When creating a presentation for the classroom or library, images are a wonderful tool to help clarify and amplify the meaning of the content (Reynolds, 2014, p. 95). But are you allowed to use the image? What about copyright laws?

This week, we learned about Creative Commons, or CC. Creative Commons is a license that is used when an author wants to give others permission to use their picture or other media under copyright law, for free. With the CC license there may be a specification on how their work may be used, such as NC (non-commercial) or SA (Share-Alike). Creative Commons has a website that breaks down what each specification means if you come across one that you don’t know.

The first website I used was Unsplash. The images I wanted was one of the mountains, since I am rereading The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Rana, A. (January 13, 2021). Moutains-Outdoors-Nature Image-Wilderness [photograph] Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/x2LStfRm7g0 CC Zero

As a visual learner, I retain information better when I see things as people talk to me. I would use an image, like this, to describe to my students what the fellowship would have been spending months climbing and walking through to reach their destination. This will give them a better idea of how hard and tiering it would have been versus if I just said “they walked through mountains and forests for months”. Unsplash as a site was very easy to use and had a lot pictures to choose from. This picture was actually taken by a Merchant Marine, which is what my husband does for a living.

Ok! So now that that I have an image, I want to edit it a little. This second image I got from Pixabay, and then edited using Pixlr, piZap, and Big Huge Lab. I wanted to give myself a challenge so I picked an image that takes up the full screen, versus one with negative space that Garr Reynolds recommends in his book Presentation Zen Designs (Reynolds, pg. 17), so I could fully try out the editing sites. On the image, I put a quote from Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings as an inspirational quote. Pixabay was another easy site to use to find images with a lot of options. As our professor pointed out, the images are not really named so citations are fun to make but other then that, I liked it.

Winkler, M. (July 29, 2016). Subeams-Forest-Fog-Trees-Woods [photograph]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/photos/sunbeams-forest-fog-trees-woods-1547273/ CC Zero

Pixlr: This editing site would be great if you already had a graphic design background as I feel like you would know how to use all the tools available. If you are just wanting to edit a little and add some text, this may not be the site to use as it could get overwelming. I could see this being the site I would over edit my image to the point of BAD. Another con is that, much like the other sites I tried, they did not have the fonts that Reynolds recommends such as Rockwell, Caslon, and Gill Sans(Reynolds, p.39-40). So instead, use your best judgement on what font works well for what you are trying to convey with the image. One pro I can talk about is that I liked that when I added a background to the text to help it pop, you can still see the image through the background.

PiZap: This site is easy to use as it still gives plenty of options but there isn’t a lot of “what does this button do?”. Keep in mind that this is a free site so there are options that if you want to use them, you have to pay for them. There is actually a serif and san serif font (Reynolds, pg. 40) category with fonts such as Frutiger and Futura but they are not part of the free fonts available. However, I don’t know if anyone else had this trouble, but it saved to my computer upside down and flipped. Luckily I can edit this in my computer but it was a bit of a hassle.

How it saved to my computer.
After I edited it.

Big Huge Lab: This one would be great for kids to use. They can take the image and make it into a motivational poster, pop art, jigsaw, and many more options! One major con is that there are a lot of ads. Children may have to be supervised when using this so that they do not click something they aren’t supposed to because the download button is surround by ads that they could click by accident. You also can’t edit the photo. The motivational poster for example, you can choose between 8 different fonts and change the border color from black to red, but that’s really it.

Another one to look into is Tupi. This might be the easiest one to use. You can add text very easily it only gives you four photo editing options; brightness, hue, saturation, and contrast. Quick, easy, and simple. One I would not recommend is Foldplay, mainly because I am not sure how to use it. I clicked around but I was not sure how to get started or where to even get started.

I learned a lot this week about using images and presenting that I had not know before. While I do feel intimidated by all the information, I am excited to keep trying things out as the semester continues.

Refrences

Reynolds, G. (2014). Presentation zen design. 2d ed. New Riders.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1991). The lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring. HarperCollins.