Photos-Drawings

To begin working with images you need a source of images. For use in your classroom (use outside your classroom would carry at least ethical, if not legal liabilities) you can use images you find with a Google Image Search. I will quickly demonstrate the construction of an advanced image search in class. Yahoo! has a similar Image search feature and Options that offer an advanced search that is somewhat the same as Google's search.

Basic editing of images can readily be accomplished quickly and easily using a cloud based service, __[|http://www.picnik.com]__. Please start this segment with a quick visit there. There are tabs and commands for the capabilities of the site when used in the free mode.
 * Editing**


 * Organizing Photos**For organizing images, and a more elaborate suite of editing tools, Picasa is recommended, as it is cross platform and freely provided by Google. (Apple's iPhoto comes with new Macs but it is not cross platform and upgrades must be purchased as a part of the iLife package.)

The Handling Photos handout below (as an attachment to this page) provides an orientation initial Picasa window and to the organization tools Picasa provides. The Fixing Common Photo Problems handout (also an attachment below) covers a more extensive array of editing tools. And, yes, there is a more details collection of tutorials for Picasa at Atomic Learning, __[]__. This particular tutorial is for the PC 3.5 version of Picasa, while I have Mac 3.6 on my computer, so it may not match perfectly what you see on your screen, but the substance should be sufficiently similar enough to be useful to you.

Unfortunately for use in China, Picasa is a Google product. The only similar current product for organizing photos is iPhoto, but iPhoto is Mac only. DigiBookShelf, Studio Line PhotoBasic3, and Album Burger worked somewhat toward similar ideas as Picasa and iPhoto, but all appear to be Windows only and have not been kept current with more recent Windows OS releases. As far as viewing and editing, Irfanview has similar capabilities, but lacks the organizational component - plus it also is Windows and Linux only.


 * Drawings**The Drawings portion of Google Docs is very new. Here is an __[|announcement]__ that mentions it. Dabbleboard (__[|http://dabbleboard.com]__) may be a reasonably close alternative to Google Docs: Drawing. See the tour (__[]__)

**Performance Record** Find a medium-sized image using Google's Image search that you can crop. Upload it into Picnik, crop it, and send both to me as attachments for a performance email. Your cropped image should be a jpeg, regardless of the format of the initial image. (Since jpg is the default format, be sure to see where image formatting can be changed.) Under most circumstances, jpg probably will prove to be most useful because of its compression strategies and usefulness on the web. While you can explore this first (because it is easiest), you may want to wait to do your email until after you have looked at Picasa.

Then, in the same email as you submit your original and cropped Picnik images, after using Picasa, tell me (with some detail) what you find to be two of Picasa's most useful attributes. If you prefer, instead of discussing Picasa you may discuss one of the Drawing applications (Google Docs: Drawing or Dabbleboard).