Digital Scrapbooking and General software links

I've been asked many times whether there was a free program that could be used in making digital scrapbooking pages, I discovered this one called Paint and it has many features that will make getting started in digital scrapping a breeze.
From the Paint site "About
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.
It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as www.adobe.com Adobe® Photoshop®, www.corel.com Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The www.gimp.org GIMP.
The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a small amount of C++ for installation and shell-integration related functionality. The source code is available under the terms of the MIT License."

Visual tutorial Link for using free Paint software to make a completed page with blushbutter.com's quickpages.

I just have to share some wonderful sites with you for enhancing your scrapbooks in photoshop. There are many more free plugins and proffessional plugins also, not shown here. The first is a favourite site of mine to visit for regular photoshop actions, I really love her paper tear actions, love the torn and inking edge action alot on my layouts for the paper edges http://www.atomiccupcake.com/ . Actions can literally save you oodles of time in the process work of making the same effects over and over again. Saving the wrist particularily for designers and fulltime scrappers on a mission to get albums done.

The following is a site that have some really wonderful actions from vintage photo framing to book making as pictured here. They are really clever and a whole lot of fun! http://www.panosfx.com/ Check out there free section for personal use which making scrapbooking layouts falls under.

Monica Larsen has some great ribbon and bow actions that are wonderful to use, twisted and rumpled ribbons. Lot's of really time saving actions that are just perfect to go with whatever kit you have purchased.
http://www.monica-larsen.net/store/

Other sites you may want to investigate are http://www.alienskin.com/ for there fabulous plugins you'll have to watch the demos to see what I mean!

For a nifty page curling plugin check out Av Bro page curler here :
http://www.avbros.com/english/products.html

For a great free tiler filter and many more free filters check out Richard Rosenman here:
http://www.richardrosenman.com

Oh and I can't forget Auto Fx's Dreamsuite for the wonderful liquid metal plugin and the other cool plugins they have for terrific photo edges and effects.
http://www.autofx.com/dreamsuite/ds1_Gallery.html

Photoshop Mama has some awesome tutorials for free with her newsletter and in some of her archives. She teachers you how to make your own simple time saving actions in a simple easy to follow video. She always talks to you as if you are a beginner so her tutorials are suitable for the advanced to beginner levels, I highly reccommend them to become familiar with your powerful programs capabilites. http://www.photoshopmama.net/

I know with all these great links to investigate you'll be busy visiting sites in search of making your pages the best they can be. Oh on a caution note of advice, actions and plugins can take alot of ram and if your computer is only just managing to get things saved in high resolution in Adobe photoshop, please don't go installing any plugins until you get more ram and a faster computer. I work off a 4gig ram computer and a 1000gig memory PC system so I don't have to worry about my computer crashing, which it will do on the slow systems.

If you found this article helpful, please leave me a comment

A free software download from Google.
Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organised by date with folder names you will recognise. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organised.

Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips. And Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures – you can email, print photos home, make gift CDs, and even post pictures on your own blog

Art Resources, one of the Web's most user friendly resources for learning Paint Shop Pro! Hi I just discovered this great site, and just had to share it with all you guys!!

Av Bros Page Curl Pro 2.0

I really love this Plug-in. Again, I can't say enough about the genius of the brothers Alex and Vladimir Shalikashvili with Pro version of Page Curl.

The interface is tasteful and easy to understand and the curl and fold possibilities are endless.

You can create multiple folds and or curls on the same image as seen with the sticky note on the left which has a fold and a curl or you can create a swirly curl as seen on the colorful ribbon with complete control.

I recommend this plug-in for digital scrappers as well as image manipulation enthusiasts.

Go check out their gallery and then download a free demo and see Page Curl Pro 2.0 in action for yourself.

This layout competition looks awesome, I think the competition will be tough though! So dust off that Photoshop Elements and get cracking(working) cos you only have to the end of June to enter!

“The 2006 Scrappy Awards” is your chance to show off your best digital scrapbook pages and win some cool prizes! Just send us digital scrapbook pages you’ve designed using Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software. Winning entries will be featured in the Photoshop Elements Techniques® Newsletter and Website.
Over $10,000.00 in Prizes to be Given Away for “The 2006 Scrappy Awards!”
One Grand Prize package will be awarded for Best Of Show and One prize package will be awarded to the First Place entry in each of the 10 categories.
You may submit a single digital scrapbook page in any of the following categories:

Holiday, Patriotic/Military, Sports, Wedding, Graduation, Family, Love/Romance, Travel, Baby, Pet

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