FAQs

Photoshop Elements and Adobe Photoshop are both good choices for digital scrapbooking. The main difference is the price. Photoshop is the gold standard of professional graphic designers and photographers. It has a lot of extra power, much of which you don’t need for routine scrapbooking, and some of which is very nice to have if you can afford the price tag of around $650. (Student prices are a lot cheaper, of course.)

What it really comes down to is finances and long term commitment. Elements can be purchased for less than $100. (Amazon and Costco are good places to find a good deal on Elements.)

If you can afford the extra money for Adobe Photoshop, then ask yourself this question: Do I plan to do this long term, or am I just checking it out? If you aren’t sure, go with Photoshop Elements. If you feel pretty strongly that scrapbooking and photography will at least be a part of your life from now on, go with Photoshop if you can afford it. For most people, Photoshop really isn’t any harder to learn than Elements, but there is almost unlimited room for growth.

Elements, however, has plenty of room for growth, too, so if you go that route, you won’t be disappointed. And once you learn Elements, you’ll be able to graduate to Photoshop when you’re ready without any trouble – they work very much the same.

In the end, however, only you can decide what’s right for you!

To change your email address for our Digital Scrapper newsletter, click on the “Manage Your Subscription” link at the bottom of any issue of Digital Scrapper. You will be taken to a web page where you can enter your new address.

If you are a Premier member, log into your Premier account and click on the “Change Password/Edit” Profile link on the right side of the screen. You may update your email address there.

Skills Taught In Our Training Videos

The new Photoshop or Photoshop Elements skills you learn are yours to use. You do not have to give Scrapper’s Guide credit for products you make using these skills.

Brushes, Styles, Actions, and Patterns

Occasionally Linda Sattgast, owner of Scrapper’s Guide, or other Premier instructors include brushes, styles, actions, and patterns with their training videos. You MAY NOT share or resell them, claim them as your own, or modify them and claim them as your own. You MAY use them to create NEW graphics, word art, overlays, etc. for personal or commercial use. If you make a physical product, such as a CD or DVD, to sell commercially, you must include a credit line for ScrappersGuide.com in your readme file. If you sell a downloadable product for scrapbooking, please include a credit line in your readme file AND a mention on your item’s description page, such as “some effects by scrappersguide.com” or “Special thanks to ScrappersGuide.com. A link back to www.scrappersguide.com would be highly appreciated.

Kits and Templates

All kits and templates are for personal use only unless you purchase a Limited Commercial Use License. (Check the Scrapper’s Guide Store to see which kits and templates offer commercial use in addition to the regular price.)

Check out our Personal Use and Commercial Use policy.

Use one of these methods:

• Large Format Printer – You can purchase a large format printer that can handle a 12×12 inch page size. Several companies make this type of printer. I use an Epson printer. I order all my paper and ink from B & H Photo. I try to buy several ink cartridges and/or paper packs at a time, so that even with shipping I save a substantial amount of money with them.
• Print Shops such as Kinkos or Costco – Call ahead to find out what format they want, pdf or jpeg. Make a copy of your page in the proper format (I teach how to do this on my training CD, Learn Digital Scrapbooking), copy it to a CD or flash drive, and take it to the shop for printing.
• Online Printing – There are online companies, such as Shutterfly that will print individual pages and mail them to you.

Currently we only have tutorials for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

Digital Scrapper Premier is a paid membership where you get scrapbook training videos, designer kits, and layered templates for drastically reduced prices from our normal store prices.

The monthly Premier issue isn’t ‘delivered’ in an email; it lives on the website. We send out an email when a new issue is available, but some subscribers have trouble receiving our emails because their email provider has an overly strict spam policy.

Subscribers are responsible to go to the Scrapper’s Guide website after the first of the month and access the current issue by logging in at the top of the Navigation Bar in the upper, left corner. That will take you to the Premier area where you’ll find the link to the current issue. The issues are posted for an entire month so that leaves everyone plenty of time to read the PDF magazine and get all their downloads.

We usually send out a reminder email—as a courtesy—to remind folks that the current issue is about to be replaced by a new one, but don’t count on that to come every time. Mark your calendar or set a recurring reminder for yourself to access your Premier issues as early as possible in the month. You don’t want to miss any of the fun!

As a courtesy to Premier members, we will help you get your issues in both cases—whether you forget to download an issue or if you lose issues due to a hard drive failure or other loss—on a limited basis.

