Digital Scrapbooking Software Review: Scrapbook Factory Deluxe Version 4.0

As a recreational graphic designer, I planned to give photo yearbooks to grandparents and family for the holidays this year. While at the store, I spotted a copy of Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe Version 4.0 by Nova Development on the clearance rack. I installed it on my new laptop and successfully entered the world of computer scrapbook design. Here is my review of Nova Development's Scrapbook Factory Deluxe v. 4.0 and a summary of my experiences in digital scrapbooking.

Scrapbook Factory Software Installation and Support

The Scrapbook Factory 4.0 software is supplied on a DVD rather than a CD-ROM. The company offers the option to send in the DVD to exchange it for those who are using computers that don't read DVDs. The program installed easily, although took some time. The Scrapbook Factory program takes a sizeable chunk of computer memory. It ran well on my newer laptop, but I experienced a few second's loading glitch with one graphic-intensive pair of pages.

What Comes with Scrapbook Factory Software

The Scrapbook Factory 4.0 software provides massive amounts of material for the would-be computer scrapbooker. They boast 1500 fonts and 60,000 graphics. There are templates available for photo albums, calendars, cards, journals, t-shirts and slide shows. Among the graphics available are numerous backgrounds, tags, rivets, shakers, photo corners, hardware clips, slide mounts, vellum sheets, letters in assorted styles, and almost anything else one could find for regular paper scrapbooking. There are options available to do minor photo editing, recoloring, creating transparencies, and adding borders.

Using Scrapbook Factory 4.0

As a self-taught graphic designer, my primary experience has been with MS Publisher and photo editing programs such as Photoshop. Scrapbook Factory 4.0 has a similar set of commands and options, making it a somewhat intuitive experience for me. I glanced through the instruction manual but for the most part was able to successfully edit a template using trial and error. After creating pages using a few of the templates, I successfully created the balance of the pages from scratch, selecting accents, backgrounds, tags, and photos on my own.

The materials are not well indexed and searching for particular items is tricky. Photo formatting is primitive, and on one occasion I was unable to resize a photo without losing the aspect ratio, accidentally creating a very tall, skinny child. The huge selection of materials makes it challenging to find exactly what you're looking for without some manual browsing. As I worked further with the program, it became easier as I familiarized myself with the available graphics.

Printing from Scrapbook Factory

One of the claimed benefits of Scrapbook Factory 4.0 is the ability to save documents as jpegs, PDFs or as a Scrapbook Factory file. I was not able to save any documents as PDFs, but don't have Adobe Acrobat installed on the scrapbooking computer. I was successfully able to create jpegs, and easily print created pages out on 8 1/ 2 x 11 paper. The image quality was quite high and photorealistic, and those who received the scrapbook photo albums enjoyed them and were quite impressed. According to the manual, it is also possible to create a DVD of the scrapbook pages to watch on the television, but I did not test that feature.

Scrapbook Factory 4.0: Worth the Price

I paid $9.99 for the program and feel like I got my money's worth from it. I was able to create 24 8 ½ x 11 photorealistic scrapbook pages, with embellishments, tweaked photos, and numerous accents, in less than a week. The pages were much more ornate than anything I could have put together with MS Publisher or any of the photo editing programs already on my computer. While there are a number of graphics I don't foresee ever using, the background and font choices will be useful in the future for creating greeting cards, party invitations, flyers, and other printables. Scrapbook Factory 4.0 is earning its spot in my computer's memory.

Scrapbook Factory Deluxe Version 4.0 available from Amazon

Scrapbook Factory Deluxe Version 5.0 now available from Nova Development