People Letters Fun

With the help of two of my kids, we had a lot of fun making letter shapes to spell out Kids rule. The individual image is brought into the software and a copy is made. Using the eraser tool I removed large areas of the background first. Then using the magic lasso tool with various tolerances, I selected more to remove. I found I had to zoom in really close to then use the eraser at 2 pixels size to smooth up the ragged edges left behind. Each letter is copied and moved to a new file that started at 1" x 12". After I was finished adding letters, I cropped the image down to the length needed. With all the letters on transparent backgrounds, I can change the background image color at will.

Combining TYPE with photos

In reviewing the last chapter in the textbook we use, I got inspired with an image I saw. It is referred to as a character mask. It was impossible to get everyone in the class to show through in exactly what I wanted but this is my best effort today.

Students have a 3 day break. When we come back on Tuesday, we will tackle the final bit in Rhoda's text working with 3 last exercises. Reminder the WBP is due on May 30th. there is NO late credit for this assignment. School camera's, along with batteries and charger are due to be turned in next Thursday, the 29th. All student files will be erased from school computers by June 4th so start deciding how you are going to transfer your images to your own computer.

I almost have decided on the final exam. It will include written questions and a practical problem to complete in class.

Framed Photos Going Home

Even though the due date for the framed old time photo is not until tomorrow, I had several students get this done early. Some of them even used my suggestion of putting a dollar between the cardboard backing and brown paper dustcover forever. The idea is "..if I ever get poor enough, at least I know where a dollar is."

I introduced a class project today where we will spell out words with body shapes. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

Animation I made in PhotoShop

Copyright Permission

I was very pleased to find in my inbox this morning, a reply from Rhoda Grossman granting me permission to use her images in my blog and teaching. The text we use is shown above, Fun with PhotoShop Elements 3 Foto-Fakery for Everyone. Her work is exciting and I encourage other Technology Teachers to use this book. An updated edition for version 4 of the software is also available. For more information about Rhoda you can visit her website www.digitalpainting.com I know I have!

The fool me product exercise

This exercise was to produce a fake product. I took a photo of a can of beans where I removed the label. I found the portable photo booth we have in class useful. With this, I used a photo I took of a nest of birds I found in my shed. It is an awful thing to think anyone in the world would actually "can" these beautiful creatures. Photo Shop allowed me to make it happen. After selecting part of the bird image I wanted, I cut and paste it into the can layer. The text was created on new blank files and simplified to rasterize the text. This allowed me to use Filter --> Distort--> Shear to curve the text similar to the can.

Encouraging Creativity

Even though this was a Friday and near the end of school, I am pressing for students to be creative. In the assignment for "Fooling me Twice" MY goal is to have everyone take the jump to come up with an idea for a product that is their own. I brought in several items from my home and set up the little light studio to pass along the idea. Yesterday afternoon I took a photo of items already in the classroom and changed a glue bottle into a 'Joy Juice bottle' and turned the germX bottle into 'Stomach Sanitizer' instead of hand sanitizer. I realize it takes time and effort to do things like this. This is WHY we meet. Come on kids, I want to be impressed! Do not use the basic can image from the exercise for your final.