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D-WRD session notes: image editing

We had a good session on Photoshop and image editing yesterday, in which Alex Naylor generously allowed us to use and to make a mess of a couple of his own photographs with some of the basic, introductory features of Photoshop:

* opening and managing files
* cropping and resizing images
* managing modes: color, grayscale, black & white
* stamp tool
* hue, saturation, brightness, contrast
* pixel-level editing
* managing layers
* adding text

Those are just a few of the 3300+ commands and features in Photoshop, but they are also fundamental to image editing.

We then switched over to the free, online Photoshop Express (thank you, Victoria!): www.photoshop.com/tools/expresseditor, which offers many of the basic features. And as Alex mentioned, iPhoto now has some of these basic features, such as cropping, adjusting light, and adding text: https://www.apple.com/support/iphoto/

Two follow-up resources:

* From a cultural and social context, this very interesting 2008 New Yorker article on fashion-image editing and manipulation names the tools — some of which we looked at yesterday — that professionals use:
PIXEL PERFECT: Pascal Dangin’s virtual reality
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_collins?currentPage=all. It’s a good read.

Finally, I highly recommend Lynda.com for all software learning needs (note the free trial):
http://www.lynda.com/Photoshop-training-tutorials/279-0.html — I have used Lynda.com for years, sometimes for long-term projects, sometimes on the fly, in a pinch, and sometimes in classes. Even though there are a million online software tutorials of varying degrees of clarity and helpfulness, Lynda.com really is in a league of its own, is popular among working professionals and educators, and is worth your time to review.

Next up!

* Friday, 11/16

— End-of-term Digication concerns, opportunities, new approaches, and problem solving
— Looking ahead to WQ meetings and workshops
— Planning your teaching portfolio: representing and integrating your technology-based pedagogical work

Thanks for reading —