Image editing activity
Tejas: We have got some pictures with us. We want to insert them in the story we are writing.
Jyoti: But some of the pictures we have, are not fitting the situations which the story demands. With little modification we can use them also. We are searching for an application for this.
Moz: There is an application that helps you do these, it is called 'mtPaint'. It is a simple image editing application with various utilities.
Jyoti: Can we change the colors in the pictures so that we can make them more colorful? Also we need to select some portions of the image(picture) for the story.
Moz: Of course you can do all these and many more. To select a specific portion of the picture, you can use the 'Crop' utility.
Skill box: Crop an image
To crop an image:
1) Select the required portion of the image using the 'Make Selection' icon from the toolbar.
2) From 'Image' option on the menubar, select 'Crop' to crop the image. Another way to do this is to press 'Delete' key on the keyboard. Only the selected portion is retained.
…...... Skill Box End......
Jyoti: We have also seen pictures which are in black and white. We also want to insert such pictures in our story.
Moz: Images or pictures of this sort are also called greyscale. These pictures are composed only of shades of gray. Explore whether greyscale option is available?
Tejas: Yes, I found it. It is under the 'Effects' option on the menubar.
Jyoti: See how the picture looks!
Tejas: We also want to add some text to these pictures. Let us try the toolbar option:
Jyoti: Clicking on this option is giving a window to type the text. But we are not able to save the placed text on the image.
Moz: Move and place the text where you want and then press enter key on the keyboard or the right click the mouse. The text will be saved.
….Skill box......
1) Click on the 'Paste text' ( ) option on the toolbar.
2) From the displayed window, select the font, font size and style. Then click 'Paste Text' button.
3) The typed text appears in the middle of the image.
4) Move it across and place where you want, then either right click or press 'Enter' key on the keyboard. Save the file.
…...... End of skill box......
Moz: Apart from inserting text, we can also add shapes in images. Just see these pictures with some shapes added to it.
Basic picture /
Picture with shapes added
------Skill Box------
Skill : To insert shapes into an image
1) From the toolbar, choose the 'Make Selection' button ( ) and select the area in the image.
2) Now click the desired shape from the toolbar.
Moz :
3) The selected area is filled with the clicked shape.
…...... End of skill box......
Jyoti: We have seen pictures which show speed lines to a moving character in the image. Can we also add this feature in our pictures?
Moz: One way to introduce this is using the smudge option. When you use this option, where ever you drag the cursor, the colour there is smeared or blurred.
Jyoti: So much of life has come to the picture, it looks as if the boy is really running.
Moz: Whenever you are doing editing on any image, make sure that you save the file in a new name or else you will lose the original image. Alternately, you can make a copy of the image and edit it.
Jyoti: While saving under the 'File Format' option ,I see some options like BMP, PNG, JPEG, etc. Which file format should I save?
Moz: By default, mtPaint saves the file in PNG format. If you open an existing file, after editing you save it , the file is saved in the same format. When choosing the format for your image, you should always be conscious of both the image’s quality, filesize and the purpose of use.
Info:
- Most commonly used image formats on the net — GIF, JPG and PNG
- Most images online which use limited colors or are charts, graphs, or similar should be saved using the PNG format. PNG makes these images not only look much better to the viewer, but it generally makes them smaller and quicker to download as well.
- JPEG file format is capable of displaying millions of colours at once. Hence images, such as photographs taken with a camera, are always best saved in JPEG format.
- GIF files can be saved with a maximum of 256 colours. This makes it a poor format for photographic images
- As the file quality of the image increases the file size also increases.
- Match the file format you choose with the way you want to use it.
Moz: MtPaint gives a lot of options to edit images. Now that you have learned about this application, explore the other options on your own.