Digital scrapbook printing

Scrapbook printing lets you share your creations on paper.

Digital scrapbooking is a relatively new field, and questions about printing 12X12 digital scrapbook pages abound. Here are the resources and information you need to help you decide whether to buy a new printer, send your scrapbook pages to an online printer, or take them to a local printer.

Purchasing a wide-format home printer

Wide-format color printers range from about $150 to more than $2,000. To find a printer that fits your printing needs and budget, visit Amazon.com and search for "wide format printers" in the computer section. Canon has been getting good reviews on several scrapping sites.

Calculating cost per page

Before you buy a new printer, you may want to calculate cost per printed page. Ink packages list how many pages each cartridge will print at a given percentage of coverage, (100% coverage would be a completely black or colored page). If the package shows that the cartridge prints 100 pages at 100% and it costs $20, then you can assume your scrapbook pages will cost less than 20 cents each. Add that figure to the cost of a sheet of paper (and factor in the printer price over two years) to determine whether this is a good option for you.

Also, find out if the brand of printer you plan to buy will accept off-brand ink cartridges. Your warranty may depend on this.

Online printing services

Another option for digital scrapbook printing is online printing services. Viovio and Scrapbooks Please both charge less than $1 for a single-sided 12X12 scrapbook page. For personal online service, Pages to Treasure specializes in printing only scrapbook pages.

Local copy and printing services

You may want to take your digital scrapbook pages to a local printing service to get them back quickly and save on shipping charges. Many scrappers use Costco, as they print oversized graphics at a significant discount for members. Or in Sacramento, you can go to Sacramento Copy on North 12th Street. Many local copy centers now print and copy 12X12 documents.

Printing on your existing home printer

Keep in mind that if none of these options work for you, you can scale your digital scrapbook pages down to 8X8 inches to fit within the bounds of an 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper on a standard printer. When you reduce a digital graphic proportionally, you will not lose any of the details, though enlarging graphics (other than vectors), will usually reduce their resolution, causing blurriness.

There are lots of great reasons to print your digital scrapbook pages. Start printing yours now, and you'll be prepared to give them as treasured gifts when the occasion arises!

Please email me at:DigiScrapWriter@gmail.com

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