Hi all, I am just beginning my journey down this road of digital scrapbooking. I really need help. I don't even know where to start. I am really in a bind. I am an avid paper scrapbooker. I had all my family pictures dated back to 2003 on an external hard drive. Yes I am STUPID...and a lesson to all...when this week the hard drive overheated. I am in the process of hoping to get back all my pictures - by taking my smart cards from my didgital camera to the photoshop where they say they can help me restore my deleted files..please do a little prayer for me. In the mean time..I AM FREAKING OUT!...I did have all my pictures labeled and coded in Microsoft Picture IT..and ADOBE..fine and wonderful but of course they are all on the fried hard drive -so I do have the Thumbnail pics. And thought..eh...I can use these pics somehow and put them into a digital scrapbook...awesome...but I don't even know where to start. I can get my hands on paintshop pro...please any help...on how to get these pictures..into a really easy digital scrapbook page I would really appreciate it...Thanks in advance..Melanie

Wow, that's rough. There are some amazing things you can do to restore digi pics, though, and now's the time! BEFORE you overwrite that part of the disk.

You have Adobe what? Album? Photoshop? Do you already have Paint Shop Pro?

If you can't get your pics back, the thumbnails won't print well. But you can make a DVD slide show that you won't print for an album instead. We usually print our layouts into albums, but for low quality photos viewing on the DVD is great!

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Emma the Pal
GALLERY Web Page

Yes..I am living everyone worse nightmare...I am currently as we speak..trying to download paintshop pro...I have a nifty little program that will "snag" a picture...called snag it...which will allow me to save the thumbnail picture...as a jpg..soo..it will take a lot of work...but if i can take these little pictures..into paintshop pro..and make scrapbooking page..it will be worth it...but I am so new to digital scrapbooking...that..I am like ...whoa! but I will not loose my kids baby pictures...lol

Oh, good: I have Snag-it, I use it for writing all my classes! You'll need a crash course in improving low-quality digi images. Let us know when you're ready to start.

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Emma the Pal
GALLERY Web Page

Yes..I love Snag It. I use it for work. I work from home for a computer consultant in Pittsburgh doing on line training and help menu's. It is going to take me a while to snag all the pictures. As you can imagine...but mostly I am concerned with my xmas pictures. So I am going to start that tonight. I just now how time consuming it is. I had them all labeled-all in there proper months..you name it...I feel so ashamed. Take a moment tonight anyone reading this back up to disc now!! I really haven't used Paintshop Pro. Yes...a crash course on trying to improving these low quality pics would be great.

Thanks Melanie

Sorry to hear about the BIG Mishap!! However glad to hear that you know enough about Snag It and computers to figure out how to get your thumbnails back at least!!

Do you have any experience with PSP? Because there are scripts that will resize photo's for you with almost just a single click of the mouse...
Here is the link:
http://suzshook.topcities.com/8scrip...et_Resize2.htm

Otherwise you can use Image>Resize by increasing the Pixel Dimensions on the photo each step by 10%, so if you use 110%, 110%, 110% time after time you can increase your pixel per inch.
Here are the settings:
Change the drop down menu and choose Percent, then
Top 2 boxes type in 110, by typing in one the other one should change as long as the lock aspect ratio box is checked...
If there is any number lower than 300.00 in the Resolution box, change it to at least 200-300 making sure it is set to Pixels/inch in the drop down menu.
Resample Using Smart Size - Checked
Maintain original print size - UN checked
Lock aspect ratio - checked
resize all layers doesn't matter unless you have more then one layer per image, which I do not believe you have...
Keep doing this again and again and again, the resize dialog box will remember the settings for you, so you can use key strokes faster as it sounds like you have a lot of photo's to resize.
Shift S - Enter

It works rather well, then you might have to use the Digital Camera Noise removal, or the .jpg artifact removal tool to help you get the photo almost back to original!!

Good luck and let us know how it's going!!

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Thanks so much for your help..

I just finished snaging about 100 pics..and that is just december 2003 and 2004...haha!

These pictures are all roughly the same size 245x183..jpgs...I am trying to enlarge them in Paintshop Pro...but they are not resizing all that great. Any ideas. I tried what you suggested below. And can get it to resize about 3x..then the quality is gone. I don't know if I am wishing on a star. Or If i can get some really good digital scrap booking pages out of these saved pics(trying to keep my chin up ).

Help!
Melanie

I know I'm probably going to get Booo'd but...
when I 1st started scrapping here (1st time ever scrapping) I made my LO's 500x500
I even printed a couple out on my home printer on normal paper (fitted to the full page size) just to see how it looked.. It wasnt picture/proffesional quality but it was pretty good.. I have one framed even..

so what I am pretty much saying is if that is the only way you can save your pictures I say go for it and you might be happily suprised with the results..
Try to print out one of the pictures you have at the 3x larger level and see what it looks like..

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~Renate