Photos are the key ingredient to most
scrapbook pages. Discovering how to capture the best possible
images and creating designs that show off your prints is a
never-ending quest. From your baby’s first steps to your
parent’s 50th wedding anniversary to your most
relaxing vacation, nothing helps recall a memory like a great
photo.
To showcase the memories you capture,
experiment with sizing, cropping and embellishing with digital
elements using your photo editing software. Try using the
selection tool or custom shapes for cutting shapes from digital
papers, as demonstrated with the circles at left. I simply
used the elliptical marquee tool to draw a circle shape over
paper, and then copy and pasted from the paper layer. I then
dragged this shape onto a digital layout in progress.
Good design will make the most of the photos
you have and even less-than-perfect shots can be disguised as
great images. Here’s just a few tricks for so-so photo
makeovers…
1. Include several
small images on one page. Cropping helps eliminate
busy backgrounds and poor composition.
2. Add balance.
Select accents that compensate for the snapshots. If the photos
are too dark, for example, use bright embellishments to bring
more light to the page.
3. Cover up
distracting elements. Overlap photos or
embellishments to conceal flaws. A tag or button can hide the
part of an image you’d rather not see.
4. Magnify the
assets. Draw attention to the pleasing part of the
photo by placing a slide mount or frame around the area you
like.
5. Camouflage the
flaws. Use your opacity tool on blurry photos to
disguise graininess and provide a soft hint of the image.
6. Design a photo
collage, as shown at left. Effectively display
multiple photos in an orderly way and cover up unwanted
portions.
Photos are almost always the focal point for
your layouts and, as such, deserve preferential treatment from
the moment you compose the shots to the minute you place the
images on your page.
