Let's start StoryBook Plus!

"Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own." Aesop

Hi all, I am sorry to have been away (for those of you checking in). I haven't had much response from readers so I took a break. But I'm back now and ready to change gears. Let's dive right into StoryBook Creator Plus. I am assuming that you have installed your software and it's content successfully, so if I am wrong, please contact me for help. For our first lesson, let's just get acquainted with the working screen. When you first open your program your screen will show the home page where you have some choices to make.

You can start a project, open an existing one, search for the latest content available for download or search the help section. Let's start with a new project. For our walk-thru purposes and to set us up for the next lesson, let's choose the 4x6 landscape option under local printer. You will notice that you have no other option but to select blank under the theme. Rest assured that you have not 'lost' your themes, they are just not available for this size. Click next.

Now you have to name your project. You can change this later but I would still choose wisely so as to save you time in the long run. Let's call it Easter Card and click create. Your screen should look something like this:

Now, lets walk thru your 'designing' palette on the right. There are tabs labeled pages (really important for making storybooks or when you have multiple page projects...later), photos, shapes, papers, and embellishments. This is where all your 'pretty' stuff is held and organized for you.

Along the top is the tool bar. Home is where you save, add, change, print, etc. your projects. Photos tab is for editing, matting and adding features to the photos in your project once they are place on your page. Enhance has some advanced features for photos and elements. Text is where you go for all text and journaling tasks. Layout is the arranging of your elements that you place on the page, where you can align, flip, flop, rotate and change the order your element appears on the page. Tools are like artists' tools. You can cut shapes, color and add fun effects like textures. Lastly, is the view tab. This is where you can customize your working space and control what you see.

Notice along the top you have rulers that come in handy when gauging space relations. At the bottom is a slide where you can adjust the size of your working palette to zoom in or zoom out.

Now, we should be acquainted with the working palette of the software. Next time I'll walk you thru using some of the features to make a basic photo easter card. I sure hope you have taken your pictures for this fun card!

Are you out there?

I am working on my next post and wondered if there are people reading this and if it's helping them so far. I want to be sure to cover everything that you may need to know to get the most out of your software. If there is something specific that you'd like me to address, please leave a comment or email me.

Also, please notice there are two polls to the right: 1) about bookmarking the page (yeah for those who already have, thanks!) and 2) about signing up for email notifications of updates to this page. If that is something you are interested in, simply put in your email address in the box at the bottom of the page and you will get an email when I post a new lesson.

I would love comments of any kind really because they let me know there are readers. Even if you just want to say Hi, please feel free to leave me one. Thanks!

Rating, journaling and naming your photos

"The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and endure a lot." --William Hazlitt



We all have our favorite photos. So why not give them 5 STARS? You can do that with Memory Manager. By giving ratings you can quickly call up all your favorite photos just by a click of the mouse. Like the photo, but not the best one, give it 4 stars and so on. I use my 5 star photos for my scrapbooks and when I'm ready to call them up and print or export to StoryBook Plus, I don't have to scroll thru all the other ones. HOW COOL IS THAT?! So how do you do this? Under Item Details to the right of the screen, simply click on the rating you want to give a picture or group of pictures. It really is that simple.

Have pictures and can't remember why you took them? Try journaling when you upload your photos to help you remember what you wanted capture when you took the picture. It is important to do this as soon as you can, even if it's just a few words. Memory Manager provides you with the perfect opportunity to do this. Under where you rated your picture, there is a box for you to tell the story. Filling this in also gives you an edge when searching for key words. Any words associated with a photo will help narrow any search you may do with words.

Renaming photos can also help with searches but is not necessary. When you snap that picture, your camera stamps that image with a lot of information, a 'name' being one part. Usually it's a series of numbers in a continuous, 'counting' format. If you so chose to change this name, it's in the same area as the rating and journaling box options. Also, if your date stamp in your computer is not correct, you can change that in the same area. Obviously you don't want to have to do this to every picture, so now would be a good time to check the accuracy of your date stamp if you haven't already.

Getting and sorting your media

"Knowledge is power." -- Francis Bacon

Ok, so now that we know the basis of how the media is stored and how to back it up, we need to get our media into the program and get it sorted so that we can find them. Isn't that our goal?

I would first think of the types of categories my photos would fall into. You will notice in the sortbox and ratings view of your media library that there are already sortboxes there for you, such as family, events, and holidays. You will want to customize these names to work for you. However, a tip you should know: you cannot add photos into a sortbox, there needs to be a file in the sortbox for the media to be added to. For example, under the Family sortbox, there are default folders for Mom, Dad, Son and Daugther. Photos with mom in them would be put in the mom folder. However, I would suggest editing these names to fit your family. Like my mom folder would be changed to Sharon. To do this, right click on the folder you want to edit and choose edit. From here, you can change the name and location of any folder you edit.

If you need a new folder inside a particular sortbox you can either click create at the top of your sortbox list, or right click on the sortbox to add the folder.


