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Images

The images that your learners use in their digital hero stories can come from their existing hero books (as scans), new photos they take with a digital camera or images from the web. Any of these images can be edited before being used in a digital story.

Working with images

Below are a few important points to remember when working with images.

Image format

Soundslides only accepts images in JPG format. If scanning images or taking photos with a digital camera, always save images as JPGs (e.g. filename.jpg). If using images from the web, and they are not JPGs, you will need to convert them using image editing software. This is easy. You simply open the file in its native format, e.g. flower.gif, and save as a different file in JPG format.

Note: if using Soundslides:

Images must be saved with a .jpg extension.
Images must be RGB non-progressive files -- so if there is a checkbox for "Progressive JPG" you should NOT tick it when saving your files.

Tip:

Even if you are not using Soundslides software, you should always save your images in the best quality possible, e.g. when saving JPGs you are often given a choice of 1-10 levels of quality. Select 10 or Maximum.
Most digital storytelling software, e.g. Soundslides and Windows Movie Maker, will resize your images to optimize the final output files. So it's best to keep your original images in good quality and let the software do the optimization.

The exception to the "always-use-best-quality" rule is when scanning images, explained below.

Image size

It's important that any images used in a digital story are not too small: the actual pixel size of an image (not it's file size) must be big enough so that the image doesn't blur or pixelate when it is made bigger by Soundslides or other software. Therefore, the pixel dimensions of width and height should add up to at least 1000 pixels. Examples:

Good = 100px wide x 900px high
Good = 500px wide x 500px high
Bad = 100px wide x 200px high

On Windows or Linux you can find the pixel dimension of an image in a web browser by right-clicking the image and selecting View image. The pixel dimension is indicated in the title at the top of the browser window (Width x Height).

Lastly ...

Regardless of whether your image is a scan, a digital camera photo or from the web, always remember to save it in your images folder.

Scanning images

The Digital Storytelling Cookbook (PDF, 2.6MB) has a very useful section on scanning images. If you are scanning images with your learners you should read it. Some of the key points to note are as follows:

Similar to a photocopier, you can scan anything that will fit on top of the scanner glass. This includes photographs, drawings, letters, pages from books, album covers, fabric or clothing, even a maple leaf: typically two dimensional objects.
If the item you are scanning is larger than the scanning area of the scanner, the quickest solution is to take a photo of the item with a digital camera.
For flatbed scanners, lay your items face down on the glass. Try to fill the entire glass area with items you want to scan to save time. You will then crop the final scan to separate it out into the different items that you scanned. Close the cover. If you have photos with drastically different lighting, it usually works best to group them together with similar photos (like doing laundry), separating lights and darks. If you are scanning a three dimensional object and cannot close the scanner lid completely, covering the lid with a dark cloth or item of clothing to shield as much light as possible from the room will result in a better scan.
An important setting you’ll want to check before you scan is the dots per inch (dpi). That tells you the number of printed dots, or pixels, per inch in a photo. Dpi determines the visual quality of an image. For example, web images are typically 72 dpi to reduce file size, whereas photos for fine book printing are scanned at 600 dpi. Knowing that a higher dpi gives richer detail might tempt you to scan at a higher rate. However, a moderate dpi of 200 in most cases will provide sufficient quality for digital video and prevent slow image-processing time in both your image and digital video editor. The only exception is if the item you are scanning is quite small, for example, a postage stamp, and you know you will be increasing the end size of the image. In this kind of situation, scan at about 300 dpi.

Images from the web

There are two schools of thought on allowing learners to source images for their stories from the web: one view is that it is simply too distracting and shouldn't be allowed (the kids will soon be chatting online or browsing sites about their favourite rapper). The other view is to build on the planning that went into the storyboard and trust that because the learners know what they need to find -- e.g. an image of a bicycle -- the task will be manageable. We have seen learners stay fairly focussed and successfully source material off the web. Tip: set a time limit on this activity, e.g. 30 minutes to find the desired material. Allowing the use of the web provides an opportunity to discuss content licencing.

In the Resources section there is a list of websites where you can find images.

Tip:

If you’re downloading images from a site such as Google’s image search, it will tell you the pixel dimensions of the picture you want to download on the thumbnail page, e.g.

Also, do not download the thumbnail of the picture, but the full-size picture. So, you would click the left thumbnail image above and then click See full-size image. (Note: keep in mind that most images on the web are NOT copyright-friendly, e.g. the image above is ©2006, Ron Rockwell, Nidus Corp.)

Editing images

To edit any images, use software such as Picasa or GIMP. For example, it is easy to rotate, crop or convert images to black and white. Each image editing program is different so refer to the help or tutorials specific to the program you use. For basic image editing, Picasa is very easy to use.

Licencing of content

Your learners should always try to use copyright-friendly images, sounds, video or text. This is especially important if they ever want to publish their work publicly, e.g. on the web. Let's say your learner uses a photograph of Nelson Mandela in her story. The story wins a competition and is seen by many people, including the person who took the photograph. If the photographer had kept an All Rights Reserved copyright on his work then your learner has broken the law. By copyright-friendly we mean content that the creator has released under a Creative Commons (CC) licence -- Some Rights Reserved. Basically this means that your learners can use someone else's content in their stories without needing to first get permission to do so or needing to pay for the content. Usually all they need to do is say where the content comes from. For example, if your learner had used this photo of Mandela's statue in her story she would only need to give credit to the photographer Frames-of-Mind (not first get permission to use the photo).

For an idea of legally using copyrighted material in school projects, see the Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers (NOTE: this guideline is specific to the USA).

Referencing

Your learners should always reference any external content that they've used. In general they should say who the content comes from -- the creator -- and and where they found it -- the source. In the instance of the Mandela photo they would put this in the credits of their digital hero story:

Nelson Mandela by Frames-of-Mind (http://www.flickr.com/photos/framesofmind/476446479), Some rights reserved

For copyright material, they would put:

And if a CC licence is known, the display that:

Nelson Mandela by Frames-of-Mind (http://www.flickr.com/photos/framesofmind/476446479),CC2.0

Copyright and licencing is a complicated matter, but if your learners use CC content and reference it, and given that the stories they create is for educational (non-commercial) purposes, there should be no problem. For more information read How to license mixed media, without a law degree (PDF, 70K).

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