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image editing

DALL-E: Edit AI Images in ChatGPT

by Miguel Guhlin May 15, 2024

written by Miguel Guhlin

Ready to take your AI-generated artwork to the next level? If you pay for ChatGPT Plus, you have access to OpenAI’s DALL-E. This image generator now enables you to edit images without even leaving ChatGPT. What’s more, you can change them with a typed description. Let’s explore some of the new functionalities of DALL-E generated images in ChatGPT.

Note: Be aware that this feature only works with images generated or created in ChatGPT. You can’t snap a picture and then make edits. For that, you may be better off relying on Canva’s Magic Studio Edit Photo options or a different AI tool.

The DALL-E Editing Tools

In the DALL-E editor interface, you have several tools you can take advantage of:

Selection Tool with Undo/Redo Buttons
Inpainting (allows you to add, remove, modify elements within your image)
Conversational editing

To make an edit with inpainting, highlight an area, then type a prompt. The prompt should describe what you want to see and enables you to transform the scene.

An example of editing an image within ChatGPT using the selection tool

Did You Know?

Canva Specialist walks you through step by step in editing images with AI tools. Canva Pro is free for educators and their students, so what are you waiting for? Sign up now for the $39 online, self-paced, 12 CPE hour course.

Conversational Editing Made Easy with Dall-E

Another DALL-E feature you will want to explore is conversational editing. This feature allows you to enter a prompt with your desired change in the conversation panel. So, you do not have to use the selection tool if you don’t want to.

An example of editing an image within ChatGPT using text prompting in DALL-E

For example, consider this original image:

A cute, fluffy kitten with paw raised to scratch a post.

While ChatGPT’s image editor won’t work with any original photos you provide, it does something different. It generates a new image like the one you provided. Here’s a modification of that:

DALL-E generated reconstruction of the provided kitten image

While this second image isn’t exactly like the first, it uses the first as a referent for its content. The benefit? You can edit the image easily with a new prompt:

Make the kitten in this a tuxedo cat and put a penguin in the background

DALL-E generated reconstruction of the provided kitten image after prompted with text to edit the image.

Want to remove an object? Select it on the screen and then type “remove [object]” to make it go away. You can also change the facial expressions of creatures that appear in the image. For example, after prompting, the penguin has been removed from the image, the rug has changes, and the kitten now has a curious expression:

Generating and Editing Images on the Go

But wait, there’s more. You may be using the ChatGPT Mobile app. If so, you can edit images on the go! To do this, provide a prompt that modifies the image or rely on the selection tool then make a change.

Example #1: Starry Starry Night

Using the ChatGPT mobile app, I uploaded a picture of my daughter. ChatGPT didn’t blink or warn me, even though I knew these editing features wouldn’t apply to an image like a photo. The prompt I offered was:

Remove the background from this picture and replace it with starry starry night painting

Since the DALL-E editor doesn’t work with outside images, the result was different. It did not include my daughter but a random person with the correct background. One interesting detail is the color added to the hair. The original image has that color, so DALL-E added it to their version.

Image generated by ChatGPT using Starry Nights as a background.

How to Save Your Work

Save your DALL-E image once you are done making adjustments. To do that, click the SAVE button at the top-right corner of the editor.

How to save your DALL-E generated images

One problem with saving the image from the desktop browser? The image format is WebP, which is problematic for some who may not know how to convert the format.

WebP is a modern image format. It enables webmasters and web developers to create smaller, richer images. These load faster on web pages. What’s more, WebP results in images that are 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs, and 25-34% smaller than JPGs. (source).

You can use a tool like Lightshot to capture the DALL-E image on screen as a PNG or JPG. Or, convert the image from WebP to your desired format. Tools like CloudConvert can also get the job done, and Chrome/Chromium browser users can rely on add-ons. Some add-ons that convert from WebP include WebP/Avif Image Converter and Convert WebP to JPG. The latter offers an easy-to-use drop-down menu, shown below, to save WebP to JPG:

Wrapping Up

ChatGPT Plus subscribers can now edit AI-generated images inside ChatGPT using the DALL-E image editor. The new tools allow you to select areas of an image to change, add, or remove elements. What’s amazing is being able to do that via text prompts, with or without the selection tool. The editor only works on images created in ChatGPT, but you can still upload photos to give the AI a starting point. These editing features are available on both desktop and mobile versions of ChatGPT.

