Just like hand-scrapped 8.5x11" albums, square albums can also be easily transformed into stunning digital scrapbooks that can be shared with far away friends and relatives in seconds.

To transform your 8x8" or 6x6" hand-scrapped album into a digital scrapbook simply use your scanner to scan the pages. Save them as high resolution (300 DPI) .jpg images which can be easily added to a new book in Picaboo. The dots per inch (DPI) should be set to 300 to guarantee the quality and resolution of the printed version. It may be necessary to re-set the DPI settings for your scanner since many scanners are automatically set to 200 DPI.

If you would like to create a digital version of your 12x12" scrapbook and do not have a scanner that is large enough to accommodate your 12x12" pages, there are two ways you can create digital images of your pages. The easiest way is to take your 12x12" scrapbook to your local photo finishing or copy center. Ask them to scan the pages of your album and save them as high resolution .jpg images (300 DPI) onto a disk for you. Most photo finishing or copy centers will be happy to do this for you at a reasonable price. Or, if you have experience using photo merge software, you can use your smaller scanner to scan half of each 12x12" page at a time. Then, merge the images together in a graphics program to create a .jpg image of each page of your 12x12" scrapbook.

Once you have created digital images of the pages of your square scrapbook, add them to a new book in Picaboo. Since your pictures are square it will be necessary to select page layouts that have square photo wells. In the sample page displayed above a page layout with one square photo well was chosen. The graphic of the hand-scrapped 12x12" page was dropped into the photo well and a corresponding background was chosen from Picaboo's Free Backgrounds Website.

 

Frame your Square Page with a Black Border.   After you have dropped your pages into a square photo well in Picaboo it is easy to add a black border. Click on the image of your hand-scrapped page to bring up the "Image Tools" on the right side of your Picaboo Edit Page. Locate the "zoom" tool and zoom out to create the black border. Continue zooming out until your border is the perfect size.

 

Drag and Drop to Fill the Page and Create a Black Border.   To fill more of your Picaboo page with your square image select the page and then locate the full-bleed page layout (the layout that shows only one landscape picture filling an entire page). After you have selected the full-bleed page, layout simply drag and drop your square image onto the page. Since the aspect ratio for your square image is different from the aspect ratio of the page, a black border will be automatically added to the space that was not filled by your picture when you drag and drop it onto a full page in Picaboo.

 

Fill the Page and Create a Matching Border.   To create the effect listed above with a matching border instead of a black border, open your favorite graphics program and create a new image. Use a canvas size of 1280x1007 pixels, which is the size of a page in Picaboo. Copy the digital image of your square scrapbooking page and paste it as a new layer on the new image in your graphics program. Move the layer with the picture of your scrapbooking page around until it is centered. Next, fill the background of your page with a coordinating color to finish the effect. Finally, save your new image as a high resolution .jpg file at 300 DPI and add it to your Picaboo album. You can now simply drag and drop it onto a full-bleed page layout.