An Easy Way to Remove Things from Pictures

CleanUp.Pictures is a new online tool for quickly editing your pictures. With CleanUp.Pictures you can selectively remove objects and imperfections from your pictures. You can also use it to blur faces in your pictures. To use CleanUp.Pictures all that you need to do is go to the site, upload the picture you want to edit, then use the marker tool to select the objects and imperfections that you want to remove. Watch the short demo below to see how it works. 

Applications for Education
CleanUp.Pictures could prove to be a handy tool for teachers or administrators who want to share pictures of school events, but want to make sure that faces of people who don't want to be in public pictures are blurred. It's also handy for removing other identifying information that might have been accidentally captured in a picture.

Editing Photos in Google Slides

It's possible to make basic edits to images using the tools that exist in Google Slides. Once you have uploaded an image, you can recolor it, adjust its brightness, contrast, and transparency. A recent update allows you to add drop shadows and reflections. You can also crop and mask pictures. Masking an image allows you to change it into a different shape which means you can be even more creative with your images. 

This video shows you how to make a few of these edits. Please note there is no sound on this video. 

Photo Editing Apps

There are so many photo editing apps available, but some are more robust than others. These are the ones that I find myself coming back to over and over again.

Snapseed This app has so many features it's hard to believe that it is free. There are 29 tools and filters including healing, brush, HDG, and perspective. It's easy to crop, tune, and edit your images so that they look like they were taken by a professional

Polarr Photo editing app with advanced auto-enhance tools and filters to meet all of your photo editing needs.

Adobe Photoshop Express Includes over 5 dozen free tools that allow you to make basic to advanced edits. Once you are finished editing you can share your creation directly on your favorite social networks.

PIP Camera-Photo Editor This is a fun app that allows you to get creative with your pictures. The filters allow you to turn average pictures into masterpieces! Choose from over 200 frames and more than 20 filters to create the perfect image.

Pixlr Use this editor to create collages, layer multiple photos, stylize your images and much more.

PicMonkey This app lets you make basic edits of your photos as well as draw on top of them. You can add stickers to your photos to create a customized, unique masterpiece.

Applications for Education
Instead of using pictures they find on the web for presentations, students could use their cell phones to take their own pictures. They could use one or more of these apps to edit their pictures, giving them more of a feeling of ownership of the content they are creating.

Big Huge Labs: Do Cool Stuff with Digital Photos

Big Huge Labs has been around since 2005. In internet years, that is an incredibly long time! There is a good reason this site has been around for over a decade. It is free, easy to use, and it doesn't require an account to use it. However, Big Huge Labs does have an option to create a free education account which provides an ad-free experience and allows students to send their creations directly to their teacher.

Big Huge Labs lets you upload images directly from your computer  or upload them from Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, or Dropbox. Once you've uploaded an image you can use them to create motivational posters, pop art posters, vintage photo booth strips, movie posters, calendars, and so much more!

Applications for Education
Students could create a magazine poster to summarize a novel or make a profile of a character from a book. They could make trading cards of historical figures or make pocket albums of projects they have created in class. There are really no limits on what students across grade levels can do with Big Huge Labs. 

Pop Art Poster 

Common Craft: Dress Your Pet for Halloween

Moose, Winston, and Tank
are ready for Halloween

CommonCraft has a free collection of Halloween cut-outs you can use to dress your pets up for Halloween. All you need to do to get started is add a picture of your pet to your presentation software such as Keynote, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Google Slides, or Google Drawings and download the file that contains over 120 Creature cut-outs. The step-by-step directions are located on the CommonCraft website.

If you dress up your pet for Halloween, please share a picture on Twitter with the hashtag #HalloweenCreaturePets. Share your picture with the hashtag by November 1 to have your name entered in a drawing to win a FreeTech4Teachers mug.

Applications for Education
While this activity is mostly just for fun, it can be used as a way to introduce students to basic photo editing and manipulation.

