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My first ever digital scrapbooking pages were done using Serif Pageplus, and then I moved into Serif's Scrapbooking Software which evolved inot Craft Artist. My children and I have been using Craft Artist for years. However it's crashing and freezing a lot, with the problems getting worse with successive Windows 10 updates. So I decided to try out the Affinity free Trail in April. This is my journey learning to scrapbook in Affinity so far: First go - using Affinity Photo. Scrapbooking with Affinity Photo is much more clunky than using Craft Artist, and took at least twice as long. The text tools are too basic for my needs. On a plus note, the psd template imported well. My page created in Affinity Photo using a psd scrapbooking template. https://the-lilypad.com/forum/galleries/royal-memories.431453/ Second go - using Affinity Publisher Scrapbooking with Affinity Publisher is fairly straight forward and is done in a similar way as with Craft Artist. The text tool power is stronger than Craft Artist's, but it can't edit or create graphics. However, it can borrow functionality from Affinity Photo and Designer to accomplish that stuff, which is why I'm looking at the complete suite. This page is done in Publisher using the "Photo Persona" to edit the colours in some of the elements. https://the-lilypad.com/forum/galleries/psalm-24.431470/ Using Designer to create a template I used Affinity Designer to create a template for this page with intersecting shapes. I had a go at text on a path too. https://the-lilypad.com/forum/galleries/spring.431552/ Drawing & Painting I've been testing out the drawing and painting tools today, and drew and painted the balloon on this art journaling page https://the-lilypad.com/forum/galleries/balloon.431571/ Using a ready made Photo Mask Today's task for Affinity is masking - seems to work fine. I'm still getting the hang of basic drop shadows. The parameters used in the dialog box are different to those used in Craft Artist. Not worked out how to do fancy shadows yet https://the-lilypad.com/forum/galleries/free-food.431614/ How about a 2 pager? My first go at attempting a 2 pager with the Affinity Suite. It's not as easy to line everything up working on 2 separate pages as it is in Craft Artist. However, Affinity doesn't freeze, struggle with large file sizes or crash on me like Craft Artist does increasingly more with every Windows 10 update. So next time I'll try working on it as one large page instead of 2 side by side pages. https://the-lilypad.com/forum/galleries/april-birthday-2-pager.432101/ Pre-flight Checks I do like the "pre-flight checks" function in Affinity Publisher. When I exported the page I was working on it told me I had spelt something wrong, and had text outside my text box, and suggested fixing it before exporting the document. Recolouring digital stamps/brushes I've learnt how to use the Colour Overlay effect to recolour stamps and brushes, and I've has some more vector drawing practice too. https://the-lilypad.com/forum/galleries/find-peace.433188/ Creating a blending Mask With the Photo Persona I used the Oval Selection tool with a feather of 150px to create a mask for blending the photo in this page. Everything else was done in Publisher https://the-lilypad.com/forum/galleries/blending.433328/ I'm getting quite comfortable now with using Affinity Publisher as my main scrapbooking software, using the Photo or Designer Personas as needed. I now have the option of using psd templates which did not work in Craft Artist. Using psd templates requires me to start with Affinity Photo instead of Publisher. But when I want to add any fancy text I can close the document and reopen it in publisher without any difficulties or need to export/import first. I think I'm going to talk with hubby about purchasing on the 50% off offer that is currently still running.