Image Manipulation - Picnik

Picnik is a free creative and fun editing program that allows you to transform your photos. Picnik has many tools such as adjusting exposure, contrast and shadows and highlights. It also offers all the basic tools to crop, resize, rotate, sharpen and fix red-eye. The program also has plenty of special effects and filters and other advanced controls to fine-tune photos (Digicamhelp, 2009).

I had so much fun using Picnik and couldn’t stop changing all my photos. I even connected Picnik with Flickr and Facebook which means the images I created can also be saved to those programs. I found this website very easy to navigate my way around which I think would suit students of a young age if of course scaffolding was used as well. One of the major advantages of this program is it not only teaches students how to edit photos and create different effects it is also works in conjunction with other programs. This will provide students with immense assistance in completing their projects, blogs, wikis etc. Students could use this tool to create a picture story of their life and thus students would take ownership and pride in their work to create a favourable classroom climate. This favourable classroom climate could be further promoted by displaying the results of this activity around the classroom.

The images above are the ones I created from photos of me. Firstly, I uploaded these photos from Flickr and Facebook to use with this program. When editing my photos I cropped and resized so that it could fit in smaller documents in the future. I also changed the exposure, contrast and colours. My favourite part was the “creating” part of the photos where I used the sandbox effects - HSL Filter and Circle Splash. On one of the photos I added a sticker to my arm to look like a tattoo. When I was satisfied with the picture I had created I finished it off by adding a frame to it. I really enjoyed this program and I can’t wait to incorporate it into my classroom.

Theory –

If students were doing an Art project on Image Manipulation with photos that related to their lives or something in their lives teachers could provide students with the Picnik program (resource) to complete their projects. Students would use the program to edit their photos and come up with different creative ideas. Using this program as a resource fits in with the Learning Design Process within Oliver’s framework (cited in AUTC, 2003) as it supports the learners in conducting their task.

Resources

AUTC. (2003). Learning Design. Accessed 10th August, 2009, from http://www.learningdesigns.uow.edu.au/project/learn_design.htm

Digicamhelp (2009) Picnik Online Editing Program: Accessed on the 11th August 2009; http://www.digicamhelp.com/processing-photos/basic-editing/picnik-review/

Oliver, R. (1999). Exploring strategies for on-line teaching and learning. Distance Education, 20(2), 240-254.