If you need another sortbox (which can stand on it's own or inside another sortbox) click on create, name it and give it a location or parent sortbox. Inside the family sortbox, I have two sub-sortboxes: 1) just for my daugther because she is the subject of most of my photos and I use categories such as eathing, bathtime, playtime, etc. to name my folders and 2) for "other family" where I have our extended family listed in their respective folders, one for each of our siblings and their families as well as the in-laws.

DATED FILES ARE NOT NECESSARY. Memory Manager keeps up with this on it's own based on the information your camera stamped on that image. This is a great time to double check your camera settings to be sure it is correct. You can use the time scale located at the bottom to find pictures in addition to the advanced search features which I will cover at a later date. So only think of categories not dates for your sortboxes.

Are you still with me? Good! Now that you have your organizational structure started, let's get our photos (video and audio work basically the same way, except for scanner, obviously). You can either import them directly from your camera, a scanner for older film printed photos or from an existing file on your computer. You can also do a search of your computer if you are not sure where your photos are on your drive. At the top you will see the 'get media' option and this is where you will choose the location to get your media.

Once brought in, you will have to sort them in the sortboxes and folders. I work on my sorting from the 'not in any folder' mode located in the sortbox window, right under my media library. When working here, it will automatically take the picture out of view once it's been added to a folder, making it easier to know which ones have been sorted. If you do this from your Media Library view, they photos will remain in view because it's all encompassing. Another place that is excellent for sorting is right when you bring your photos in the import date view. There is a box to the left to select to hide photos once place in album. Again, makes things easier to see what photos still need to be sorted.

Where you put them depends on the subject. If you have several that need to go in the same sortboxes, the easiest way to do this is to select the first photo in the series, press and hold shift and then select the last photo in the line. This will select every picture in between the first and last selected photo. Then right click and add to folder. From here you can choose as many folders as necessary. For example, you have a picture of you, your husband and two children; that one picture will be added to your folder, your husband's and BOTH of your children's folders. Now, this said, you have to understand that it does not copy these pictures into these 4 folders. Rather, it creates a pathway to find that picture, almost like a roadmap. This is great because you don't have to have multiple copies of the same picture taking up space on your hard drive and you can actually find your pictures quickly.

Another way to add photos into folders is the traditional drag and drop. You can use the mass selection technique and then drag into a folder. However, this is not recommended if it needs to be added to more than one folder at a time.

If you accidently put a media item in the wrong folder, simply right click and remove from folder. Once a photo is sorted, you can click on it and look over to the right under folders. It will show you every folder that one picture is in and helps you with accuracy.

This is a lot of information at once so I'll stop here. Next lesson will be about rating your photos, using the journaling option and renaming your photos.

Memory Manager 101

Memory Manager is a media organization software that helps the user to sort, edit, find and tag photos, videos and even audio clips. There are other types of softwares out there which have been compared and contrasted for ease of use (fellow CM consultant) and I still find that MM is the easiest and most user-friendly software.

For my first lesson, I want to address your Memory Vault. Your MV is basically your 'safe' for your media. It houses all your photos, videos and audio clips in one area where it can be backed up, either manually or automatically, depending on your settings (action found under protect tab in your Media Library view). Manual backup is done on disks and only backsup the most recently added files (since your last backup) and if your computer crashes, EVERY disk will be needed to restore your MV. Automatic backup is usually used to 'shadow' your MV onto another hard drive, like an external and does this without prompting. Some people have multiple vaults, which I do not find to be necessary in most cases.

You can run 'health checks' of your vault by going to memory vault>manage vault. It gives you all the stats of your vault, including the name (which defaults to Sample Archive, but can be changed here), how many images are in your vault, how many need backing up, etc. It's worth checking out and knowing it's there. A great piece of info here is the back up size: it will help you decide what type of disk (CD or DVD) you will need and how many. DVD's hold more but some studies have shown that CD's are more durable and last longer...all the more important to have THREE points of backup for your photos. AND NEVER USE CD-R OR DVD-R, as this opens the door for erasing/overwriting mistakes, just from my experience.

So, to recap, your MV is your safe for photos and doesn't require anything except occassional backups and health checks. It can store all your media needs for easy reference and sharing with others.

A New Idea

Hi everyone! First of all, thanks for taking an interest in my newest endeavor. It occurred to me earlier today while helping a friend/customer with her new Memory Manager software that I needed a new way to help my friends, family and customers preserve their memories, because, afterall, that's what Creative Memories consultants are supposed to do. So after thinking of creative, innoventive and convenient ways, I decided to start this blog. While this will serve mainly as a way to educate those digital folks on my newest passion, I will also share some other ideas for memory preservation so not to exclude traditional, paper forms. I will post tips and tricks, neat things I figure out and even share my own work as inspiration. If you have any questions or topics for 'lessons' please email me or leave me a comment.