ChatGPT for Educators

Have access to ChatGPT (free or Plus) at work? Learn how you can take advantage of this powerful AI tool to enhance your personal, as well as work, project projects. Sign up now for the self-paced, online course ChatGPT for Educators.

Bonus Example

Here’s a picture I snapped of my neighbor’s cat reclining on a bench. I asked DALL-E to make its own version of the image.

The Original

Photograph of a tuxedo cat perched on a bench. The bench sits on tops of a garden filled with gravel, with a paver rock barrier, in front of a brick house.

The AI Version

DALL-E generated image of a tuxedo cat perched on a bench. The bench sits on tops of a garden filled with gravel, with a paver rock barrier, in front of a brick house.

May 15, 2024 1 comment

PhotoAid: Free Easy Photo Enhancing Tools

by Miguel Guhlin July 19, 2022

written by Miguel Guhlin

Fantastic image editing tools abound online. Let me introduce you to a new one, PhotoAid. It offers a stunning amount of solutions on one website through a collection of free, online photo editing tools–14 different tools to be exact. Let’s take a look at my top five PhotoAid tools. And, given the positive response this blog entry has received, you can find contributions from Twitter fans included after Tool #4. Check them out!

The main product of PhotoAiD is the all-in-one passport photo editor, which, thanks to Artificial Intelligence, will transform a simple selfie into a professional passport-style photo. The software we developed is composed of numerous small apps like our remove-shadows-from-photo app. We have figured out the smaller tools may be beneficial to plenty of people on their own, hence in order to give back to the society, we made this tool completely free of charge.

Tool #1: Background Remover

There are a lot of background remover tools, but often the tool host limits them in some way. Not the case with PhotoAid. There are limits, of course, but they are:

Max upload size: 30MB, 10000px x 10000px
Supported formats JPEG, WEBP, PNG

Compared with Remove.bg, which offers 573 x 435 downloads, that’s a high-quality improvement. You can see the difference between the two images below:

A quick comparison between the two with Irfanview:

Pretty nifty, huh? Now Remove.bg does offer an additional feature that still makes it a winner if you need it. That is, after removing the background, you can add a new one. The new background can be one of the ten plus scenes or you upload one of your own. That aside, if you want to remove the background and get an image with more pixels, then PhotoAid’s is the tool to use.

Tool #2: Free Round Cropping Tool

Find yourself dropping images into Powerpoint or Google Slides for cropping? Stop. Instead of using those juggernaut tools for cropping an image to a circle, use this one from PhotoAid. It’s quick and gives you a nice result, as you can see below:

Once you have adjusted the cropping tool (the blue circle), download your image. It will look something like this (although not as dashing as my Bitmoji, of course):

TIP: Remember if you need to crop images into other shapes, you can also use IMGonline.

Tool #3: Free Photo Blurring Tool

Need to blur a portion or all of your photo? There are several tools you can use. For example, one of my favorite photo blurring tools is Irfanview. It’s a no-cost, Windows-only program (look at the shareware Graphic Converter for a Mac alternative) that offers a host of features. One of those features is the ability to blur images. The reason I like it is that I can apply a wide variety of effects via a simple interface to a photo selection. That is, blur the face of one person in a group rather than the whole group.

For a browser-based tool, you can try LunaPic would let you. A tool like LunaPic would let you be more selective about which portion of the image you might want to blur, like Irfanview.

If you need to blur an entire photo, then PhotoAid’s Free Photo Blurring Tool works quite well.

It’s a question of how selective you want to be. A general-purpose blurring tool can be helpful to have.

Tool #4: Shadow Remover

Now this is a tool I haven’t seen much. It allows you to lighten an image by removing shadows. Here’s a picture of me in my new Fiesta hat:

What if I want to remove the shadow cast by the brim of the hat? Here’s the resulting image; you decide as to the quality:

This might work great for removing circles under a person’s eyes, but I’m not sure about shadows cast by a hat brim. Here’s another example. The picture on the left is the original, and the one on the right is enhanced.

