MemoryMixer Digital Scrapbook Software

With digital scrapbooking programs and Web sites cluttering the landscape, it can be difficult to pick the one that fits your needs. MemoryMixer is a highly adaptable scrapbooking program flexible enough to suit just about everyone.

Memory Mixer will tax users with older systems, but if you can get past the system requirements, it is quite useful. The installation consumes nearly 700MB of storage on your drive. Install the extras and the installation will be about 3GB. It also needs a reasonably powerful system to run. Recommended is a 1.6GHz Pentium 4 or better processor and 1GB or more of memory, although it will run on less. Running on a system a bit faster than the recommendation, it seemed a little bit sluggish. After installation, Memory Mixer will lead you to its site for registration. You can also join the Memory Mixer family. Joining is not required but will give you access to more creative freebies.

When you open MemoryMixer, two sequential interfaces pop up, prompting you to start or open an album and then to build from scratch or use Quick-Mix. Choose to create a new album from scratch and MemoryMixer will prompt you to name your album and select the orientation (portrait, landscape, or square) and one of dozens of layouts. You can also start with a blank page.

Once you have the basics down, buttons on the left side of the display let you add photo frames, embellishments, titles, shapes, music, or video to your album. Using the Edit Photo button, you can perform basic photo edits (crop, remove red eye, etc.) and more.

Here, you will also apply special effects, a term MemoryMixer uses for artistic effects (sepia, impressionist painting, etc.), position changes, and technical tweaks. MemoryMixer makes it easy to add or delete photos, resize or relocate them, and perform other adjustments. You can also adjust opacity to let the background show through a photo using a slider bar in the Edit Photo interface.

At the outset, if you opt to use Memory-Mixer’s QuickMix feature instead of starting from scratch, you can create a complete photo scrapbook in minutes. With QuickMix, you select a ready-made album template, complete with backgrounds and artwork. Most templates offer several different page designs, the Custom Page Arrangement feature lets you mix and match them at will.

Once tweaked the album layout to your liking, MemoryMixer can place your images automatically or you can insert them manually. You can then edit art, backgrounds, and photos using the same tools available for From Scratch albums. When you are finished, a few clicks will let you check your album for spelling and errors and then publish it in a number of formats including a self-running digital album, printed Photobook (via Memory-Mixer), movie, and more.

MemoryMixer includes more graphics-editing and production-control options than we expect from a scrapbooking program, which is a nice bonus. If you have images stored all over your hard drive, photo selection will be a pain.

Overall, MemoryMixer is a versatile and feature-packed scrapbooking program, especially for those who are long on photos and short on time.

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