Scrapbooking With Lumapix: The Best Digital Software Program Yet

by Nicole Humphrey | More from this Blogger

01 Aug 2006 05:59 AM

Trying to find good scrapbooking software is always a challenge. And if you love scrapbooking as much as I do, you are trying out any program you can get your hands on.

I recently discovered Lumapix: FotoFusion - for digital scrapbooking.

Lumapix is a software program that can be used at home or professionally to make incredible artwork using digital photographs. I downloaded the free trial to see what it was all about. Talk about cool!

FotoFusion is available in three different versions: Standard, Pro and Studio.

Apparently scrapbookers use the standard version. Professional photographers seem to use the studio version. And Pro seems reserved for web designers and photograhy enthusiasts, though in fairness I think anyone can use any of the versions they choose.

After downloading the free trial, I was impressed with how quick the installation was. Less than a minute and I was ready to use the program. When it first opened, it immediately checked for updates - which is always appreciated from me!

The program itself was amazing. It did take me several minutes to navigate my way around and learn what I was doing, but I had a bunch of fun doing it!

There are templates that come with the program and then you can also make up your own. I started with a template and it was so easy to just drop my photos in where I wanted them, edit the text on the page and poof I was done. Super easy!

Some of the finer points of FotoFusion are:

Direct connectivity to participating labs

• Professional photographers can upload their layouts, including original images, to participating labs for output. The labs can retouch individual images and then process out the completed layouts for printing. [STUDIO only]

New Multipage support

• Design an entire album in a single project [STUDIO only]
• Think Powerpoint as compared to Photoshop.

Patent-pending automatic collage layout and tuning

• Produce a unique arrangement for a selection of pictures with a single click . No more fussing around with templates (although FotoFusion supports templates as well!).
• Tweak compositions with interactive control over cropping, sizing, rotation, etc.

Precision control over text, borders, backgrounds, and shadows

• Add TrueType text, with support for EXIF information (camera make / focal length / etc).
• Give images 'jagged' borders and mattes, color-correct interactively, set to greyscale or sepiatone, blur images, or make them transparent.
• Add drop shadows and interactively control their size and placement.
• Add a tiled backgrounds and scale or blur it interactively.

Unique sharing capabilities - email and web galleries

• Mail compositions to friends or customers as ultra-efficient images embedded directly in the email - fit pictures from an entire wedding into a single 200K mail!
• Publish collages and source images to your own web page - a gallery with a unique 'clickable' interactive front page that matches your existing web page styles.

Power printing support - home to grand format

• Print at exceptionally large sizes and high resolutions - producing anything from 8x10 images to posters and banners [PRO] to grand format output [STUDIO]
• The quality of the original images is preserved at all output sizes, and text/borders/shadows are all rendered at the final output resolution for pristine quality.

All I can say is that this has got to be my top pick for digital programs for scrapbookers! It's so easy and fun to use. Click here to get a FREE TRIAL. It's totally worth it.

Learn more about Nicole Humphrey

Nicole Humphrey is a freelance writer, consultant for CTMH and a Sr. Blogger for families.com. She resides in St. Charles, Missouri with Mike and their five children and two furbabies.

View Full Profile | More from this Blogger