Hold On, I Want To Share Some Other Tools, too!

Thanks to feedback from the Twitterverse, I’m adding a few more tools other readers want to see included. Special thanks to TCEA Member John Bimmerle for sharing IMGCandy. If you haven’t seen it yet, it offers a ton of features as well, similar to PhotoAid. Give it a looksee!

Tool #5: Image Enlarger

Have a thumbnail image that you wish were…well…larger? You can do that with the image enlarger tool. The idea is that you can “upscale your pictures without losing quality.”

For this test, I took a small image and ran it through the enlarger.

Here’s the original thumbnail image:

Here’s the enlarged image:

The pixel resolution doubled. What do you think of the quality of the image?

Additional PhotoAid Tools

I’ve shared a few of my most often used tools through PhotoAid’s site. But there are nine more to try. Find them all online here. The ones I didn’t mention but that you may find useful include:

Photo Darkening Tool
Photo Inverter
Photo Cropper
Color Eyedropper Tool
Black and White Photo Editor
Photo Flipper
Photo Brightener
Colorize Photo Tool
Photo Rotator

Additional Articles on Photo Editing

If you’re a first time visitor, you may be wondering what other TCEA blog entries address photo editing and enhancing. Here is a short list you can explore later.

Become a PhotoDroid: Image Editing on Android
iPhoneography: Image Editing on the Go (with any device)
[Converting PDFs/Images to Digital Worksheets](CONVERTING PDFS/IMAGES TO DIGITAL WORKSHEETS)
Vector Images: Make Magic with Two Free Tools
Powerful Photo Editing for All Devices
Fix Your Grumpy sELF: How to Change Your Bitmoji Expressions
How to Edit Emoji and Icon Colors using Google
Shape Word Clouds Made Easy
Five Fantastic Browser-Based Digital Tools

Give them a try. There’s bound to be some awesomeness you can use with your existing images.

Feature Image Source

Screenshot by author.

July 19, 2022 0 comment

Web 2.0 Tool

Five Fantastic Browser-Based Digital Tools

by Miguel Guhlin April 13, 2021

written by Miguel Guhlin

Over the last few years, I’ve found myself circling back to use the same digital tools time and time again. So I challenged myself to try and find some new tools to add to my repertoire. Let me introduce you to these browser-based tools that will change your life and may save you some time. I also encourage you to drop your favorite digital tools in the comment section.

Digital Tools

You may know about some popular digital tools featured in the TCEA TechNotes blog. Those tools could include background removal tools (e.g. Remove.bg), note-taking tools, Bitmoji editing, video editing tools, and more. These are all fantastic tools that I keep close, but there are more than can make your life easier.

Let’s take a look at a few browser-based tools you can use.

Tool #1: Generate Graphs

Need a quick way to slap a graph together? Instead of reaching for some sprawling Office suite, try the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) Create a Graph.

This fun graph maker works in your browser, giving you a variety of customization options. Since it’s designed for kids, there’s no doubt it’s easy and free. You can save your graph creation to your device in a popular image format or combine it with a tool like LightShot Chrome extension to grab it right off the screen.

Tool #2: Crop Photos into Shapes

Do you have a favorite tool in Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint? If you dislike square, rectangular image shapes with sharp edges, I bet I know what your favorite tool is. It’s the crop to shape tool. In both Slides and PowerPoint, you can crop any image into the shape you want. That shape can be a star, a circle, whatever. But what happens when you don’t need the power of an Imperial Cruiser to whittle an image down to shape? You use IMGonline.

This versatile website makes it an easy matter to modify images. One nice tool is making a photo into different geometric shapes. They have quite a selection of shapes, up to one hundred, in varied categories including household goods, animals, hearts, arrows, and transportation.

You can make some minor adjustments, upload your image/photo, and then let it work its magic.

In this case, I’ve chosen shape #44, a hot air balloon, and combined it with a work image. I love the result, don’t you?

