Digital Scrapbooking Software Review

When I started selling my designs at MyMemories.com earlier this year, I was given a complimentary copy of their digital scrapbooking software, My Memories Suite, to create custom content for the site.  It has taken me a while to get through some other projects and try out the software but I have put it through its paces and am ready to give my honest opinion of how well this software works for creating digital scrapbook pages.

Over the years, a number of people have asked my about creating their own digital scrapbook pages – how do I do it?  What software do I use and how much does it cost? Is it easy to learn?  Since I am a digital scrapbook designer, I’m not using a consumer grade product to create my pages – I use Photoshop CS5 and I can’t really recommend someone spend $700 to get started in digital scrapbooking.  Photoshop Elements, a consumer product rather than a professional product, costs $100 – that still seems like quite a bit and honestly, it was made for photo editing and manipulation much more than digital scrapbooking.  Photoshop Elements is a good program for digital scrapbooking – if you don’t mind the learning curve.  If I wanted to help a friend or blog visitor get started in digital scrapbooking using Photoshop Elements as their program, I would literally have to sit down with them and show them all the different steps to creating their first layout and beyond.  I actually did this with a friend and after 3 hours of instruction, she still wasn’t able to create things easily, on her own.

So where does My Memories Suite fit in?  First, the price is really great.  The software retails for $39.97.  As a designer at My Memories, I am able to offer you a coupon code for $10 off that so you can get started for just under $30.  (See below for code).  It also contains a coupon for $10 off digital scrapbooking kits and embellishments in the MyMemories store.

So the price point is great, but what about the functionality?  I really liked using this program and am excited about it because my 11 year old daughter really wants to learn how to create digital scrapbook pages herself but I definitely didn’t want to go through showing her how to use Photoshop. 

Here’s what I like about the program:

• First and foremost, this program was made specifically for digital scrapbooking, rather than photo editing. Everything about it was created to help you create albums and individual pages.  You simply start by placing a background on your page, then move to the photos tab and move to the embellishments tab.  They are all lined up on the right.  For each thing you add, there are quick and easy to understand options like mats, shadows and shapes.  The program interface is very well designed.
• Create whole albums quickly.  This is great for projects where you have a whole series of pictures like a vacation.  Keeps all your related pages together. This feature is great because if you are working on a set of pictures in an album: you can make changes, duplicate pages, copy embellishments across the project and basically mess around with it as much as you want without having to open and close individual pages. I am planning on creating my 20th wedding anniversary vacation album in this program rather than in Photoshop so I can plan out all where all the photos will go and then do the embellishing and text.
• One click conversion of photos from full color to effects like black and white or sepia
• The menu options and navigation are clear and easy to understand.  Some of the steps involved in creating a layout in Photoshop are “hidden” a bit in the menus (such as clipping a photo to a shape).  The user interface is easy to use and provides ample workspace to create layouts.
• You can view finished albums or sets of digital scrapbook pages in a slideshow with different viewing options
• It is very easy to export images for printing or the web.  In Photoshop, you have to manually resize and export – My Memories Suite does the resizing for you.  You can also export everything in an album to .jpg at once. In Photoshop or Elements, you have to do this page by page. 
• I LOVE how the shadows work in this program.  You can carry a shadow style across all the embellishments or photos in fewer clicks than Photoshop and I think they look nice and realistic. You can see how the shadow will look as you adjust it on the fly.  You can choose the color, the pixel offset, the opacity and the blur.  It’s REALLY well done
• Quickly mat photos. Just click on the photo and choose the mat option.  Choose the color and the size.  Copy to ALL photos in one click.  If your photo is rectangular, the corners will stay square and the same number of pixels across on all sides.  This is a big deal to me because in Photoshop, a popular way to add a mat  is to add a “stroke” to the photo, but the corners are not quite square.  That really bugs me! Another way is to add a new layer behind the photo.  If you do this, you have to drag out the corner of the mat, but it goes proportionately on all sides and then you have to adjust it / eyeball it to get it even.  Not that fun.  Right in the mat screen in MyMemories, there’s a color picker so you can grab a color from the layout to do your mat, too.  VERY COOL.
• Create rounded corners easily.  This takes a lot more steps in Photoshop – you have to create a new layer, create the rounded rectangle (hidden a bit in the fly out menus), position it properly on your photo, send it back a layer, click on the photo layer and then clip it to the shape (in a different set of menus or memorize the keyboard shortcut) and lock the layers.  In My Memories Suite, it’s one click in the photo menu.  You also instantly choose square, oval or circular.  This is a HUGE time saver. 
• Create paper shapes easily.  Want a square or strip of paper?  Very easily done.  ALSO, this can be changed.  If you decide you want to use a larger strip of paper, you can make a change but going back to the crop box.
• Easy to use outside content – you can use anything from my digital scrapbooking store at christinesmith.net in this program.  You can add papers and embellishements from the menu system inside the program or open the containing folder with my digital scrapbooking kit and simply drop and drag into the program.  VERY slick.  I used to sell my designs at a different store that had its own software and it did not offer drop and drag, which I consider a huge drawback.
• Good text editing.  View fonts as they look (not just the title) in the drop down menu, use the color picker to match your page, drag and resize text box.  Auto text wrap. 
• You can add narration and music to your albums – a great option if you want to create something like a graduation or anniversary display album that runs on a laptop at your event.  I’ve seen this done for a few parties and it was a really neat idea – this software includes the option to do that!
• There’s even a spell check for your journaling – definitely not an option in Photoshop.
• Tutorials available on the My Memories blog.  Of course, a user’s manual is included too.

Drawbacks

• There’s only one thing missing that would make this program 110% perfect – you cannot change the color of embellishments or papers. So if you have a red button in your stash, and it’s not quite the right color of red, you cannot adjust it.  I think this is only a big deal if you really like to mix and match stuff from your digital scrapbooking stash. If you are a “kit scrapper” – meaning you mostly stick to using papers and embellishments from a single digital scrapbooking kit for a page or project then this isn’t really such an issue – most likely the designer has included more than one color of any given element or paper so you have many options for embellishing.

Sample Page

Below is a page I created in about 20 minutes the first time I ever used the program

This digital scrapbook layout sample was created using my Serenity Kit, available at MyMemories and christinesmith.net

Bottom Line

Even without the ability to change colors of embellishments, I heartily recommend this software and am excited to start creating my own digital scrapbook album in it, as well as creating more custom content for the software users.  The price is fabulous and it does so much, so easily that it overshadows the one negative.

If you want to get started in digital scrapbooking or just think My Memories Suite would be better software than what you’re currently using, you can use my custom coupon code to get $10 off your purchase. Click the banner below to go to the site to order a downloadable version of the software and get started right away. At checkout, just use code STMMMS30070 in the box provided after you click on the Add to Cart button.

BONUS OFFER: I will give you a $10 gift certificate for my store at christinesmith.net if you email me a copy of your purchase receipt of the software.  So you get $10 off by using coupon code STMMMS30070 to order the software, you will get $10 in the store at MyMemories (be sure to check out my products there) and you can get $10 off in my store as well!  That’s $30 in discounts and free products.  To email me, use the contact button in the right sidebar of this blog.

ENJOY!