Do you have a cabinet full of Creative Memories scrapbooks?
Your Creative Memories scrapbook creations required a faithful devotion to put together and the results were a beautiful keepsake documenting your precious family photos and stories. What happens, then, when your children want to take your ‘labor of love’ with them when they start their own families. All that hard work, the laughter and tears, it was for them, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want a copy of it for yourself.
So, what do you do – where do you start?
Recently I had the opportunity to convert Creative Memories scrapbooks into digital photobooks and the five key things I learned I would like to share with you to help you get started: (If you already know this information skip to my followup post on converting scrapbooks into digital photos books part 2)
1) Scanning the pages. You will need a scanner that has a bed that is at least 1/8th of an inch larger than the size of the page to ensure that nothing gets cut-off. I considered photographing the pages however the source of light provided by a camera in the time-frame you will be photographing will change and result in pages with different lighting.
2) Software. You will need good editing software to clean up the pages and remove any area of the scan that you do not want – like the hinge staples – on the books I was scanning. I used Photoshop and automated some of the clean-up and re-sizing that was needed via the ‘actions’ function. I believe Photoshop Elements also has this capability.
3) Photobook vendor. You will want to pick out a photo book company that offers the following
-
- ideally a book size that matches your original album/page dimensions
- a lay-flat option because if you use the magazine-style option anything on the inside edge of your pages risks getting stuck in the seam of the book.
- flexibility in the number of pages – count the pages first. Depending on the page restrictions of the vendor you might need to eliminate a page or two of the original book or be “ok” with a blank page.
4) Time. To perfect the process you need to allow for a learning curve. Give yourself time to establish a process that works for you. I like to scan one scrapbook at a time (page protectors removed), and then import the images into Photoshop. Experiment with the best way to clean up the pages, re-size the DPI (dots per inch) to meet the printer’s guidelines for the book vendor, allow for the printer’s bleed (this is the part of the book that gets cut off in the print process) and then export to your upload folder. A trick here – be sure to build two sets of actions in Photoshop – one for the even-numbered page and one for the odd number page – the clean-up is different for the different page sides. Once the pages are perfect save and upload to the digital photo book software. I like this process because it breaks up the monotony of any one step.
5) Preserve. Once you have received your books back from the printer you will be IN LOVE with the outcome. You will be happy to send off the original creative memories scrapbooks with your kids and display your new versions. Be sure however, to preserve your original edited scans on a thumb drive. Why? If anything happens to the hard-copy books you can easily access the images and recreate. In addition, if you want to access any one individual photo on one of the pages you can do that too. Make sure to scan the original pages at a minimum of 600 DPI so that the individual images offer a good reproduction quality.
Let me know if you have any questions about this process or if you would like some help converting your scrapbooks into space-saving digital photo books. Be sure to read the follow-up post converting scrapbooks into digital photo books – part 2 on the three most popular questions my readers asked (and my answers).
rita norton
I am the momma to two children and was an Oregonian for the past 25+ years. A job transfer for my husband (in the summer of 2016) resulted in a cross country move and now I am a Massachusettsan. I confess, I had to look up the demonym! The birth of my son 20+ years ago was also the start of my entrepreneurial adventure. Photos have always been at the core of my businesses and continue to inspire and drive my passion to create beautiful keepsake photo collections for my clients.
You always have such great advice, and your explanations are so easy to follow. I dream of having a scanner this big. For now, I have to stitch my scans together. Another excellent post, Rita.
Kathy, Thank you so much for your comments and your support – it is truly appreciated.
What a great way to save space while preserving the effort that went into the original books. I think most people don’t realize that this is also how you stop the original pictures from fading. Thanks for the step by step info.
Darla,
Thank you for your comment. You are correct about the ongoing preservation of the physical photos. Even if you do not convert into digital books you should still scan the scrapbook pages to preserve the photos and the memories.
Hi Rita, Thank you for such a great (detailed) post. I am our family’s historian, and have been a photographer for many years. I am blessed to have both of my parents living, and as I’ve researched both sides of my family, I have been fortunate to receive lots of photos from distant cousins. You gave me the perfect solution for my parents, and both of my sisters. Thank you so much!!
My friend and I are interested in converting our 12 x 12 inch scrapbooks into digital photo books. The scanning sounds the best option.