Here’s what you see once the image processing is complete:

Tool #3: Create Custom Buttons and Badges

Need to make your own button images for use in Canvas LMS or Schoology? Maybe you want to create some nice buttons for use in Google Sites or Microsoft OneNote. One way to do that is to take advantage of ImageFu.com. You’ll be cranking out badges and buttons in no time.

Let’s take a look at the button maker first. This tool allows you to do quite a bit, all for free and without copyright restrictions. See the interface below:

With this interface, you can make rounded box buttons. Simply use the corners radius sliders (shown above, bottom left quadrant) to adjust it all. Isn’t that amazing and easy?

Want a circle? You may want to take advantage of the ImageFu badge maker utility, shown below. You can round out the “arms” of your badge to make a circle, or change their spikes. You can adjust colors, orientations, and shadows.

Give it a try; the possibilities are endless and you will look very professional graphically with this browser-based tool.

Tool #4: Make Images Smaller

Are you a web designer or responsible for your district/campus content management system page? One new image format that’s gaining popularity is WEBP. In lieu of using PNG, JPG, or GIF, each of which can come with hefty file sizes, try WEBP. This new, super light image format works great on content management systems (e.g. WordPress) and also works great in browsers. WEBP is not yet supported in Canvas or Schoology however. It does work in Google Blogger, but not in Sites or Google Workspace.

WebP is a modern image format that provides superior lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. Using WebP, webmasters and web developers can create smaller, richer images that make the web faster. WebP lossless images are 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs. WebP lossy images are 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images at equivalent SSIM quality index.
WebP is natively supported in Google Chrome, Firefox, Edge, the Opera browser, and by many other tools and software libraries (source: Google Developers).

In spite of its partial adoption, WEBP is making inroads. The reason why is the terrific size savings. Consider that I took a PNG photo, 223K in size, and converted it to WEBP. The new size? 17K. That can result in significant size savings on websites, making images faster to download on mobile connections. Give it a try with native conversion tools or Cloud Convert.

Tool #5: Insert Web Pages into Other Websites

Need to embed a website in another tool such as a Canvas or Schoology learning management system page? You could rely on iFrame Generator to create the embed code. While some websites offer iFrame Generators, some websites do not. That’s where this tool comes in handy.

Let’s say you needed to embed this TCEA website in Canvas or Schoology. You could insert a link, but that’s not too exciting, is it? Instead, use the iFrame Generator. It will give you the code you need to embed a web page into another website, as you can see below:

The result is a fantastic looking page that appears in a website (e.g. Schoology):

The entire web page of content drops right in and the student need not leave your learning management system or website.

But Wait, There’s More!

Wondering how I made that Wanted poster at the top of the blog post? I made it with Tuxpi’s Wanter Poster Creator. Tuxpi has a host of other tools you can use. Here are a few more neat tools you may like:

Canva: Tons of great tools, including image cropping to shape
LunaPic: Remove backgrounds, crop pictures in shapes
OOOO Plus: Crop images into a variety of shapes
PhotoPea: Need a superpowered image editor with low price? Try PhotoPea for layered edits of shapes.
JoyPixels: Need some amazing icons? JoyPixels and the brand new IconsMania (SlidesMania creator) are definitely two places to check out.

These fantastic browser-based tools should expand your awareness of what’s possible. Since they are browser-based, you can use them on a variety of devices, including mobiles, and can share them with your students.

Really, There IS More

Two of my favorite browser-based tools didn’t make the list above, and I’m going to fix that right now. Here are two must-have in your bookmarks, on mobile or desktop browser, tools:

Remove.bg: Use this to remove the background image of any photo or image, then replace it (or make it transparent) with something else
Cleanup.pictures: Use this to remove any object, text, person, or defect from an image.

I love using these two tools in combination with Kleki, a browser-based image editor. It’s so easy to edit a Bitmoji to be happy, or to mix-n-match components from one Bitmoji to another.

Feature Image Source

Image created by author.