We ask your courtesy in the following ways:

• Please be timely in downloading your issue of Premier.
• Immediately open the issue and check it out to make sure your download was successful. (If you wait you may find out, months down the road, that the file somehow got corrupted during download.)
• Please copy the Premier issue to a CD or external hard drive for safe keeping. Computers DO fail, so back up your products.

If, in spite of your best efforts, you still lose one or more Premier issues, or if you forget to download an issue, we will help you out using the following guidelines:

• You must be a current Premier member.
• We will only help you retrieve issues you’ve acquired since you started your current membership. In other words, if you let your membership lapse and then become a member again, you will only be eligible to receive the issues in your most recent membership.
• We’ll help you get your issues the first three times free of charge. After that, we will charge $10 per incident to discourage members from using this service in place of responsibly following our guidelines.
• To get help with back issues, contact mary@scrappersguide.com.

To find out when your subscription expires, log in to the Premier member area on our website with your Premier user name and password. On the first page you come to, you’ll see a heading on the right: Renew Subscription. Just below that, in green, you’ll see your subscription dates. If you want to renew, just click on the box right above it. You can renew your subscription anytime, and it will automatically add the extension onto your regularly scheduled expiration date.

To renew your subscription, just log in to the Premier member area on our website with your Premier user name and password. You’ll see a heading on the right that says: Renew Subscription. Click on the box below!

Back issues of Premier can be found in the Scrapper’s Guide Store as individual kits and video tutorials.

For tutorials, click on the link Premier Video Lessons in the left  navigation bar. This page has thumbnails of the most recent tutorials and more tutorials listed by topic along the right side of the page.

For Kits and Templates, click on the link Scrapbook Kits or Scrapbook Templates in the navigation bar.

We have an automated security feature for our Premier area, which locks an account that is being accessed from more than one computer. This is in place to prevent people from “sharing” their Premier subscription with non-subscribers. If you try to log in to your Premier account from more than one computer, you’ll trigger the lock-out. If you’re using a digital satellite internet connection, each time you log in, the satellite generates a new IP address, which fools the system and triggers the lock-out.

If you get locked out of your Premier account, email jan@scrappersguide.com and she can help you.

Please follow the instructions provided on the new Customer Support page here. Please help us help you by giving us full details when you create your help ticket.

If you signed up for the Digital Scrapper weekly email but have not received one lately OR you’ve NEVER received one from us at all, here are the most likely reasons why:

1. Your email provider may be blocking it, or sending it straight to your Junk Mail file. In that case, you may need to add our domain name (scrappersguide.com) to your list of safe senders. Junk mail filters do a great job at catching spam, but in the process they can sometimes grab legitimate bulk emails, like ours. Check the settings on your junk mail filter, or contact your email provider to let them know that you are not receiving some emails that you wish to receive. Each email provider is different, and each features different security levels.
2. When you signed up to receive Digital Scrapper, did you confirm your subscription? You may not have confirmed your desire to receive the Digital Scrapper weekly email when you got the Welcome email. There’s an opt-in link that you must click on to confirm that you wish to receive Digital Scrapper. (Over a thousand people have signed up but not confirmed, so our newsletter service cannot sent it out to them until they do.)If you think you may not have confirmed your subscription, contact us, and we will manually confirm your subscription. However, if you never received the confirmation email because of spam blockers, you’ll probably have trouble receiving the newsletter also. In the worst case scenario you can come to our website to view the Digital Scrapper Tip of the Week newsletter, which we post online each week.
3. What is your subscription status? If you are having trouble receiving your Digital Scrapper Tip of the Week email, you might want to check your subscription status. You can do that two ways. If you have a previous email, scroll down to the very bottom and look for the red link that says ‘Manage Your Subscription.’ It will take you to a page that will tell you what your subscription status is. The other method is to go to the Scrapper’s Guide home page and click on the box at the top right and sign up for the newsletter again. If your status is active, you’ll get a dialog box telling you that. If it isn’t, you can sign up for the newsletter.
4. Have you changed your email address recently? If you have received the Digital Scrapper Tip of the Week newsletter in the past but are not receiving it now, you may have changed email addresses but haven’t updated your subscription yet. To change your email address for the Digital Scrapper Tip of the Week email, click on the ‘Manage Your Subscription’ link at the bottom of any issue. You will be taken to a web page where you can enter your new address.

Check out these possibilities, and you’ll probably find you fit into one of these categories.

Meanwhile, as a backup measure, we’ve placed a link to the Digital Scrapper Tip of the Week eNewsletter on the left navigation bar. Click on the link Current Newsletter under the Community section in the navigation bar on the left, and it will take you to the current issue of Digital Scrapper Tip of the Week.

