There are many books about digital scrapbooking on the market and more popping up every day. Most of these books show the reader how to create scrapbook page layouts from predesigned kits and then move on to more challenging projects that teach the reader how to create their own papers and elements. Once the digital scrapbooker realized how much fun it was to make their own elements and assemble them into digital scrapbooking kits of their own, a new cottage industry was born. Over the last few years, we have seen a growth of online stores selling digital scrapbook products created by some very talented designers.

Although these books teach the reader the latest Photoshop® techniques for creating digital scrapbooking elements, they don't teach how to package and market these new digital products. This is something that these designers had to make up along the way. How were they going to show their digital kits to their potential customers? Over the past few years, these designers have developed the preview graphic as their point-of-purchase packaging.

Example 1 - Digital Scrapbooking Paper Pack
Example 2 - Digital Paper Crafts Party Set

As you can see from the examples, a preview is a jpg graphic that is usually 600 x 600 pixels at 72 resolution and is the main way designers display their kits in an online store. The size of the preview is usually set by the online store and can be as small as 400 x 400 pixels. But the 600 x 600 seems to be the most popular size, because it is large enough for the customer to see the individual parts of the kit and small enough so that it can download quickly even for the dial up customer. If you browse any online digital scrapbooking store, you will notice that most previews have some features in common.

Breaking down the preview into its individual parts, we can get an idea of just how to make our own preview. As you can see from the example, there is a top and bottom strip where we can display information such as the name of the kit and a list of the contents. The parts of the kit are displayed in the center and somewhere on the preview is the designer's business name and logo. Because this preview is the only way the online shopper has of viewing the product, it is important that this preview display the individual parts of the kit and also show how these elements will look when used together in a project.