April 13, 2021 5 comments

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Background Removal Tools for Photos and Videos

by Miguel Guhlin April 16, 2020

written by Miguel Guhlin

Have you ever taken the perfect photo until you looked at it later and found that the background wasn’t what you wanted? Would you like to add your own background scene, replacing an existing photo or video’s background? As we work with remote learners, knowing how to remove inconvenient backgrounds scenes is important. This blog entry provides a quick roundup of background removal tools that make this job easy for you.

Note: Do you need some free images/videos, like Smithsonian’s Open Access three million plus images, to work with? Checkout my Copyright-Free Media and Tools Wakelet collection.

Background Removal Tool #1: Remove.bg

My favorite tool in the pack, Remove.bg makes it easy to yank the background from an existing photo. Remove.bg works great on smartphones and tablets. Even easier is replacing the background with a provided image or your own picture.

background remover

As you can see from the clip above, the original picture appears featuring a character. Flames surround the character. With Remove.bg, you can remove the flames and then replace it. You can edit the image and replace the background using this interface:

background remover

This can result in some fascinating combinations:

background remover

And another example:

background remover

Unfortunately, the images are not layered. This means that you cannot move the new background or original image independent of each other.

Need an alternative? Give Removal.ai a shot as an alternative to Remove.bg. Removal.ai offers standard features (simple editing, background removal) for free. If you want hi-res access or editing, you will need to get an account and pay. Removal.ai also offers a Windows program you can use on your computer. You can add text, resize image to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest standard image sizes. It offers several other editing tools you won’t see in Remove.bg.

Once you have the image the way you want it, you can save it to your computer or device. Remove.bg doesn’t allow you to add text to photos. You can use Picfont to do that (provided you turn off Ad Block Plus):

Background Removal Tool #2: PhotoScissors

Need a way to pluck yourself out of a picture? PhotoScissors offers some ways to do this via their website. Like Remove.bg, it does a nice job of removing the background from a picture. It does have some limitations though. It limits high-quality results to for-pay options ($30 for Windows or Mac). You can see that it offers an almost bewildering set of tools.

background remover

It does allow you to reposition the character in the picture. You can then app smash these tools a bit to get different results. In the image below, I’ve taken the PhotoScissors image and dropped it back into Remove.bg.

The PhotoScissors website offers other tools you can take advantage of (at a slight cost):

Inpaint – Remove elements from photos
iResizer – Scale an image without changing other visual content
PhotoStitcher – Stitch photos together to panorama
FolderIco – Customize folder icons and color

Check these tools out.

Background Removal Tool #3: StickerMule’s Trace

Right from the get-go, you will need to create an account to use Trace. This may not be a problem since you can “Sign up with Google.” You can also create an account using a name and email combination. Once you have an account set up, you get access to Trace to remove photo backgrounds.

background remover

StickerMule’s Trace offers a nice interface that looks like the one below. Note that you can’t provide your own background; you must select one from the list. It does offer the option of replacing the background with standard colors.

background remover

One thing you can do is download (save) the transparent version of your image. Then you can load that picture into an online paint tool like Kleki. The advantage of that is that you can import your desired background. After you do that, import your transparent image from Trace as a layer.

background remover

A big advantage is that you can reposition your character anywhere in the new background, as you can see:

Isn’t that amazing? Even if you are a novice at paint programs, this will be easy to figure out. Kleki is NOT Adobe Photoshop (thank goodness).

Those are three powerful tools for removing backgrounds in images. One bonus tool that makes it possible for you to remove backgrounds in videos is UnScreen.com. It makes it easy to remove video backgrounds, which can be handy in a busy environment (like a classroom).

April 16, 2020 9 comments

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Exploring Google Photos as a Collaborative Tool

by Miguel Guhlin August 13, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

“What’s the best way to collect and share photos for my journalism class?” a high school journalism teacher asked me. The answer, without a second thought, was, “I’m not sure.” A few years later, a middle school journalism teacher asked me the same question. “I’m not sure. I could rig up an FTP solution. A PHP-based photo gallery would make it easy to share images via the web.” The question always arose though, “Why can’t I use Flickr?” Now, however, you can use Google Photos within the G Suites for Education to get the job done. It’s so easy. Let’s explore Google Photos as a tool for capturing and sharing images. Of course, Google Photos can do so much more.

