How To Display Those Digital Photos

Given the popularity of the scrapbooking movement, it wasn't surprising that someone would come up with a way to remove all of the manual labor from the process.

Broderbund Software teamed up with American Greetings to offer a package that allows you to create scrapbooks, "brag" books, photo cubes, posters, organizers and panoramic albums.

"American Greetings: Scrapbooks & More" consists of three CD-ROMs. The program and a bunch of templates are found on one.

The second disc includes an "Art and More Store" containing additional American Greeting designs and projects (they call them "Content Packs") that can feature licensed artwork under such themes as Garfield, Dilbert and the teams of the National Football League. These additional templates can be purchased by calling a toll-free number on the package.

The fact that you have to buy these items separately bothered me at first, but given the package's low price ($29.95), I didn't find it excessively greedy, and each Content Pack includes a free sample. A third CD, "Holidays and Everyday, Collection 2," includes 500 pieces of artwork that you can add to your projects.

You start the scrapbook process by choosing a template and pasting in photographs from a Kodak Photo CD, digital camera, scanner or any other source.

If you want to retain some of the homemade look, you can manually paste your favorite snapshots after printing the scrapbook pages. The package includes hundreds of prewritten (canned is too harsh a word) sentiments that can be used for captions. Text is searchable by keyword or occasion, and can be added to your scrapbook pages with a single click. Documentation for the program is simple, but clear and easy to follow.

Scrapbooks & More includes two digital imaging modules. Photo Organizer helps you keep track of all your photos, making it easy to search for and retrieve images. Photo Workshop provides a few rudimentary image-editing tools, including the ability to crop, color correct, remove redeye and add special effects like Emboss, Pixellate, Impressionist or Pastel.

No Habla Mac?

The program's only failing is the lack of a Macintosh version. If the large number of Windows computers being sold is what seduced Broderbund, I would ask how many of the thousands of anonymous PCs sitting on the desks of insurance companies are going to run Scrapbooks & More? On the other hand, every iMac owner is a potential customer, but this concept seems lost on the company.

Scrapbooks & More looks like a fun group activity, and is a great example of a computer program that promotes family interaction. This program is so easy to run that even school-age children can work on the computer while a parent assists them with scanning or connecting cables to digital cameras for downloading images. If you have a Windows computer and kids, Scrapbooks & More is a better way to introduce them to the computing experience than letting them blast aliens into pixels.

Related links:

• Nov. 4, 1999: Digital Cameras: Comparison-Shopping
• Naturally, there is a "Scrapbooking.com"
• More scrapbooking links