Pros & Cons
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- Cuts expenses; fun multimedia designs; intuitive, colorful interface; e-mail your creations; no Internet connection needed to use software; no registration unless you e-mail a design.
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- Can't optimize images or modify text styles and sizes; no international character support; no Mac version; can't print all design pages at once; some printing problems; limited design choices.
Many people think scrapbooking is just about gluing photos and memorabilia onto a page, sprinkling on glitter for decoration, and writing bubble captions. But the hobby has grown more complex, and its practitioners—mostly women—more creative over the years. They don't merely snip snapshots, they wield paper-shapers to carve decorative edges around photos, and they apply embellishments, such as stickers, trinkets, and ribbons, to give pages a more personal, 3D touch. Now the pastime has gone digital: Smilebox combines software with a service for "creative messaging," and the hybrid, which lets you do scrapbooking, share photos, and send greetings, is even attracting men.
Scrapbook makers spend a good deal of time on their projects—and enough money to fund a multibillion-dollar industry. Local craft stores, consultants who host scrapbook get-togethers, and online suppliers (I use CreativeMemories.com) will gladly trade tools and materials for cash. Printing a 4-by-6 digital photo at a pharmacy or retailer costs 15 to 20 cents; albums sell for $5 to $50 plus another $30 for additional pages and page protectors; tape runners set participants back $7 each; and refills come in at about $5 per. Then you'll want shape makers ($8 to $20); trimmers ($20); calligraphy pen-and-paper sets (up to $10 each); and alphabet, number, animal, and occasion stickers ($3.50 to $12.75 a set). Oops—forgot to mention stencils, corner makers, and organizers to hold your materials. You could easily spend $200 to $300 and a year on one album!
Smilebox requires far less time, and it's much cheaper. The free Basic version lets you select, modify, and send designs—with ads. With the ad-free Premium version, you pay $0.99 and up for each design, but you can also print it and view it full-screen. A $4.99 monthly subscription gives all capabilities and unlimited use of designs.
To get started, you download the free design software from Smilebox.com. You can use the app without a Web browser (sending and receiving designs requires an Internet connection, of course), but it only works with Microsoft Windows for now. Mac users can receive and view creations, though.
The colorful, clean interface has tabs labeled Design Catalog, My Designs, and My Creations. The catalog, which holds over 300 design templates as of this writing (with five added each week), has five project categories: Scrapbooks, Slideshows, Photobooks, Postcards, and Greetings. Each of these has sections—which vary depending on the category—such as children, travel, and pets. A drop-down menu in the catalog lets you view all designs or just those in a category (such as Scrapbooks). When you hover over a design, a pop-up shows its name and how many photos you can put into it. My Designs lets you see the templates you've chosen, as well as personalize or delete them. In My Creations, you can preview, edit, send, or delete the projects you've made—scrapbooks, slide shows, and so on. Differentiating between a slide show and a photobook can be difficult, so I was disappointed that My Creations doesn't label projects with their types. —
Click and Create!
I'm used to creating one real-world album page an hour, so I was amazed that I produced an entire scrapbook in under ten minutes. The process could hardly be simpler: Download the design of your choice, click on Get Photos to upload your images to a holding area, then use drag-and-drop to place them on the pages. You can zoom, rotate, center, and remove photos. If you already have items in your My Pictures folder, Smilebox automatically uploads them into the holding area and inserts them into the template for you.
Each template lets you choose (if you want) one of three music clips that will play when anyone views the scrapbook—few of the choices complement the designs, though, and you can't import your own music. Some templates let you select from three background colors and also add text, but the software doesn't support international characters, and you can't modify text styles or sizes. To build a slide show, you follow much the same process as with a scrapbook, but you select a background scene and a certain number of photos to display. I got satisfying results when I used the At The Beach template with shots from my vacation in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. When you save any type of design, which you can do as you go along, the software stores it locally. As a result, you won't be able to access it if you log in to the service from any other machine.
Photobooks tell a story, chronicling a wedding, for example, or your first sailing expedition. Depending on the design you select, you'll be able to adjust settings such as the number of pictures per page or the frame color. The Vintage design I used to create a Photobook from my trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City let me choose the frame color, the mat color, and (to a degree) the number of photos to display per page. Again, I wasn't too thrilled about the choices of music clips, but I chose "Sentimental" anyway. I also found the number of designs limited and would have preferred artsier ones. When you preview or view a Photobook, it opens like a book, and you page through by clicking on a Next button.
Using a Postcards template, you can create a simple photo collage to e-mail to Aunt Gert in less than five minutes. Themes include travel, sports, and "thinking of you." I showcased New Year's Eve photos using the Modern Art template, although I was looking for something more celebratory. Greetings templates for birthdays, cocktail parties, and more let me indulge my love of sending e-cards and e-vites to friends and family. A Rate This Design button in each template provides a method for commenting on it. —
Sharing
To e-mail your design, you just click Send, then enter the address and a personal message. Smilebox automatically remembers addresses you previously entered. If you haven't signed up, you'll get a second screen prompting you to register for a Basic, Premium, or Club Smilebox subscription. For the paid services, you must enter your credit card info. When you e-mail a design, a copy also goes to your e-mail address.
Those you send to don't need the application to view your creations. I e-mailed some to friends and family members who have AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! e-mail accounts. None of the e-mail services dumped what I sent into spam folders. And recipients could view my handiwork simply by clicking a link in the messages they got. My mom, a veteran scrapbooker, was blown away by how easily she could see what I sent and by the fun, animated designs. Recipients can continue to view your creation through the e-mail or by bookmarking the URL.
You and others can replay your creation, look at it in full-screen mode, and mute the sound. If you paid for the design or have a subscription to the service, you can print all the pages as well, although with some effort—you must click on and print each one individually. And in my tests, the results often came out off-center. Still, the output looks amazing tucked away in an album, especially if you use photo paper.
Other digital scrapbooking software and services exist, such as Paint Shop Xtras Scrapbooking Editions, which are ready-to-use embellishments or layouts on CD-ROM, and SharedBook, an online service for creating memory books that you can have converted to bound editions. But Smilebox outdoes both in ease of use and convenience—the software/service combination makes the process quick and effortless. An online service won't give your scrapbook albums that one-of-a-kind, 3D feel, but if time isn't on your side, this multimedia creative-messaging service will surely make you (and your wallet) smile.
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Final Thoughts
Smilebox
Unlike traditional scrapbooking, which can be a long, tedious (and expensive) process, Smilebox lets you produce results in minutes. Design choices are limited for now, but this software/messaging-service combination will surely make you (and your wallet) smile.