Exploring Google Photos as a Collaborative Tool

If you’re not using Google Photos to back up your photos to the cloud, you need to consider using it. Most cloud storage solutions (e.g. OneDrive, Dropbox) offer quick back up of photos to the cloud. The nice thing is that Google Photos offers unlimited storage. If you have a school district G Suite for Education account, then use Google Photos. It works great as a collaborative tool to back up and share pictures. Let’s explore some tips (view a detailed feature list).

Tip #1 – Back Up Personal Photos and Free Up Space

Ready to take school-related pictures with your personal smartphone? Let’s take a few steps to avoid confusion down the road.

Note: If you are using a school-owned iPad or Android tablet, then you can ignore this tip. You need to use your G Suite for Education account on that device.

First, make sure to add the Google Photos app to your smartphone. Second, log in with your G Suite for Education account. You may have to click on manage accounts to add your G Suite for Education account. You can be log in with many accounts.

To clear your phone of personal images with a backup your personal images, begin with step #1 below:

Clear your phone of personal images. The easiest way is to have the Photos app back up all photos you take on that device to the cloud. When the process is complete, move to step #2.
Select the option to “Free up space.” This action will remove images from your phone AFTER the app backs them up. You can double-check. Go to the Google Photos app on your phone and view your images there.
Still not sure? Go to http://photos.google.com and you will see your images there.
Go to the Google Photos app and log in with your G Suite for Education account.
Set your G Suite for Education as the account to back up photos to.
Now you are ready to take school-related pictures.

All done? Let’s begin with Tip #2 below to snap pics of school events.

Tip #2 – Snap Pics of School Events

Now that you have set your device to back up new photos to your G Suite for Education account, take lots of pictures. As you take pictures, Google Photos will back up your snapshots as bandwidth allows (e.g. WiFi). You can choose to back up pictures when you are on WiFi or using your phone’s network provider (e.g. AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint). On the Photo app, go to “Settings” and then choose “Back up & sync”. You will see that you can turn cellular data to back up on or off.

The highlighted section refers to Cellular Data on/off for photos/videos, as well as roaming (good to know if you are at a football game in outside your cellular coverage area)

If you are capturing video, make sure to turn your smartphone or tablet sideways. This will ensure your videos will not need post-event editing. If you forget to turn your device sideways during video recording, there’s an easy fix. The Google Photos app offers the option of flipping your video sideways. How cool is that? Read Simple Video Tricks Tip #3 to learn how.

Google Photos makes editing via your web browser easy. It offers red-eye reduction, cropping, image rotation, and more.

Tip #3 – Create Photo Albums

“Could you take pictures of the awards ceremony?” asks your superintendent one evening at a board meeting. Your smartphone is the only thing you have available. “Sure,” you reply. “I can do it. Would you like me to share the photo album with you?”

With Google Photos, you can drop photos into an album. This makes it easy to share photos via a link with others. As you can see from the options available, you can do more than create an album or shared album others can add to. More options include:

Animation – Take any series of photos and display them as an animation, like an animated GIF. You can’t change the speed of the animation like you can with GIFmaker.me. View an example of a Google Photos animation.
Collage – Create a simple collage of two to nine photos.
Photo book – Create a printable photo book of a particular set of photos.

As mentioned earlier, you can create a Shared Album in Google Photos that others can add to. Like a regular album, select the photos you want to share as an album or shared album. A shared album allows others, such as a select group of students or team members, to also add pictures. A regular album is one you create and then you can share the link to.

Explore these features. One of the best aspects of Google is that you can take that link and share it. You can do that off your mobile device or online. Isn’t that amazing?

Click the SHARE button in the top right (yellow highlight) to see all the options possible

Tip #4 – Drop Photos into Google Drive

You can display Google Photos in Google Drive with a settings change in Google Drive. Enable that change with these steps:

Organize photos and videos using Google Drive

On your computer, open drive.google.com.
Click Settings.
Check Create a Google Photos folder.
Click Done.