In Windows, open the newsletter in your email program and choose “File > Save As” from the Menu Bar. When the dialog box comes up, choose “HTML” from the format menu, choose which folder to save it in, and click on the Save button. Now you’ll be able to open it up any time in your browser, whether or not you’re online.

To save as a PDF go to primopdf.com and download Primo PDF, a free application, which will make a PDF out of anything you can print.

On a Mac, open the newsletter in your email program, and press Cmd + P to Print. When the Print dialog box comes up, click on the button in the lower, left corner that says “PDF” and choose to “Save as a PDF.” You will need to select the folder in which to save it, then click okay.

Digital Scrapper Tip of the Week is the free weekly email with scrapbooking news and Tip of the Week. Digital Scrapper Premier is a paid subscription where you receive kits, templates, and video tutorials with advanced scrapbooking techniques.

Every week, in the Digital Scrapper Tip of the Week email, we give a brief overview of what’s available in the Premier newsletter, but only paid subscribers can access that information by logging in to the members-only area.

Find out more about what is available to Premier members.

To join the forum, just go to www.scrappersguide.com/forums and click on the Register link in the navigation bar at the top of the Forum page, then follow the easy instructions on creating a user name and password. Please remember to write down your user name and password, and keep them in a safe place in case you forget them or need to refer to them in the future. If you forget your user name and password, please do not attempt to re-register using the same email address as your original account! If you forget your log-in information, please click here for assistance.

Please do not try to log in to the Forum using your Premier account user name and password. They won’t work. The Premier database and the Forum database are not linked. So you will have to create a separate user name and password for the Forum.

Premier subscribers have their own password-protected area in our Scrapper’s Guide Forums, where they can share and discuss topics relating to each month’s Premier issue. To enter the Premier area of the Forum, just enter the current password (found in each month’s issue of Premier) and that will get you in.

We have a direct email address for you to communicate with with us and get your problem solved. Please send an email with all the details of your problem to jan@scrappersguide.com so that we can troubleshoot the problem you’re having with the Forum.

Here are some miscellaneous troubleshooting ideas about what might be causing some of the issues you’ve experienced. Look them over to see if any of them apply to you:

If you forget your Forum user name and password please do not re-register using your same email address! If you can’t remember your user name and password, just email jan@scrappersguide.com and she will reset it for you.

Remember, your user name and password (both for the Forum and for the Premier log-in) are case sensitive. Always write down your user name and password and keep it in a safe place (not on your computer) so  you can refer to it if you forget.

If you have trouble uploading a layout to the Gallery, please read the Gallery How-To Guide before you fill out a support ticket. Most of the Gallery upload problems are due to user error, such as incorrect sizing. Make sure you read the tutorial on preparing your images for uploading AND the tutorial on sizing and uploading your images. You will find those PDF tutorials in the How-To Guides at the very top of the main Forum page.

Check the Remember Me box when you log in. That will keep you logged in to the Forum.

If you have Norton 360 installed, you need to know that it has a serious cookie scrambling problem. Cookies are used to track login status in the forum, but they won’t work when switching between different computers or if cookies are turned off in a security setting somewhere on your computer. We corrected the cookie setting configuration recently so they may not match what you have stored from before. Simple solution: log in, log out. Clear your cookies. Log in again. If you have Norton 360 running, you may need to log out every time you leave the Forum and log in when you come back. Either that, or replace Norton 360 with another security program.

If you’re using AOL: We suggest you minimize the AOL browser and use an alternative browser. We recommend Firefox. You can download Firefox for free, and you can keep it on your computer along with your regular browser.

Not all computers or browsers react the same to each download attempt, so follow these instructions for best results:

In Windows: Right click on the download link and choose “Save Target As” or a similar save option if your browser says something different.

Choose a location for the download. You might want to create a new folder where you can keep all your Scrapper’s Guide downloads.

Click okay to begin the download.

When the download is complete, navigate to the folder you created, and you should find the video clip or product there.

If the file is zipped it will need to be extracted before it is usable. In Windows, right click on the file and choose “extract” or “extract all.” On the Mac, double click the file.

On a Macintosh: Click on the download link to download the file(s) to your desktop. If a file is zipped, double click on it to extract it. From a Finder window, open a folder and click and drag the files into the folder.

If you’ve followed all the instructions in our first suggestion and are still having trouble, your best bet is to try the download again. Each browser reacts differently to each download attempt. Sometimes it even helps to clear your cookies before you try again.

