I received my book!!!

[breeze3005]

I GOT IT!! I was so excited a day early! It turned out great! The clarity was perfect, much better than online. The thing I'll do different next time is zoom in closer on the pictures and take out the shadows, otherwise it's perfect!! I bought the deluxe book with the jacket and the jacket is awesome.

For those of you who helped me here, thanks. Just wanted to let you know that I used Scrapbook Factory Deluxe 4.0. If anyone has any questions, I can now answer them, since I know the results. I also used Paint Shop Pro X2 to work on my photos.

[Cruiser]

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[Marti]

I'm so happy for you, breeze. Glad your book turned out well. It sure makes all the hard work worthwhile. As Cruiser said, if you would like to share your book, I would love to see it as well.

[breeze3005]

Oh absolutely! I would love to share. This was my experimental book, it only has 19 pages, but I'm so glad I did that. I now know what to do and adjust the next time. I have been looking at some of the others books people have done, and layouts, and there's just so many possiblities, from the scrapbook type like I did to the vacation book, and the elegant wedding books. I'm excited to get started.

Here's the link to my book.

http://www.mypublisher.com/bookshelf/bookviewer.py?d=tq%3Ey-cppl%60je%3E3416261

[Marti]

Your book is absolutely delightful, breeze!! It is so cute and lively and colorful. Your layouts are adorable. What a fun book. No wonder you like it! The photos are great! For an experimental book, you sure did a super job.

[breeze3005]

Thanks Marti, that means a lot. I've seen a lot of your books here, and they are awesome. Can't wait to get started on some old family pictures I have sitting around!!

[Cruiser]

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[breeze3005]

We are neighbor Cruiser. I live in LA County. Next year we are going to try to take the Splendor out of LA and do the Mexica Riveria. I'm orginally from the Midwest and took the cruises in the Caribbean, but heck with having 2 ports close by, we save on airfare!

Ok, I really examined my book, I thought the background looked great, but wanted to be sure. Yes, they do, I used a couple that were "fabric" corduroy, and they have the texture, as well as the sand and cardboard backgrounds. What I discovered in the process, if you remember me asking about that darn file size problem I was having, is that with Scrapbook Factory, when you go to save it as a jpeg, using Scrapbook Factory to save, it gives you jpeg options. I click on that and move the slider to HIGH (this is where you can see the file size). On this book I kept the file sizes below 1 mb because I was having problems getting it into MP so I could make my book. But then discovered (after sending the book in) that I could have had a much larger file, apparently I was just have an isolated incident. So I'm thinking that if I could have had a bigger file, the clarity would be that much better.

I will say the the pictures are not as clear as they were when I used MP templates, but again, I wasn't able to save to the highest setting, so I may have lost quality there. Not sure. I do know that the higher I slid the slider the better the picture looked.

[Cruiser]

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[breeze3005]

I actually did look at Photoshop Elements Ver 6 and ended up with Paint Shop Pro X2, because I've been using PSP for years. I just didn't feel like having to learn a new program. When you say there are elements built in, I'm guessing graphics? I didn't realize that about Photoshop Elements. I should've guessed. PSP doesn't have that, although they have things called Picture Tubes and I haven't actually looked at all of those. On my next book, I was thinking of using PSP and see how it goes. I do want to spend some more time looking at everyone's books for ideas too!! Thanks for the info!

[Cruiser]

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[breeze3005]

Thanks Cruiser, I'll check that out. WOW, $39's a great deal!

[Marti]

Breeze, I looked at your book again because I think I'm going to try my Scrapbook Factory again and see if I notice any quality improvement over PP. I noticed your scrapbook layouts in the book were landscape orientation, not square. I haven't used Scrapbook Factory for years, but does it give you the ability to create a landscape orientation layout? Most scrapbook software only offers a 12x12, 8x8 or 6x6 size.

[breeze3005]

It does. I clicked on "Design from Scratch", then "browse templates" then under embellishments, I click on Journal. I chose "letter-wide". Then when I was done with my page, that is when I resized it when I went to save it as a jpeg, by clicking "export sekectuib as image". I also clicked JPEG options and slid the slider all the way up to high.

[Marti]

Thank you for the explanation. I'm going to try it. Your book is so nice, it's put me back in the mood to try some new layouts and make another book.

[PhotoGeek1]

Curious, Breeze 3005... Why did you choose to print on just one side of the page? It looked like you put a LOT of time into your book layouts. Looks Great!

[vivayne]

Great job!