First experience with Creative Memories StoryBook Creator 2

Well, I really liked the freebies Creative Memories has on their site. I thought I would try their software and write about how I like it.

It installed OK. There was an update that needed to be installed. That installed OK.

I launched it and tried to create a new project. I picked StoryBook 7X5 Softcover. That is their most inexpensive option at $17.95 for 20 pages. I think picaboo is cheaper. Their cheapest option is $9.99. Fine. Maybe they allow more pages, or use better paper. I haven't seen how the books come out yet, so it's hard to compare.

But the next thing that happened absolutely stumped me. Once you pick your project type, you have to pick a theme. I absolutely LOVE that at picaboo you don't have to pick a theme, you can just create each page from scratch. But the dumb thing was, for the 7x5 Softcover, there were no themes! So the "Next" button is greyed out. They only thing I can do is "Cancel".

Pretty dumb.

Not impressed.

Well I went to their website and downloaded a theme for their 7x5 book. There aren't many selections for a 7X5 book! I picked one I like. You can see what some of the pages look like here. And this did get me past my stuck point.

There are two things I don't like about having to pick a theme for a photobook:

1. I might want to do a simple chronological scrapbook. I might have Christmas pages, Halloween pages, gardening pages, vacation pages all in the same book. So I really want to make each page or pair of pages independently.
2. The colors in the theme may not go with the colors in my photos.

So far, I'm still sold on picaboo.