Scraps Of Mind

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Product Review

Some of you may remember a review I did a few months ago on the suite of computer video training tutorials from Scrap Girls called Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed. These are a terrific resource for those of you who are wanting to get started with digital scrapbooking but are needing help in understanding how to get the scrapbooking goodness out of your photo editing software so you can make wonderful creations painlessly. I tried to find some bad things so say about the product, just so the review would seem more balanced but unfortunately (??) I couldn’t find anything to mark them down on.

Now I’m going to talk to you about the follow up set of training videos, More Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed. And I’m kind of in the same boat.

I do like the quality of the products put out by Scrap Girls. They always have such attention to detail. And these training videos are no exception.

More Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed takes up where the first set of videos left off. And where SSSR was very careful to take you by the hand and show you the basics of your software functions, MSSSR is much more gung ho. This training takes no prisoners! More Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed is definitely not for the beginner digital scrapbooker.

Experienced Digital Scrapbookers read on…

MSSSR takes you from creating the wonderful digital scrapbook layouts that you learned how to do in SSSR to learning the tricks and techniques for designing your own digital scrapbooking papers and elements! These are techniques you can apply to your layout creations too; to take them to the next level. But if you’ve ever thought that it might be cool to try your hand at designing then this training will really give your aspirations a quick start.

Here are just some of the secrets you will learn:

• Take the world’s easiest shortcuts to creating your own backgrounds, embellishments, and alphas.
• Make sure that you don’t make the biggest mistakes that digital scrapbookers make when they create layouts.
• Dip your digital scrapbooking self into some of those “other” cool tools that are sitting there waiting in your software for you to use such as paths, masks, the drawing pen, and more.
• See how easy it is to install and manage new Custom Shapes and Styles in Photoshop (or PSE or PSP, depending on which software you use) so that you can make things that are creative and unique.
• Learn advanced tricks for using tools that you already know and love.
• Watch Ro make some beautiful papers and get a chance to peek inside of her layers. (How up close and personal can you get?)
• See a new way for coloring doodles.
• Get “IN” on creating your own brush sets. (You do NOT have to have those impossibly long brush sets frustrating you anymore. In fact, when you learn this trick, you will wonder why you haven’t been using it all along.)
• Find out why Custom Shapes are so important to you.
• Learn how to cut out a title from a background or a photo.

Now to be honest with you, I personally am not interested in creating my own digital kits. Frankly maintaining this blog and doing a bit of scrapbooking on the side takes up all my time so I’ll settle for just creating layouts. But I’ve found this training enormously good value in teaching me how to squeeze the best out of my software. I find I learn much better when I can see a full visual demonstration than when I just read the instructions on the screen or in a book; even with pictures. So this type of training just suits me down to the ground. I can watch the video and pause it whilst I try the technique out myself and go back and replay if I still haven’t ‘got it’.

And I love the nacky little ‘insider’ tips and techniques you learn that aren’t the sort of thing you’ll find in the product manual. Sooo cool.

The important thing is to recognise that this training will not work for you if you are a beginner or if you do not have a good level of understanding of your software. It assumes you’ve been using your software for some time and know what you are doing, and that you just want to take things to the next level. So if you’re not at that level please don’t consider this product. But if you are a reasonably experienced Digital Scrapbooker who knows her way around her digital scrapbooking software, and is interested in learning some cool insider tricks and tips…check out More Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed. And if you do, let me know what you think.

Other related posts:

Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed
A Toast to Scrap Girls

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