When it comes to digital scrapbooking we are dealing with a lot of competition between many programs that aim in aiding the user to create perfect scrapbooks that will preserve memories and will bring a smile on people’s faces as time passes. It is important to understand that there is no need to utilize professional design programs like Photoshop when all you want to do is create a digital scrapbook. With this in mind, let us take a quick look at the three most popular digital scrapbooking programs available and compare them in order to see if any of them is good for your needs. The three that need to be discussed are Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe, My Scrapbook 2 and Creating Keepsakes. All of them are paid programs costing $39.99, $19.99 and respectively $23.99. Price is always important but when comparing digital scrapbooking programs we also need to take a look at features before deciding what to choose.

Which one is better?

When using digital scrapbooking programs the first thing we need to analyze stands in the easiness of use exhibited. Both Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe and Creating Keepsakes are very easy to use while My Scrapbook 2 is a little more difficult to properly utilize at the beginning. On the other hand, all three can be learnt and this is not going to be a problem on the long run.

Importing features are always important but in the case of these 3 digital scrapbooking programs we can notice a clear cut tie as all can import from either scanner or digital pictures. When it comes to real time editing on the other hand we can notice that My Scrapbook 2 falls short as it does not include this highly important feature. Both Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe and Creating Keepsakes have real time editing and this feature alone makes the creation of scrapbooks a lot easier. Another important aspect is what the software comes with when talking about included material. This covers clipart, pre-built templates, borders and backgrounds. Once again, Creating Keepsakes and Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe come with a plus, especially in the case of Art Explosion, which alone features over 40,000 included clip art. Also, both allow users to download additional clipart, borders and backgrounds. Other features are present in all three digital scrapbooking programs and are easy to use while allowing the digital scrapbook to catch life and look very good. The most popular features that need to be mentioned in this case are: the possibility of using layers, adding on screen text and editing it with ease, remove red eyes in photos, create various collages, crop images, rotate, resize and flip pictures, move or delete frames while having the possibility to stretch them to fit the chosen page size, change the orientation of the page to either portrait or landscape, adding filters and different border effects, change light and color changes and providing users with pre-built sample ideas. Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe and Creating Keepsakes also allow users to lock frames and snap to grids. Also, when it comes to features, Art Explosion also brings two more to the table in the possibility of aligning frames and multiple undo moves made easy.

When it comes to sharing and organizing all three digital scrapbooking programs are equal and none of them stands out of the crowd. You can end up sharing what you created through email, uploading in special web photo galleries or apply/create screensavers. Organization is also a breeze as the user can add the results to a CD with archiving options, create albums or different single layouts and save them for use on another future digital scrapbook.

Output capabilities are very important and all three digital scrapbooking programs come with important features although this is where Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe fails to impress as much as the other two. My Scrapbook 2 and Creating Keepsakes allow the possibilities of saving as photos, sending via email, printing photos and setting photos as wallpapers. Art Explosion can also do these except for the set as wallpaper feature and the number of file formats available for output is just 7, which is not much when compared with My Scrapbook 2, which comes with 23 possible file formats.

With every type of computer program out there we will need to have some sort of technical support, just in case we need it. This is where these three programs are very different and if might be an important aspect to analyze for regular users. All three come with a list of frequently asked questions and lack of toll free telephone support. This is where similarities end and each manufacturer chose to handle the topic of technical support differently. My Scrapbook 2 is the only one that offers a user forum and similar to Art Explosion they both use telephone support and email opportunities. Tutorials are only offered by Creating Keepsakes and My Scrapbook 2 and a user manual is only offered by Art Explosion. If you need help you might want to think about the kind of technical support you are more comfortable with before thinking about other facts like price as you never know when you might need help. Different individuals respond better when dealing with some types of technical support offered. All three digital scrapbooking programs work on Windows based operating systems, including XP, ME, 2000 and 98. No Windows Vista versions are available yet although there are rumors that the following versions will also be available for the new operating system.

Conclusion

It is very hard to choose between the three digital scrapbooking programs as they are very similar and basically offer the same features when it comes to creating digital scrapbooks. On the other hand, leaving price aside, the best one out of them is Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe and the second place would need to go to Creating Keepsakes. My scrapbook 2 is the weakest of the three but still better than other digital scrapbooking programs like Photo One Print, Picaboo or Bluebell.