Scrapbooking is the creative art of preserving pictures and memories in beautiful and artistic ways. As most avid "scrappers" who have already dabbled in the digital form of the wildly popular pastime know, the possibilities to create scrapbook pages you'll cherish for years to come are virtually endless.

But how does one go about beginning this exciting way of capturing and sharing memories? Here is all the information you'll need to know to get started and on your way to creating fabulous pages of your own to print, share, and save forever.

What You'll Need to Begin Digital Scrapbooking

- Photos: The very first thing you must have to begin your digital scrapbooking adventures are, of course, photos. The three methods most often used for getting pictures onto the computer are using a digital camera or scanner, or using the services of a photo lab, either online or off. If you absolutely love taking pictures and using them for scrapbooking, a digital camera is a must have. For digitizing older pictures, a scanner is another essential tool. You'll also have the ability to "correct" photos and even restoring those you may have thought were unusable.

- Photo Editing Software: There are several types of photo editing software to choose from for your digital scrapbooking needs, including Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Elements, as well as Paint Shop Pro, Corel Photo Paint, and many others. There are also layout programs specifically designed for creating scrapbook pages, or you can rely on your own artistic talents to make your pages.

- The Means to Share and Save Your Masterpiece: Thanks to all the advances in technology, today there are numerous ways of sharing your pictures and scrapbook pages. Besides email and uploading them to websites, you can also share your pictures by printing them, or saving to a CD or DVD. Always be sure to save your pages in a location you'll remember, possibly in specific folders set up and organized just for scrapbooking.

The Benefits of Digital Scrapbooking vs. Traditional

With digital scrapbooking, you're only limited by your imagination as you'll now have the ability to modify and enhance your pictures like you never thought possible. Also, with digital scrapbooking, there's no paper cuttings to pick up, no supplies to reorganize and put away, and no glue to worry about. The only clean-up or organizing you'll have to do requires a few clicks of your computer's mouse.

Also, if you're like most scrappers, you're all too familiar with the frustration of running out of supplies just as you're about to finish a project. The internet is a great resource for digital scrapbooking kits that contain countless types of digital embellishments for your projects. Besides a dizzying array of colorful background papers, there are also overlay transparencies, "stickers," frames, and many other scrapbooking elements that can all easily be resized and used anywhere on your virtual page.

The undo button is another invaluable asset in the world of digital scrapbooking. Instead of wasting piece after piece of paper if something doesn't turn out the way you envisioned, as is the case with traditional scrapbooking, this method allows you to simply click the undo button and quickly move on to the next step.

This type of creative scrapbooking offers the unique benefit of being able to combine both mediums, digital and the traditional paper, to create one-of-a-kind keepsakes that can be tailored to your tastes and completely personalized.