The last few times we were at CHA and I stopped by the dazzling booths of DCWV, (Die Cuts with A View), I noticed that they were advertising a new digital scrapbooking app. I hadn’t tried any yet so I decided to give this a go for on-the-go scrapbooking- the eScrap app! Here is how the app is described in the app store:
“eScrap™ App allows you to scrapbook on-the-go with your iPhone®! Liven up your photos with backgrounds, pre-designed pages, elements, fonts, and filters. Then share your creations via text, Facebook, Twitter, or email. eScrap™ App includes over 50 different layouts in a variety of themes.”
There are two different versions; the “lite,” which is free and lets you test-drive the app, and then the paid which is $1.99 and gives you a bit more to play with. In the lite version you get four themes and in the paid you get eleven themes, each with approximately 2-3 background options. Also you get about thirty-three Quick Pages with the paid version and only six in the lite.
Upon entering the app you’ll see that there are two main options, “Design a page,” and “Quick pages.” There is also a “settings” tab which offers twitter access control and email support. Design a Page lets you start a layout from the ground up with themes and background papers, whereas Quick Pages gives you a complete layout, but you can still add your own little touches, too. Let’s get to the tools!
First off, the Elements choice will give you embellishment options that are coordinated with the theme and/or design you chose. There’s everything from photo frames, eyelets, ribbons, tags, word buttons and more. Once you choose your embellishment, you can size it by using two finger to make it larger or smaller. I found it a bit difficult to size smaller embellishments and would accidentally rotate them. I also ran into problems with layering different embellishments; if you want an embellishment to be in the forefront you have to have to click it after you’ve completed all of your work on the items behind the main one.
Next up is the Text Tool. When clicking on this tab you will bring up a new window with many options for color, size and font. Big problem with this tool? You only get one “text” per layout. You basically have to jedi-arrange all of your text and you cannot have multiple fonts, colors or sizes. Bummer! Once you do get your text on the page, it automatically aligns to the top left of the page and it can be kind of tricky to move it around your layout. I found it easiest to click a bit to the right of your text to get the box to pop up.
Each Theme and layout is assigned it’s own specialy coordinated Letters tab. Consider these your chipboard or sticker title alphas. I was a bit disappointed to see that a lot of the the same design were repeated, but overall they’re pretty cute. Each letter has to be individually chosen, which can be a bit frustrating when trying to re-size each alpha to the same dimension to complete a title.
The next tool is the Filters. This can be handy if you want to quickly recolor your photo. There is a black and white, sepias and then other basic color filters. The colored ones are a bit bright and blown out but the others were useful.
The final tab and tool is the Share button. This will let you tweet, facebook, email or save your layout to to your photo album. This is an easy tool to use to share your creations with everyone. I was easily able to email myself my layouts to print at home. Unfortunately, when I went to print the layout, I did so at a small 4×6 size, and the quality was pretty low. The letters and embellishments were blurry, as well as the high-resolution photo that I used when creating it. I couldn’t imagine trying to print a full 8.5×11 or 12×12 layout to use in an album. With that said, I would recommend using this app to share your creations digitally and through the social network options.
(digital copy)
(printed out photo)
One big problem I found with this app is there is no save option. And if you accidentally hit the back button while you’re working on your layout, you can’t recover it. Even if you saved your layout to your photo album, there’s no way to re-open it and continue working on it.
All in all?
Pros:
Works on all Apple devices
Fairly Easy Learning Curve
Free and/or Low Cost
Cute Themes
Cons:
No Save Option
No Layering Option
Limited Capabilites
Low-Resolution Printing
What do you think my fellow crafters? Does this app get your digi-mind working? Have you seen any other digital scrapbooking apps out there that have piqued your interest? Let me know in the comments!
(Disclaimer: I purchased this product and have no connection to the company)
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Sara- excellent review! I’m sad to hear that printing is not high-quality, but maybe they will read your review and build a “save” and a higher-quality print capability in the next version. Thanks for sharing!