Cutting And Cropping
Often photographs aren't quite the right shape and size or the photographic image is improperly centered. Having oversized or off-center photographs creates an air of unprofessionalism. Carefully cropped and sized photographs, on the other hand, enhance the overall look and feel of your scrapbook. There are various ways to solve these problems. The low tech way is to manually crop and shape the photograph using a pair of scissors or an exacto knife. If you are manually cropping and cutting pictures, make sure that you mark the outline you want with chalk (or eye shadow if you don't have chalk) before you cut. Remember the old saying, measure twice and cut once! To manually change a distracting or cluttered background simply cut out the background and replace it with a with a new paper background. This allows the eye to focus on the people instead of the clutter behind them. For tricky cutting out, you might find a fine pair of nail scissors or even some professional decoupage scissors the best option. The high tech solution to improving your photograph is to use modern computer programs such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. Using these programs, photographs can be magically darkened, brightened, sharpened, enlarged, and cropped without ruining your original photograph. Most programs will even allow you, with a bit of practice, to change the background of the photograph. Finally, die cutting machines such as cricut or scissix, if you access to them, can provide you with the ability to cut your photograph very precisely into particular shapes for your page - perhaps ovals, or rectangles with curved edges. They machines are expensive, however, and buying the die you want for each job can soon jeopardise your mortgage payments! Unless you know that scrapbooking is going to be a hobby you will pursue for a long time or can borrow and swap with friends, these machines are probably not for the beginner.
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