Once Google Photos appear in Google Drive, you can see the photos in Google Drive. Google organizes these photos/videos according to Year and Month:

Having access to your Google Photos makes it easy for you to copy your photos to specific folders in Drive. That’s important because you can use that to organize and share the way you want to.

Tip #5 – The New Google Sites

The new Google Sites offers many great features. You can make it a virtual meeting space to showcase exciting events. It makes embedding Google Photos in your Google Drive on a Sites web page easy. You can embed documents, videos, and images. Place animated photos into a Google Sites page. Here are two ways to view Google Photos images that are saved to Google Drive. You can view the new Google Sites setup to show these off.

Approach #1 – Embedded Picture Slide Show

In this example, to view the slideshow, you must click the image shown.

Approach #2 – Grid view of images

In this example, to view the images, you scroll down to see images.

See this in action in this new Google Sites.

A Final Tip

As mentioned, Google Photos on the web offers additional features. My favorite options include auto correct on lighting, crop, and/or flip or rotate an image. Isn’t Google Photos on the web amazing?

August 13, 2018 0 comment

Uncategorized

Vector Images: Make Magic with Two Free Tools

by Miguel Guhlin June 7, 2017

written by Miguel Guhlin

Image Source: Wikipedia

Many of us who dabble in print and blog publishing have an amateur’s interest in vector image editing tools. That is, we either hate it or love it depending on how much our current project stretches our skills in an area we don’t necessarily want to grow in. In the last year, as my interest in working with 3D printed images has grown, I’ve found myself searching for SVG image converters. How do you pull an SVG image off the web and then drop it into TinkerCAD or some other 3D printing design tool?

Though you may be as clueless as I am when it comes to finding and adjusting image formats that work in 3D printing software, you may find yourself reaching for one of the following tools. Let’s not forget that creating vector graphics has long been the domain of Adobe tools like Illustrator, the premiere (albeit expensive) vector graphics creation tool.

Tool #1 – Inkscape

Free and open source, this cross-platform, venerable tool is available at no cost and boasts legions of followers. One of its benefits is that tutorials abound. If you need a quick way to convert SVGs for inclusion into a 3D printing design program, Inkscape offers one alternative that won’t hurt your wallet.

Inkscape is the best vector graphics program available for free, and is a great alternative application to Illustrator. If you’re a designer on a shoestring money budget, this is the perfect application for creating high quality vector graphics.
(Source: 50 Tutorials for Creating Vector Graphics with Inkscape)

Lest you think that Inkscape won’t work on cloud-centric devices, take a look at Inkscape on Rollapp, which describes itself as Inkscape on the Web.

vector

Handy Links: Get Software for Mac, Windows, or GNU/Linux | View Tutorial Site #1 and Site #2 | Read Blog | YouTube Video

Tool #2 – Vectr

Vectr Explains: Raster vs Vector Image Difference

A newcomer to the vector graphics creation toolkit, Vectr strives for lean simplicity. The interface is simple and understated, allowing you to add shapes, multiple layers, and text. Vectr features lessons (get started in ten simple steps) you can work through from your first install. This makes it a great tool to introduce students to. Vectr relies on the cloud as a way to save files. It makes online collaboration possible and features an infinite undo history. You can also use plug-ins to extend Vectr or design your own HTML5 plug-ins (wow!).

One key benefit of this cross-platform tool for beginners (or for those who want to learn only just enough to get the job done) includes the ability to access it via a Chromebook, Windows, Mac, or GNU/Linux device.

vector

Handy Links: Get Vectr | Tutorials and Free Online Course | View Blog | YouTube Video

The Short List

While there are many other available vector graphic creation and editing tools, this is the short list of those TCEA likes and recommends. And it’s not a bad list for those hoping to dip their toe in vector image creation. And, if these don’t work for you, give Vecteezy Editor, another free online SVG editor, a try.

vector

Note: This post was updated on July 3, 2017 to include Vecteezy Editor.

June 7, 2017 0 comment

iOS Tips and Tricks

Quote Makers, Engage!

by Miguel Guhlin January 23, 2017

written by Miguel Guhlin

Leaders, looking for an easy app to use to spice up important quotes that you include in your staff missives, parent newsletters, or student projects? How about a simple way to highlight key ideas in assigned student text? Typorama may fit the bill for iOS device users!

