Digi Scrapbooking - software

For most wanting to start out in Digital Scrapbooking it will be a program like one of the one's listed in this neat 2014 review. After playing with one of these for a few months you'll know if you want to dip your toe in further or not.

Digi scrapping isn't for everyone. And these programs are way cheaper than the commercially aligned photo editing packages like Photoshop and Photoshop Elements!

http://scrapbooking-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ 

Also - there are lots of 'getting started with digital' sites out there. Here is one (you can google search for others) :
http://www.designerdigitals.com/digital-scrapbooking/GettingStarted.html

I use Adobe Fireworks (formerly Macromedia Fireworks. Macromedia created a suite of products including Flash and Dreamweaver (creating web pages). But then Adobe moved in and bought them out. Making few upgrades of the products after that. But I believe Fireworks is still a better program than Adobe Photoshop Elements in many ways, even though it is barely promoted at all by Adobe).

But I was formally trained in both Fireworks and Photoshop. Without this training and exposure to the software over some years, and my quickness in picking up new concepts, I probably wouldn't be as good in creating digi pages freehand as I am today.

For those without this training, I would recommend going with a $20-$50 program first that is for digi scrapping; yes it is limiting creatively, but it gets your feet wet in sitting in front of the screen and trying to produce something digitally. If that takes, then you can move to Adobe Photoshop Elements or similar, with visiting alot of online tutorials or reading Photoshop Elements for Dummies or lashing out and doing a Introduction or Short Course in the program. Once you're exposed yourself to one, you'll find alot of the tools and concepts transfer over to other applications, even though they may be slightly different locations.