Product Description

Here is the first scrapbooking guide centered on Adobe's popular digital imaging software. Written by an experienced digital scrapbooking trainer, this practical book shows you what you can create with digital technology. Loaded with inspiring full-color examples, you'll learn professional design tips, secrets for getting the most out of hardware, important information on digital archiving, creative techniques for enhancing photos and pages, and much more. Its friendly cookbook theme offers special features, such as shopping lists to help you choose the right tools, exclusive coupons for savings on digital scrapbooking products, and handy recipe cards that outline key steps from the book's projects.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #370371 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From the Back Cover
Today's advancements in digital technology are transforming the traditional art of scrapbooking. With a computer, digital camera, scanner, ink-jet printer, and Photoshop Elements—Adobe's popular digital imaging software for home users—you have all the ingredients you need to create a truly astounding and unforgettable scrapbook. But learning how to use these tools can be intimidating.

In Scrapbooking with Photoshop Elements: The Creative Cropping Cookbook, digital scrapbooking trainer Lynette Kent distills the information you need to know about choosing and setting up the hardware you need. She also shares professional design secrets and introduces you to the vast range of artistic possibilities that emerge when you use Photoshop Elements. This practical and friendly guide demystifies the technical topics and leads you step-by-step through dozens of inspiring examples.

Inside, you'll find:

Professional advice and principles for coherent design

Shopping lists to help you choose the right tools

Creative ways to enhance photos with Photoshop Elements

Artistic techniques you can't perform with scissors and glue, such as turning a photo into a sketch or painting, and creating type that is filled with a photo

Tips for producing special text effects and customizing clip art and backgrounds

Innovative ideas for making better photos for your scrapbooks

Instruction on how to set up pages for printing and archiving

Handy tear-out recipe cards that outline key steps from the book's projects

Secrets for getting the most out of your digital camera, scanner, and ink-jet printer

Essential information on preserving your images through digital archiving

Bonus! You also get exclusive coupons for savings on digital scrapbooking products.

About the Author
Lynette Kent is an artist and art teacher who loves to experiment with digital tools, using them to create and embellish all types of projects, including scrapbook pages. She teaches popular classes on digital scrapbooking, where she demonstrates the magic you can make with a computer, scanner, and ink-jet printer. Lynette has a Master of Arts from Stanford University.

Customer Reviews

Nemo MyMac.com Review
Scrapbooking with Photoshop Elements: The Creative Cropping Cookbook
by Lynette Kent
Sybex Press
ISBN 0-7821-4377-6,
175 pages plus three endpaper pages of laminated tear-apart tutorial cards
Price: $29.99 US, $41.95 CN, £19.99 UK

There's a lot to like in the early chapters of this friendly, inviting reference and tutorial book. How often do we see introductory text dealing with principles of design and color theory, with a presentation that doesn't require a wall of post-graduate diplomas to comprehend?

Fifty pages covering digital cameras, scanners, input devices, printers, and data storage come next, written in a straightforward style, accompanied by graphics that are cheerful without being cutesy. "The Care and Feeding of Your Scanner" is especially useful, including advice for scanning three-dimensional or messy objects with the help of clear plastic wrap.

Still nothing limited to the craft of scrapbooking, which is a crucial observation. Scrapbooking with Photoshop Elements is, in spite of its precise title, a general-interest primer on the basics of digital imaging. Elements enters the text at page 82, nearly halfway into this book, which shifts into high gear from here onward.

Photoshop Elements' mighty Toolbar is explained in detail, along with some other basic attributes, and soon readers are learning how to whiten teeth, creating custom cookie cutter frame shapes, adding artistic effects to their photos, and making homegrown sports trading cards. These tutorial chapters are loaded with numbered, sequential lessons that are Mac/Windows aware. Hints and tips are plentiful.

Scrapbooking finally takes center stage with instruction for "building a digital page," including "scanning a 12 x 12 page with a letter-sized scanner." Does that sound tricky? It is, but not formidably so. A final appendix assists readers in monitor calibration, something most beginners would be intimidated to pursue.

If you've been reading this review without falling asleep, you'll wonder why scrapbooking is the dominant title, instead of, for example, digital imaging or a similarly banal term. Could it be a marketing decision?

Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 is functionally identical in its separate Mac and Windows versions (unlike single-CD Elements v.1 or v.2), but very different in how catalogs of photos are handled. The Windows edition includes a separate component for that purpose that s-o-r-t o-f resembles Apple's free iPhoto. Adobe took Microsoft off the hook by developing Elements 3's new Organizer.

Three thick sheets of heavy, laminated, colorful, perforated card stock contains twelve double-sided lessons from Scrapbooking with Photoshop Elements' most important interior pages. Some editor and graphics person and paper buyer devoted a lot of energy and expense to providing these cards that add considerable value and utility to an already first-rate book. Easier to use than to describe, I'll find plenty of ways to make sure my photo students become well acquainted with their contents.

Digital photography and image editing don't need to be heavy-duty chores, as we learn throughout this high-quality book. At $30 US, Scrapbooking with Photoshop Elements is well priced, given the extent of its material and presentation. Book Bytes rates this title at a very strong 4 out of 5.

creative scrapbooking
The first part of the book explains everything the novice needs to know about design elements, digital cameras, scanners and printers. But what I really appreciated were her explanations of special effects and incorporating text with art for my scrapbooks. Her step-by-step instructions are less complicated than the help section of Photoshop Elements. This book is the perfect compliment to the PE's software.

Clear, Precise, and Elegant
I have read many "How To" books. This one is a cut above the rest. Lynette Kent clearly is a gifted writer, who knows, and loves her subject. Unlike so many books of this genre, that are written by "hired gun scribe hacks", Scrapbooking with Photoshop Elements has a spirit that makes the subject come alive, and makes the reader anxious to try out the many skills that Ms. Kent simplifies. A clear layout. Creative, real world examples. Precise and easy to follow instructions. I have seen books that cost twice this much, that do not deliver half the value. If you want to really take your scrapbooking to a new level-- buy this book! If you just want to learn a great program like Photoshop Elements--- buy this book!