Speed scrapbook page design with smart crops

by Debbie Hodge

Most of my 4×6 photos straight out of the envelope can be—and even need to be–cropped. To get clean designs that go together quickly, I always look for uniform cropping opportunities.

Crop for Columns: “Women Who Love Wool too Much”

The photos I took from this evening of knitting all had a landscape orientation, and they  had background that didn’t add interesting detail. I kept the 6″ width of the photos, and trimmed them to varying heights so they could be mounted in a tidy column that left room for a fun title and journaling on the other side of the page.

Crop for Rows: “Hide & Seek with Cats”

The 4″ height of the three photos in this layout works well.  I trimmed away width so that they would fit in one row that echoes the story’s chronology of events. The photos abut each other and bleed off each side.

Punch out Squares: “Scrapping Girls Gone Wild”

When I looked through the photos from this shopping trip, I discovered that my friends’ faces were what I really wanted to emphasize.  A square punch was the perfect way to get close-up and uniformly-cropped photos.  Cropping away so much of a 4×6 photo seems a bit drastic, but there are times it results in photos with the perfect focus.

Related posts:

1. Speed scrapbook page design & learn new techniques by scraplifting
2. 3-in-a-row: the little black dress of scrapbook page design
3. Scrapbook Page Design: Asymmetrical Balance
4. Scrapbook page journaling: justification that strengthens design
5. Strengthen your scrapbook page design with alignments



One Response to “Speed scrapbook page design with smart crops”

1. Sandy/tx-nana-scraps says:

   March 5, 2010 at 10:07 pm

   I enjoy reading why you do certain things on LOs. Or why a particular size photo fits better. Thanks!

   Reply