How to...photograph your pages.

Photographing your pages is a personal thing...lots of people have different ways to do it...one of the things i get asked quite a lot is how to do it, especially if they are sending it in for publication or a competition. I know that you seasoned scrappers out there know how but there are always people who are new to this craft that we can help.

As i said there are several ways..ie Vanessa who owns Papermaze scans hers...i dont have a scanner so i have to use my camera. Here is how...

First off you really need a good photo editing program...there is one with windows, but that is fairly limited. For those of us who dont have Photoshop ( me included !) the next best thing is a photo editing software that you can pay for or find. I have always had Picasa...which is a google photo editing program...we have done several posts on this on this blog...it is free and completely safe to download so google it and have a try.

Anyway here is how i photo my layouts...

Step one : I stand my page at the back door of my conservatory as that gives the best light at all times of the day...i bought an easel from Ikea

and place it on there.

step two: the next step is the important one...this makes the editing of it so much easier...
You have to photo the page straight on so your edges are straight...

I took this photo of the page...

as you can see i was not directly in front of it so the lines of the edge of the page are not straight...so when i tried to crop it, it ended up like this...

if i had tried to crop the edges even more i would have lost lots of the page trying to get it right. ( by the way Picasa allows you to write on your photos...and it is really easy as well, just go to the text option and follow the instructions)

So i try again...

This time as you can see i photographed it straight on, so when i edited it it cropped really easily like this...

I always mess about a bit with the colour, light and contrast and i always sharpen it for the internet as well....but as long as you get the photo right in the first place it makes cropping much easier. If you have questions then please leave them in the comments section or i if you have another way you do it, again leave it in the comments section and we can add it onto this post to share with others...

If you have any questions about scrapbooking...how to questions, email me at wendy@bbbweb.com and we can do a post on them and answer some of your questions for you.