Get a FREE fully-working copy of Steganos Security Suite 7 (worth £49.99) when you sign up to the Practical PC Newsletter. Review: Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe
Dave Cook captures his memories the easy way - on computer!
| Product | Scrapbook Factory Deluxe |
|---|---|
| Company | Nova Development |
| Web | www.guildsoft.co.uk |
| Price | £29.95 |
| We like | Comprehensive range of tools and templates |
| We don't like | Histrionic themes |
| Rating | 8/10 |
| Requirements |
It's a funny old world. One day you're kicking a football around the school playing field with your mates, and the following day you're a dad! Well, perhaps not quite, but that's how it seems.
So what did happen to the years in between? If you're lucky some of your happiest moments will have been captured on camera, developed, and then lovingly stored in photo albums. But what's the betting those albums are now lying half-forgotten in some old dusty cupboard.
What a waste! All you need to copy them onto your computer is a scanner. And let's face it - wouldn't you enjoy those snaps far more if you turned them into digital photos?
Having turned them into digital photos, what then? Well, that's when the fun really begins - assuming you have a program such as Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe from Nova Development.
What it offers
Scrapbook Factory Deluxe is aimed at beginners and intermediate users. It includes everything you need to create a varied range of personalised scrapbooks including over 2,000 scrapbook pages and customisable projects. Creative projects include subjects as diverse as mini-albums, magazine covers, trading cards, frames, photo cubes, and even family trees.
To these ready-made templates you can add photos, captions, talking balloons, and special effects for graphics and text. In addition, there are 10,000 graphics available, 500 fonts, and 600 quotations covering a variety of subjects.
You can create your own Web albums and photo slide shows for the Internet, and then bring it all together with sound and music. Scrapbook Factory Deluxe also includes its own built-in digital photo editor. So you can crop, fix flaws, remove scratches, reduce red-eye, or add special effects to your photos with the minimum of effort.
Take three
Assuming your photos are already stored on disk then creating a scrapbook, journal, diary, or whatever can basically be achieved in just a few easy steps. Alternatively, you can create quite complicated designs; the only limit is your own imagination.
If a criticism can be levelled at the program it's that some of the themes are not really aimed at the British market. That's no slight on our cousins from across the pond, of course. It's just that a few of the topics don't apply to us Brits.
After launching the program, you typically choose a category, and select an event, occasion, or theme. For example you could choose "Family Tree" as the project, select "Family Trees" as the category, and then "Pedigree" as the subcategory.
This will direct you to half-a-dozen ready-made templates, ideal for creating a family tree for your pedigree pet. All you have to do is personalise the selected template by filling in the detail and adding photos and so forth. Then, having completed the project, you simply print the results using your printer. Cool!
Verdict
Despite being easy to use, Scrapbook Factory Deluxe sports a comprehensive selection of photo editing tools and templates. Thanks to Scrapbook Factory Deluxe, you have the potential to take the longest and most enjoyable trip down memory lane - ever!