An Interactive Guide to Photo Editing

Instagram will have you believe that anyone can be a photo editing expert by just applying a filter and cropping your image into a square. But my friend Abbie Morrison, a professional photographer, will remind me that being able to use Instagram and being a good photo editor are not the same things. A good photographer and photo editor will take advantage of more than just a few default filters in a photo editing tool. To help people understand photo editing terminology and functions, Polarr has published an interactive guide to photo editing terminology. The guide defines twenty-four terms and provides visual examples of each in practice.

Applications for Education
Polarr's guide to photo editing terminology could be a good resource for students who are in introductory photography classes. It's also a good resource for students who simply want to create better pictures to use in slide presentations and other multimedia projects.

H/T to Lifehacker.

Picadilo - A Robust and Free Photo Editing Tool

Picadilo is a free image editing service that offers a lot of useful tools. To use Picadilo you do not have to create an account on the service. To get started just upload a picture and start editing. After your image is uploaded you can re-size it, crop it, add filters, touch-it up, add text, and put digital frames around your pictures. When you're happy with your edited image you can download it and or share it on Facebook.

Applications for Education
If you're looking for an image editing tool that doesn't require your students to install any software or create online accounts, give Picadillo a try.

Quickly Add Speech Bubbles and Effects to Images

Phrase.it is a simple service that anyone can use to add speech bubbles and some basic Instagram-like effects to your pictures. To use the service just upload a picture and choose a speech bubble. Drag your speech bubble into place then type your text. You can change the font style in your speech bubbles. Click the "add more drama" button to add one of four image shading effects.

Applications for Education
Phrase.it does not require any kind of registration to use which means that students don't have to have email addresses to use it.  Students can download their completed images and use them wherever they like. Students could create a short story by uploading and adding speech bubbles to five or six images then downloading them to use in slidedeck or in a document.

H/T to Larry Ferlazzo.

12 Simple Image Editing Tools

Quick Picture Tools is a free service that offers twelve tools for editing and enhancing your pictures. Some of the things that you can do with Quick Picture Tools include cropping images, combining images, adding text to images, and creating calendar wall paper for your computer. Each of the tools provides the option to resize images and adjust the overall quality of your original image before you use it for a collage, calendar, or mini poster.

Applications for Education
If you're looking for a set of image editing tools that your students can use without having to register for a service, take a look at Quick Picture Tools. Quick Picture Tools could be used by students for editing and enhancing images before placing them into a slideshow or video project.

PicMonkey is Like Instagram on the Web

Earlier this morning I was asked for a list of alternatives to Picnik for editing and adding effects to photos. I had this list handy, but I have another good photo editor to add to the list. I learned about PicMonkey from one of Jim Sill's Tweets last week and I finally gave it a try this morning. My initial impression is that it is a lot like Instagram except that it functions on the web instead of as an Android or iOS app.

To get started using PicMonkey you can upload an image by simply dragging it from your desktop to the PicMonkey editor. From there you can change things like saturation, contrast, size, and sharpness. You can then add custom frames and special effects like "Polaroid style" to your images. Want to add text to your images? PicMonkey provides a slew of font styles for your use. And if you have just one tiny part of an image that you want to enhance or obscure, PicMonkey gives you tools for that too.

Applications for Education
PicMonkey doesn't require any kind of registration in order to use all of the photo editing tools. That lack of a registration requirement makes it perfect for use with students that don't have email addresses. If you want students to experiment with editing images for use in slide or other presentations, PicMonkey could be just the tool you need.

Picozu - A Nice Free Online Image Creation and Editing Tool

Picozu is a free online image editing tool. Using Picozu you can touch-up existing images or you can create new images from scratch. In the Picozu editor you will find tools for adjusting color saturation and clarity. The editor also includes tools for creating images containing multiple layers. And if you want to include text in your image Picozu has options for that too.

Picozu offers the option to register and join their community or you can use the editing tools without creating an account. If you do choose to create an account you can save your images on Picozu and add them to the community albums. If choose not to create a Picozu you can save your images to your computer, send them to your Facebook account, or send them to your Dropbox account.

Applications for Education
If you're looking for a nice tool for students to use to create images for their digital presentations, Picozu is worth giving a good look.