Digital Images
Sources for storing, sharing and editing images
The Internet has made it very easy to store, share and edit pictures online. The challenge is to choose a site that will do all of these quickly and easily. Below are some standouts we would like you to try. For a majority of these sites, you must sign up for the product by establishing a login and password. Although these all are free sites, you may choose to upgrade to a "premium" or paid version which offers more options (e.g. storage, additional effects, groups, etc.).
Pre-Assess your skills for this "Thing"
Aligned to NETS-T: 1.a, 1.b, 2.a, 2.b, 2.c, 3.a, 4.b
Connections to Marzano Strategies: Nonlinguistic Representations; Identifying Similarities and Differences
Editing Images
FotoFlexer TM
- special effects - (such as enter text, comic, blur, blueprint, sepia, pop art etc.)
- decorations – (such as enter text, insert faces, make cards, add glittering text, poster and stickers)
-animations
- beautify - (smooth, sharpen, fix blemishes, smooth wrinkles)
- distort - (twirl, bulge, pinch, stretch, squish)
- layers with the ability to add images
- geek – (resizing, colors, cutouts, morph, and snap a picture with your webcam)
There are several demo tutorials available on the web to learn about effects such as re-coloring hair, animating shapes, using smart scissors to cut an image out, or resizing. A search of YouTube will bring up several tutorials as well.
To begin, you do not have to create an account. You just click on Get Started and Upload Photo. When you are done, you can save it or email it. This program has a very easy to use interface.
Picnik
PLEASE NOTE: Picnik will be closing down on April 19, 2012. It is recommended that you consider using one of the other resources listed on this page. The information will remain here until the Summer 2012 revision of "21 Things".
Picnik is another program which is totally web-based and does not require a download to use. It has incredibly easy editing tools all online! You can upload photos from a number of online photo storage areas and/or your computer. There are many effects, fonts, shapes and forms to add to your photos if you wish, including cropping, resizing, and rotating tools. Once you have them edited, you can save and send them back to your computer or to your favorite online photo storage site. Picnik's basic version is free. Click here to access a variety of tutorials and tips on Picnik.
Storing and Sharing Images
Picasa
Picasa is different from the online editors mentioned above. It is a free Google product, but does require you to download it to your computer. It provides free web storage for your photos. Picasa allows you to store, edit and share your photos online. The biggest difference is that Picasa helps you organize all of the images on your computer, create albums, and have a timeline view of your images. Click here to access the learning tutorials about Picasa. Another great tutorial page on Picasa can be found here.
Here are four more popular locations which let you post and share your photos: Flickr, PhotoBucket, PhotoGallery, and Snapfish.
21things Hands-On Activity and Assignment
2. Use one of the digital photo editing applications to upload an educationally appropriate photo. Edit the photo in the application and/or apply effects to it. Capture a screen shot of your photo before and after editing it, and while using the program, illustrating some feature of editing you have applied. Include the URL to the site you used, and reflect upon ways you can use this type of resource for your classroom or your setting.
If you are not uploading your own photos, check out the links in "Additional Resources" below for copyright and royalty free images you can download to your computer and use for this activity. (NOTE: Please be sure to see our ‘thing’ about Copyright.)
3. Upload an image to a public photo-sharing site (e.g. Flickr, PhotoBucket, PhotoGallery, and Snapfish) and provide the link to the photo in your portfolio.
4. After completing all of the activities for this "Thing", take the Post-Assessment of your technology proficiency for this "Thing".
Post-Assess your skills for this "Thing"
Additional Resources
2. Here are some additional sites where you can get FREE photos to use for projects:
FreeFoto: http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp
Pics4Learning: http://www.pics4learning.com/
Public Domain Photo Database Photo: http://www.pdphoto.org/
Public Domain Photos: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/
Flickr Free Use Group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/freeuse
Public Domain Images: http://www.public-domain-image.com/
3. MAC Users: Check out Picasa for Mac users
4. Want still more ways to play with your photos and images? Try http://bighugelabs.com/ for a site to make posters, jigsaws, badges, etc.
5. Lunapic: an "upload and go" editing site. There is a tutorial tab on the page, but it's easy enough to use without previous instruction.
6. You can use one of these sites to create a digital slideshow: Kizoa, Smilebox, Slide, Animoto, Photosnack.
7. There are very easy ways to resize digital images to make them easy to upload to a website or email. Here are several websites that allow you to upload a photo and resize it quickly: Picresize, Resize2mail, and Shrink Pictures.
21 Things for 21st Century Educators by CCRESA, IISD, MISD, SRESD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at 21things.weebly.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://21things4teachers.net/. Page updated August 20, 2011