We looked for scanners of adequate size, but without success. Where do you buy a scanner of that dimension? As you suggested, the ideal size would be one-eighth bigger on all sides than 12 x 12.
Rosanne,
Thank you for your comment. There are two scanners that I recommend, however, both are fairly expensive. One is an Epson and the other a Kodak – both in the $2,000 range. If you are going to manage this project on your own I would purchase a V600 Epson, you can probably get for under $200 on Amazon.com. The additional step you will have to do, however, is stitching your pages together. You can do this in Photoshop. Let me know if I can answer any other questions for you.
Do you know of any vendors (staples, kinkos, etc.) that you can pay to do all of this scanning for you on their equipment?
Jenna, My company, Photovation, offers this service. Another vendor that offers it is Picture Perfect in the John’s Landing area of Portland. Feel free to contact me if you have additional questions.
Thanks for pointing out the five steps really reading them pumps me up for creating my own digital photo books
Thank you so much for your great blog post. I am embarking on an overwhelming project to digitize all of our 12×12 family scrapbooks (50+ of them) and create photo books using Blurb. Our local UPS store offers large format scanning for a very reasonable price (at 600 dpi), and I would like to know if you offer consulting services as I take each scanned scrapbook into the Photoshop (or Lightroom) world? I am fairly computer savvy, but have not used either editing software, and I’m guessing that you could save me hours with a (paid, of course) step by step consultation. Thanks for letting me know if this service is something you provide.
I made a completely digital scrapbook for my son in 2003. Working with the limited programs at the time, manipulating pictures with the help of Ulead Photo Impact 3 and adding clipart and digitally scanned images to pages in Microsoft Word 97. Capturing my sons elementary school years digitally was a blast but a huge project consisting of 267 pages in total. I often wondered if it was a first of its kind.
Patty,
That is great!! It may very well be the first of its kind! Did you print it?
I am planning to do some research on the availability of the scanners and my husband is going to get it for me for Christmas. If I am understanding this correctly, the scanner will provide the resolution and if I need to edit or “trim” a page or imperfection caused by the scanning, I should be able to do it in the digital scrapbooking site. I use Shutterfly exclusively and think that I can manage to do this because I have not found a scanner (yet) that is larger that 12×12 at least on one side. Anyone willing to chime in to correct me or provide other advice? Thank you in advance!
Hi Debbie,
If you want to scan the scrapbook pages here is the company that provides the scanner that you need: EZ photo scan. If you decided to purchase you would need a PS80 and the A3 flatbed. The A3 flatbed only works as an add-on item (hence the purchase of the PS80). You will need to indicate the DPI using the settings via the scanner software. You will need to adjust the bleed in a editing software, Adobe Photoshop Elements is an easier one to learn. Let me know if that helps!
Could you give me an estimate per page for converting one of my scrapbooks into a photobook? My son recently passed away and I’d like to give his dad a copy of mine.
Sherry, I am so sorry about the passing of your son, my deepest condolences to you.
In order to give you an estimate for converting one of your scrapbooks I need the following info:
1) # of pages in the scrapbook (count each side as 1 page)
2) size of scrapbook
3) style & age, is it Creative Memories or a different style and how old is it
With this information, I can give you a ball-park idea on cost for creating the digital files (phase 1) and then the digital book will be the second phase.
We are trying to get a scrapbook made into ‘books’ for our kids for Christmas. The owner of the books will not let us scan them because she says that the scanning light will damage the finish on the pictures. Is this really true?? Please advise – it’s not right for only one person to have all of the family photos.
Here is a great article which addresses your question: https://thefamilycurator.com/whether-to-scan-or-photograph-old-documents/
The flip side is considering the purpose of photos – to actually enjoy them and share the stories. 😊 In addition, if the photos are not in an archive scrapbook they are already deteriorating daily. And don’t forget mother nature, fires, floods or even a home robbery could permanently destroy the photos.
At the end of the day, one “dose” of light is not going to harm regular photos. If the photos are heirloom then photographing with a camera is probably ideal.
Let me know if that helps.
I have used the high resolution scanner at our public library. Just have the librarian check your flash drivers make sure you have all your scans before you delete from the scanner. Our library also has an amazing scanner to scan delicate scrapbooks that wails be damaged by flipping face down on a regular scanner. The historical librarian is extremely helpful.
Great idea Marsha! Our libraries continue to be great resources!