Digital Photo Editing in a Middle School Lab - tbea

Digital Image Editing
in a Middle School Lab
Want more features than Windows Paint
but not as complex as Photoshop?
These free programs are your answer.
Mike Morrow
Woodland Middle School, Brentwood, TN
First…
Advise, Advise, Advise.
1. Students should develop a critical eye.
2. Never work on an original image. Save as a
secondary file.
3. Save, Save, Save! It’s not IF but HOW
SOON is the computer going to freeze.
These types of pictures help me to start this
unit with my students.
An image of Katie Couric, originally released in May by CBS, was slimmed
down for reuse. The left photo is the official first-pic-of-Katie released by CBS.
(TV Newser posted it in May.) The doctored photo on the right appears in the
September issue of Watch magazine, which is owned by CBS, according to
Mediabistro.com, which first reported on the alteration.
National Geographic squeezed the Great Pyramids of Giza together to
better fit the magazine's format in 1982.
The cover of TV Guide in August 1989 displayed this picture of daytime
talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. This picture was created by splicing the
head of Winfrey onto the body of actress Ann-Margret, taken from a 1979
publicity shot. The composite was created without permission of Winfrey
or Ann-Margret, and was detected by Ann-Margret's fashion designer,
who recognized the dress.
The jackalope is a faux species of antlered rabbit. It is said to be highly
aggressive, willing to use its antlers to fight. Thus, it is also sometimes
called the "warrior rabbit." In this doctored picture, which appeared on
a postcard of indeterminate age, a pair of jackalope scan the horizon of
a field in Colorado.
Baseball Team Original
Baseball Team Edited
Baseball Pics Side by Side
Now… Let’s look at the digital editing programs.
www.getpaint.net
About
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run
Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with
support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of
useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community
provides friendly help, tutorials and plugins.
It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project
mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the
alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free
replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it
has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool.
www.pixlr.com
What is Pixlr?
Pixlr is the creator of online, mobile and desktop image tools and
utilities. Today we have three applications in our suite: Pixlr Editor, Pixlr
Express and Pixlr-o-matic. They are built in Flash and you need to have
the Flash plug-in to get it to work.
We also provide screen grabbing tools Pixlr Grabber and one click photo
sharing imm.io. Pixlr is now part of Autodesk, a global leader in
innovative design software and services.
Pixlr editor (Advanced)
Pixlr express (Efficient)
Pixlr-o-matic (Playful)
And now some ideas for
digital editing projects…