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Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking Your Childhood: Part Two Crystal Jeffrey Rieger provides a tutorial on how to scan your old images in order to use them in your scrapbook pages Article rating: 9.67

Now that you are ready to tackle scrapbooking your childhood you are going to need to reprint your photos so you can use them on your scrapbook pages. If you are lucky you will have negatives to use but most will find that the negatives have been misplaced. In this case you will need to create digital scans of the photos to be able to make reprints. Most local printers offer this service but it can become quite expensive if you have a lot of photos that need reprinting. An investment in a personal scanner to use at home might be worth it if you plan to reprint numerous photos or memorabilia for your scrapbooks.   

This simple tutorial on scanning your photos can be used as a starting point to learn but will need to be tailored to your specific scanner and photo editing software.

When scanning your photos be sure to check the settings on your scanner to ensure the best scan possible. Consult your user manual but your settings should be something similar to this.

To be able to reprint your photos at the same size as the original be sure to set the dpi (or dots per inch) to 300. If you plan to enlarge your photos you will need to set the scanner to a higher resolution such as 500 dpi or higher.

Once you scan your photo and save to a location on your computer you might want to make some adjustments to it before printing. Simple photo editing software such as the one that comes with your computer will probably prove adequate enough for your needs. At this time it is probably best to crop out most of the white space surrounding your photo if your scanner does not do this automatically.

For this particular image an “auto correction” was done to improve the colors. When choosing “auto correct” you let the software make the adjustments needed based on its programming. Some auto correction programs are better than others so be sure to look at the corrections and make sure they are satisfactory before saving. 

When this photo was scanned it was slightly askew so it will need to be straightened before printing. A minor rotation using the same software corrects this and the image is ready to be printed.

Make sure to use the “save as” function when saving your adjusted photo so you do not overwrite your original scan. This will ensure that you can go back and make changes if you are not happy with the photo after printing.

All that is left to do is to bring to your digital files to your local printer or if it is an option, print them at home. In this particular case a quick application of a corner rounder to the photo and the copy is complete. 

This simple scanning and printing technique is easy enough to do but it only works if your original photo is based on a standard printing size from present day. A lot of photos from the past vary in size and shape which can make reprinting difficult if you want to retain the original look.

To reprint your photo the same size as the original you will need to have photo editing software that allows you to open a blank canvas or page such as Photoshop. To start, you will need to scan and edit your photo as per above steps and then open the revised file in your photo editing program.

Next you will need to open up a new canvas, setting it to a standard photo size such as 4” x 6”. (Size is dependent on the size of your original photo.)  You can choose to have the canvas either transparent or white.

You should now have opened in your program both your photo and the new blank canvas.

Choose the “move” tool and then click and drag your photo onto the new canvas. It will look something like this.

You should then close your original image and only work with the new canvas/file you have created.  Your new file is composed of two layers; the first blank layer (transparent or white) and the photo layer.

Before saving and printing you will need to flatten these layers using Layer>Flatten image.

Once the image is flat you can then save the file and print as you normally would. Once printed, you will end up with something like this.

The extra white paper can be trimmed off and then you will have a photo the same size as the original photo.

Once you have completed these easy steps you will then be able to add the reprinted photos to your scrapbook pages while still preserving the originals.

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