Quote Makers, Create!

I love collecting quotes, often snapping a photo of my favorite quotes at Buc-ee’s while I’m traveling or jotting them down in my handy notepad. The best part of being out on the road is encountering truisms, as well as listening to K-12 and adult learners share their stories.

Just last month, I spent some time in Edinburg facilitating Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) professional learning. We kicked off the session reflecting on a powerful quote from Microsoft. Using Typorama, I recreated the quote below.

quote

Don’t you think this is more engaging than words on a slide? Typorama is a VERY COOL iOS quote app! Once you start using it, you won’t be able to stop.

Scan this image with Aurasma to listen to the audio introduction from Dr. Katie Alaniz, author of “Digital Tools for Today’s Classrooms,” the book from which this quote was taken.

Quote Makers, Adhere to Copyright!

Typorama combines a wide range of copyright-friendly backgrounds and text styles and allows watermarks to be inserted as well to advertise your campus, district, organization, or event. What’s more, you can use pictures from your camera roll and then add powerful quotes from students, staff, or even your own creations.

Note: Don’t have an iOS device? You can make your own image quotes with Google Draw or Powerpoint, but you might also give one of these a try: Recite.com, Quozio.com, BeHappyMe, and/or VizzBuzz

Not satisfied with the pictures that come with Typorama? Save pictures from any of the popular free image sites, several shown at the bottom of this blog entry, to your iOS device and then add your quote. The New York Public Library just released their digital collection for use, so be sure to include that in your list of image sources.

Learning Connections

As written in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), “Students must develop the ability to comprehend and process material from a wide range of texts.” Using a quote generator like Typorama, you can help students identify topic sentences or key ideas represented in text.

Tap into the excitement students experience when creating quote a work of art. This work can be displayed via social media or made into a “mini-poster” for bulletin board placement. And you can also help students “summarize the main idea and supporting details in text in ways that maintain meaning.” Whether for professional development (e.g. book study, article jigsaw) with adults or ask ing students to work in small teams with a buddy to analyze text, this type of activity is powerful for engaged learning.

Quote Makers, Share!

Learners can, as encouraged in Digital Media in Today’s Classrooms, “Collaborate to create an online clearinghouse of student-created media.” This clearinghouse can serve as a resource for students to use as they support one another in preparing for exams. The clearinghouse can be any one of the following:

OneDrive-based Image Clearinghouse

Hallway bulletin board
Google Photos – Easy to create a shared album, enable multiple staff/students to add content.
OneDrive Photos – Easy to add images to a folder, as well as share edit rights or view only link.
OneNote Online Notebook
School or classroom Instagram account

Steps to Make and Take

quote Here are the steps you can take to create your Typorama quote project. Remember, these techniques can be used whether you have the app or not. If you and your students are on a computer, try one of the aforementioned, browser-based, free quote generators.

Read a selection of text, online or from paper.
Choose your favorite quote or come up with your own based on what you have read (better activity).
Start up Typorama, select a background from their image search results or use a picture you have taken with your camera. Remember, you can always find a picture online. The image should reflect a key word in the quote text.
Modify the text and image features and then share it online.

Enhance with Augmented Reality

Using the iOS app Aurasma, you can convert these student-created image quotable quotes into “hyperlinked” images. That is, you turn each image into a “trigger” that when students point their iOS device to it, it has students reading the quote aloud, sharing a short anecdote.

Reminder: TCEA members, don’t forget about the upcoming January 25, 2017 Augment Your Reality Lunch-and-Learn webinar where we will share more ideas for using AR in the classroom.

Use the Aurasma app on your Android/iOS device and scan the quote picture above to listen to audio via Voxer!

More Than Quotes

This is a perfect app for both adult and K-12 learners to use. You can use it for creating memorable vocabulary words, summarizing fictional texts, and posing problems in social studies or history class. Please comment below and share how you would use Typorama in your classroom.

List of Copyright-Friendly Image Resources

January 23, 2017 0 comment