My oldest son turned sixteen yesterday. SIXTEEN! Boy, do I feel old! One of the things Landon likes to do is take and edit photos on his camera. He'll take a normal (sometimes even boring) picture like this one of his bed...
and turn it into something abstract and really cool.
In honor of his birthday, let's do some editing of our own.
Supplies:
camera (phone or point and shoot)
photo editing software - Since this is a project for children, the simpler the better! The basic photo editing software installed on your computer or phone will be good enough. We are using Windows Photo Gallery (free download). It's a perfect tool for children to try photo editing with because it only has a few items that you can change with a sliding bar. Simple - unlike Photoshop! Still, younger children will need parental help.
Directions:
Take lots of pictures and choose one you like. Those using a camera - upload it to your computer. Parents: Don't worry if it's blurry or has other photography flaws! Just let the kids have fun with the camera! Landon took a picture of his shoes that were lined up by the wall . Ahem, the same ones I'm always asking him to put in the closet. There was no natural light in the room because his blinds were closed, so his picture has a yellow glow.
Open the picture in your photo editing software, click FIX or EDIT, and play around with the contrast, brightness, tint, saturation, and color temperature. Again parents, don't worry if the picture looks terrible to you! The whole idea behind this project is for the children to experiment!
Landon took the color temperature all the way down, to get rid of the yellow glow.
Then he upped the saturation. See! The gray wall just turned blue, and the colors on his shoes are a little more vivid.
Added contrast which sharpened his image, made the blue wall a brilliant turquoise, and darkened it.
Now brighten it a tiny bit.
And crop out whatever was in the bottom left corner. When you have it just the way you like it, save your picture!
Suggestion:
If you have older children that know their way around on the computer, let them upload their picture from the computer to Picnic (closing April 19) or Pixlr. These are free photo editing sites with a little more to offer, like borders, stickers, text. Fun fun fun! As always, I recommend parent supervision when children are on the internet!
Have fun altering your pictures, and be sure to upload them to the Kid's Craft Along Flickr Group!
