Filters, Tools and Utilities

So let’s review the new Scrapbooking “organizer”. Resembling Photoshop Album, Picasa and Paint Shop Pro’s Album – Digital ScrapRoom has attempted to accommodate digital scrapbookers specifically and giving us almost everything we could need in an organizer, previewer, element drag-and-drop mechanism. Yes, I said “almost”. Why? I will explain below as well as highlight the PLUSES (which there are a lot of those) to go with them.

One drawback of the software at this time is there isn’t a trial version. So, decided upon hearing so much about it to just purchase the license and check it out and therefore right this review as honestly as possible for those considering the purchase. You can purchase or review more details on it here:
digitalscraproom.comThere ARE screenshots at their site; but it still left a lot of Q&A for me as to its full capability, speed, etc.

First let’s start with the presentation upon opening the program. Great simplicity – not a lot of gadgets and extras that we don’t really need…. I.e.: we aren’t going to upload our elements to an online source so why have it as an extra program feature to load up. Another plus – this program comes with preconfigured folders as a basic jumping point for starting the organization of your elements, papers and other.

One difference I found in this immediately compared to Adobe Photoshop Album is that when you import a folder… it actually creates new folders for EACH kit that’s imported. This is probably more for the reason that it’s meant to help you keep better track of kits you download etc. But as a scrapbooker with A LOT of items to import – having them into separate folders like this is more of an annoyance (personally; and merely my opinion) as when I import a particular designers products I just want them all there for preview – not having to click on each kit name and yet still possibly another folder deep before seeing any previews. As mentioned – some might not mind this small difference between the programs as it let’s you view it by the kit name….but also in Photoshop Album you can sort by “folder location” which is basically the same… but in Photoshop Album I have the choice of viewing it that way or not; BUT still wouldn’t have to click open EACH folder before seeing the previews…. So far the only way around this for me has been to select the elements, papers, etc. from each kit in the sub folders and drag them to the main designer’s folder (ie: all those kit folders, take their image previews of contents and drag them to where it says “fhung-lie” so that I can preview all the items she has created at one time, one click on her name.

One thing I must ADMIT TO LOVING….. Being able to preview png files properly for a change!!! This is something I KNOW that not only myself but MANY digital scrapbookers found a HUGE annoyance in other programs. Digital ScrapRoom obliges our needs by addressing this past issue and this part I LOVE! I can FINALLY preview an overlay without having to open it first just to figure out if I really want to use it or what it “REALLY” looks like! Below is a sample of png word art – you see that it’s as a preview should be! Maybe Adobe Photoshop will catch on to this? Who knows….

I also discovered that if you want to have a preview of the item in another folder, as with Photoshop Album you can also just drag and drop the preview to the secondary, third, etc. folder you want to label the items and it will add them there. What my next question concerning this was naturally, is this making a duplicate image or just tagging it in a database of sorts within the program – therefore not building up the file size of the initial loading. What the program really does is just generate a “preview” and link to the actual file that you imported. It’s NOT importing the actual scrapbooking element, paper, etc. This is the same with Photoshop Album as well.

Another thing I found, and had concern of and had to confirm before doing something stupid! I had to find out if the deleting of a preview deleted the actual file from my hard drive – NOPE – yeah! But… it is nice to have that option as Photoshop Album offers, but at the same time… it does make it a nice safeguard against accidentally deleting files from our hard drives right?!!!?

SO WHAT ELSE IS SO GREAT? You are plugging away on a layout and forgot to keep noting in a separate document or in the note feature in Photoshop what you have been using or who it belonged to. How often have you found yourself trying to backtrack just to find that element or paper to ensure you give proper credit? FIRST OF ALL – what a pain and SECOND – KUDOS FOR DOING THIS – giving proper credit; especially in this age of progression of the digital scrapbooking industry to GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE!!! Back to my point…. As you drag items from Digital ScrapRoom to your program of choice (mine is Photoshop); it will keep track of them until you clear the list! HOW AWESOME IS THAT!??? ONE THING TO NOTE – you MUST have the “work mode” marked for it to document the “supply list” you are creating by dragging and dropping from the ScrapRoom to your program.

Keywords, search, etc. IT’S ALL THERE…. You can label your keywords, search, etc. Very few things we, as digital scrapbookers, could be missing from this program (other than a built in Photoshop Brush viewer like abr – how great would that be????!!!).

This program overall is VERY APPEALLING; with some things I’d like to see added to it or only slightly altered; but USEFUL – by all means and will just need to organize my kits as I import them differently as the “other” features that this provides is SO SIMILAR to Photoshop Elements but much less of the extras we don’t need and all the other features we do!!!!

What is my overall take – IT’S WORTH THE 19.99 to purchase it and if you currently use a different program for organizing your elements and kits, it might take a bit of adjustment for the change from one program to another; but I think with constant use of this program you will LOVE IT ALL THE MORE!

Questions? I’d be happy to answer any since I have purchased and downloaded it and will be playing a bit more with it tonight.

Email me at: admin@sbbemail.com with DIGITAL SCRAPROOM in the subject line

© Copyright 2003-2005 by Scrapbook-Bytes; & original creator/s of tutorials/articles

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