For ages, Digital Travel Scrapbook has been a fantastic way for travellers to preserve memories from their special trips. And in this digital age, you might also be among the many that widely rely on social media platforms like Facebook and cloud-based apps like Google Photos to make their adventures unforgettable through photos.
Each option might seem perfect for the job, but they have limitations. For instance, traditional scrapbooks can be tedious and time-consuming, whereas social and cloud-based storage apps can be a slight distancing. A digital travel scrapbook could combine both advantages while solving these challenges.
Starting with the various benefits of digital scrapbooking, below are 8 tips you could use to create a digital travel scrapbook.
Reasons Travelers Should Try Digital Scrapbooking
Digital scrapbooking is a simple and super-fun way to preserve travel memories and photos for generations to come.
Some notable benefits of digital scrapbooking for travellers include:
Low Cost
Digital scrapbooking is much cheaper than traditional scrapbooking. You don’t need to buy expensive paper, adhesives, embellishments, and other supplies. Also, you do not have to incur the cost of printing your travel photos. All you need is a computer and an internet connection.
Easy to Share
Digital scrapbooks are easy to share with family and friends. You can easily upload your scrapbook to a website or create a digital album that can be shared with others in a soft copy or a printed version.
Flexibility
Digital scrapbooks are very flexible and customizable. You can add photos, text, and other elements to your scrapbook to create a stunning collection of travel memories without much strain. Moreover, even physical images can be scanned, converted into soft copies, and included in the scrapbook.
Save Space and Time
A digital scrapbook doesn’t take up any physical space. They are also much easier and faster to complete than traditional scrapbooks, which require time cutting out materials, pasting photos, and finding the right paper.
More Durable
Last but not least, digital scrapbooks are a fantastic way to preserve memories from your travel adventures for generations to come. They are much more long-lasting than their physical/traditional counterparts, whose quality might deteriorate over time.
Tips for Getting Started with Digital Scrapbooking
1. Pick a Digital Scrapbooking Tool
Creating a digital scrapbook can be done in one of two main ways. You can either design yours with dedicated software or make it online using web-based software.
Especially if you’re starting, making a digital scrapbook is easier, faster, more convenient, and more cost-effective with online tools. You don’t have to download or install anything on your computer.
With these tools, you can even design an incredibly stunning one from scratch entirely for free. Mixbook’s free software only requires you to pick a template and upload photos, and the rest is done for you.
From stickers to backgrounds and other decorative elements, it also comes with various features that let you design a unique and customized scrapbook you’ll be happy about.
The main idea is to pick a tool that gives you more control over your designs and how creative you want them to look.
2. Collect and Organize Your Photos
Beyond reasonable doubt, photos are the centrepieces of any scrapbook. The photos you choose can make a massive difference in the overall look of your memory photo album.
After deciding on the tool to use, gather the photos you took during your trip, store them in one folder, and organize them chronologically before you start adding them to your scrapbook.
The keyword here is getting organized! You can organize your photos based on dates, destinations, people, etc.
Using a photo app such as Windows Live Photo Gallery, or Google Photos, you can apply tags to your photos with unique names. Hence, they are easy to remember, access and pick when you start uploading them to your travel digital scrapbook project.
3. Create a Timeline
Whenever you’re off for an adventure, vacation, or road trip, it’s good to create a timeline of your tours, listing out the dates and places you visited at the very least.
Besides making it easy to organize photos, a timeline can help you structure your scrapbook and make it easier to plan what content to include.
4. Choose the Right Themes
You’ve chosen the right tool and have your travel photos at arms-length. Now, it’s time to decide what theme your digital travel scrapbook will have. You could pick a piece that’s related to a specific destination, a type of trip, or a period.
Whichever the case, having a specific theme will help you determine what content should be included in the scrapbook. A particular piece also allows you to add personality and unity to your digital scrapbook design.
You can even have different themes for different pages or sections in your digital scrapbook. A beach theme, for instance, could be a fantastic option for a summer family holiday album. On the other hand, a fall photo spread could be more stunning with a yellow, orange, or red colour scheme.
5. Edit Your Photos (enhance, resize, and Crop)
Again, the photos are the judge and the jury regarding the overall look and feel of your digital scrapbook. Don’t just upload your travel photos to your scrapbooking project and finalize it as is. Some images might need a few touch-ups to create a harmonious design, so consider making a few edits.
While at it, pay close attention to brightness, contrast, saturation, angles, etc. Also, you might need to crop out some photos or resize them to fit well into the space where you want them to go.
You can use photo-editing software beforehand, but most digital scrapbooking tools have features that adjust these aspects accordingly.
It might be a bit tricky at first, but once you get used to photo-editing features, you’ll know just what a photo needs to look better as soon as you take a glance at it. Make sure your enhancements or adjustments do not end up distorting the quality of your travel photos.
6. Use a Variety of Media
Don’t just limit yourself to photos. If your scrapbooking tool permits it, you can include videos, audio recordings, slideshows, and other media in your digital scrapbook.
This can give your travel memory book a new dimension of interest and personality. You can even share it as a surprise birthday gift for the travel-loving friend or loved one in your life.
7. Add Text and Captions
A photo is worth a thousand words, but adding text and captions to your digital scrapbook pages can take this a tad notch higher. Whether you use them to tell a story or simply describe the photos, adding text and captions can make your scrapbook more fun and your travels more memorable. Also, adding embellishments such as stickers, ribbons, and backgrounds can help to add interest to your pages.
8. Back It Up
Finally, always back up your digital scrapbook to be safe. Save your ongoing project, and probably download it to your PC once you have actual content.
Some tools even allow you to save different versions of your scrapbooking project while on the go, so you can revert at will. It also doesn’t hurt to print out a physical copy of your digital travel scrapbook as a keepsake.
And voila! With the above few tips in mind, starting a digital travel scrapbook can be super fun — easy-peasy!
Also Read:
How To Combine Study and Travel together