It’s possible that your browser may be the problem. We’ve found that Firefox is an extremely reliable browser for downloading. You can download Firefox for free and keep it on your computer along with your regular browser.

If you’re having trouble downloading the Digital Scrapper Premier issue, it might be due to the fact that activity is heaviest on the server the first couple days after a new issue becomes available. If you have trouble during that time, you might want to try back a little later.

In order to play Scrapper’s Guide videos, you’ll need the latest version of QuickTime installed on your computer.

You can download QuickTime FREE for  Windows or Mac from Apple’s website.

After you’ve downloaded and unzipped Quicktime, double click on the iTunesSetup.exe file and follow the instructions in the installation wizard. If you don’t want iTunes to be your default music software, uncheck that option when prompted. Once the installation is finished, QuickTime will be active and the videos should play properly.

From time to time, you may experience problems with a video because of a bad download attempt. Simply download the file again, and give it another try.

If you are having trouble watching QuickTime videos on Windows, try opening them in Video Lan Controller (VLC). VLC is an open source video player that supports most video formats, and generally does a good job playing QuickTime files even when QuickTime is not working properly.

Go to videolan.org to download the current version of VLC. Once you have installed it, open VLC and choose File > Open File. Browse to the video file you want to watch, choose Open, and then click Okay. If you are opening videos from a Scrapper’s Guide training CD you will need to browse to the Movies folder on the CD and open the video files individually. They are numbered, so you can watch them in order.

We do, but they are temporarily not available because we’re switching to a new shopping cart. We should have them available again soon.

No. We do not offer check payment in our Scrapper’s Guide Store.

Payment may be made through PayPal or by credit card: Visa, Mastercard, American Express or Discover. You may also shop with a Scrapper’s Guide Gift Certificate.

Our credit card transactions are processed through Authorize.net, which is one of the major gateways. Transactions are fully encrypted, and we do not capture any credit card information on our server, so we never have access to your number at any point.

To get your full Premier discount on the CD, log on to your Premier account page, and click on the link that reads Members Only Discount Store. Then add the training CD to your cart. The price will reflect $29.94. On the left, enter your Premier discount code word (which is found each month in the current issue of Premier) and then click on the Update Cart button on the right. The cart will calculate your discount, and the price of the CD will show as $26.95 (before shipping/handling).

We’ve posted instructions on how to install layer styles in the Scrapper’s Guide Forum.

The easiest way to load brushes is not to install them at all. As long as they’re on a folder on your desktop you can easily access them any time you wish:

• Get the Brush tool and open the Brush Picker in the Options Bar.
• Click on the right facing triangle at the top to open a flyout menu, and choose Load Brushes.
• When the dialog box comes up, navigate to the brushes folder on your hard drive and double click on the brush set you want to load. The brush set will load and will stay there until you change brushes.
• Loading brushes this way instead of installing them keeps Photoshop Elements or Adobe Photoshop from being over burdened with too much to load when you open it, thus slowing it down.

No. You can have more than one version on your computer at a time, as long as you have sufficient memory on your hard drive.

Don’t uninstall the old version of Photoshop Elements before you install the new one. As soon as you open the Organizer in the new version of Photoshop Elements, it will copy the old Organizer into the new one.

You may now uninstall the old version, if you wish, or you can keep it installed, but keep this in mind: From this point on you can only work in one Organizer at a time, so it’s best to only use the Organizer in the new version.

There are many, many photobook and scrapbook publishers you can choose from, but our recommendation is Shutterfly. We make QuickAlbums (a collection of pre-made templates, including a front and back cover) that fit the specifications for Shutterfly.com.

There are many places to look for freeware fonts on the internet. A simple online search for “free fonts” will turn up hundreds. For specific recommendations you might visit our Scrapper’s Guide Forum, and check out the Fountain of Fonts thread. You’ll find many websites that offer both fonts for sale and freeware fonts. Just be sure to follow the stipulations for your freeware or shareware font. It’s helpful to know the difference.

Freeware fonts are free–usually for personal use and sometimes for any use, depending on what the font designer stipulates, and shareware is for you to try. If you like it, the designer usually asks for a small fee of $5 or $10.

To be on the safe side, always check in the font download itself. (The website often doesn’t say anything or is sometimes inaccurate.) When you download a font you can usually find a Read Me file in the folder, or, if there’s no folder, double click on the font itself for a brief notice from the designer, which will outline their terms of use for that font.