One of the most progressive and interesting people I met and spent a good deal of time with at the Memory Trends show last month, was Kerry Hill, owner of the "Lasting Impressions " scrapbooking company. We met at a social event that kicked off the show and then interacted quite a bit during the show itself. She graciously allowed me hang around her booth and look over her shoulder as she presented the Memory Mixer Software demonstration to Scrapbook store owners. She also provided a demo copy of the program for me to give a thorough test drive of so that I could give you my honest and educated opinion on its functionality.
After an extensive review, I believe that Lasting Impressions "Memory Mixers" software is especially suited for many of my digital crafting readers that would like to start scrapbooking. So many of you buy digital art, but have been somewhat intimidated by how to use it to scrapbook your family memories effectively. This product might be the answer to making that step a reality. If you’re already experienced with software such as Photoshop, Microsoft’s Digital Image Pro or PSP, you won’t likely need this software, but if you’re a beginner this might be a great place to start. Your Christmas list might even be handled amazingly easily and inexpensively if you make the initial investment to purchase this program.
I asked my 21 year old daughter, Jacqui to download "Memory Mixers" and without any instruction or prior graphics experience, see if she could figure it out on her own. In Jacqui’s exact words this program is , "The easiest thing in the world to use!!!!" I felt if she could easily find her way around the program, so could any of you. Her experience confirmed that it has an extremely intuitive interface, yet has very powerful capabilities. She didn’t just like it SHE LOVED IT!
Within one hour she had created an entire album that consisted of 6 pages — not bad for just getting started in scrapbooking her life! Her favorite features were that it leads you easily through step-by-step creation of not only a page, but a style that you can apply to your entire album if you wish so that it has a cohesive, sophisticated feel. For example, she created a standard drop shadow that will be added to every picture she imports into her album no matter what page it is on. She also loved that you can likewise create "mats" of specific colors and sizes that will be applied to each picture. Moving items around on the page was as simple as dragging them and adjusting their size. The organization of the graphics that come with the program is very easy to figure out and might be a great example for many of you in setting up your own digital art files (a constant source of frustration to many of you 🙂 )
For those of you "graphics collectors" who have oodles of existing digital art collections, you’ll love the fact that you can access and use them through "Memory Mixers," so you are not limited to their provided content. "Memory Mixers" also sells additional content on their web site and you can create a calendar or a book in this program and then have them create a beautiful quality, hard bound copy. I saw many examples of their finished books and they are of exquisite quality and yet very fairly priced as well.
The software provides pre-existing scrapbook layout templates that you can use to create great layouts with no design skills required. Also, if resizing your photos, cropping, and changing their shapes has been intimidating to you, it is easily accomplished with Memory Mixers. For instance if you have a standard sized photo that is horizontal, it takes two seconds to crop it to an oval, a circle, square or zoom in on only a face. The changes are non-destructive and can be modified just as quickly should you change your mind.
This software retails for $79.95, and there is quite a bit of graphic content contained in it, so you are paying for the art and the software to start. They also offer add on graphics for $35. You can purchase their software online at http://www.memorymixer.com/ or at many major software outlets such as Office Depot.
While this isn’t the least expensive software available to create digital creations off of, it is the easiest to use specifically for scrapbooking that I have seen. I believe it likely that you won’t purchase it and then have it sit unused on your computer because the learning curve is too steep! I love the quality of everything this company produces and can highly, highly recommend any product that they offer.
This sounds like just what I have been wishing for! I want something with more features and better graphics than your standard print (and SB) programs but not as advanced as my PSP for when I want to make quick pages. I love that you can add audio and video! Is there a variety of music included? In the instamix feature if I do not like the placement of say one photo can I change it or is it fixed? Can I use my own images with insta mix? Can albums be emailed, opened and viewed as a album? Thanks for sharing your opinions and experiance with us! This will probably be going on the top of my christmas list. Let me know if you ever hear of an option to download a trial version. Thanks again. (I will be testing this further and will use your questions as a jumping off place to do so. Thanks for the GREAT questions! AJ)
Hi,
Thank you for the evaluation of this software.
I had tried it myself on someone elses computer. But I don’t think I personally would buy it as it doesn’t have the tools that graphic editor programs such as Microsofts Digital Image, Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, Paintshop Pro etc.
It does have some photo editing and enhancement filters/effects but not a wide range of tools. So for one example you can’t do “out of bounds” or have a photo portion come out of a frame in a layout, etc.. – because I couldn’t locate any free hand drawing tools. And I didn’t see any options for plug-in support etc.
But someone who just wants to create digital layouts easily and doesn’t need much in the way of manipulation or free hand creative techniques, etc. – this would certainly be an easy program to play with and make layouts and use some of the other features it offers. (Exactly my reason for recommending it, people brave enough to venture into the bigger graphics programs won’t need this program but many, many people haven’t tried anything yet 🙂 By the way, LibMary is an absolute EXPERT at all of the programs she mentions 🙂 I looked for your website address Mary, if you’ll email it to me I’ll post it here, AJ)
Thanks for the review!
Sounds great for beginning scrapbookers.
It sounds like maybe even I could learn to do it also with this great
program think I will check into it a little more. Thanks for sharing
it with us
Thank you for letting us know about the program.
Easy sounds good to me! I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for the tip AJ!
My friend just got this program and she showed me the papers, embellishments, frames it comes with and they are great. I currently use Creating Keepsakes Designer and Photoshop Elements however neither of those programs have the # of papers, embellishments and frame options as Memory Mixer. This is truly a program for scrapbookers. I am not into doing fancy techniques like cutting things out of pictures and making things look three dimensional or extra fancy. I just want to get my pages done with some nice embellisments and graphics that don’t look like cartoons. Many of the programs I’ve used have graphics but they are clipart and they are cartoonish, not something you would want to put on a scrapbook page. this is on the top of my xmas list for sure.
the lowest price I found it for was at a store on ebay. I think it would be well worth the money for scrappers who aren’t looking to get really intricate in their layouts.