Unit Five - Digital Image Design, Development and Manipulation

Technology Development Environment

Analysis of Technology Development Environment 

Within this unit, we focused on digital image design, development and manipulation. We had the following choices to evaluate and decide on an environment to produce a deliverable for this unit. My evaluations of these environments are as follows: 

Adobe Photoshop Express

•  One thing I definitely liked about this application is the amount of help and tutorials available straight from their home screen. I was able to learn quite a bit about how to use this program before I even made the leap to attempt to register and sign in.

• So the most important thing I did not like about this program is that I could not figure out how to register and sign in. I do not have an Adobe ID, and I could not find anywhere to create one. So I will be moving on to the next option.

PicMonkey

•  One thing I did like about PicMonkey was that you could use it without registering or signing in. As I played around in it, a few things I wanted to try, I couldn’t because I had not registered (although they do offer a 30 day free trail). I did not sign up for the free trail because in order to do so, I would have to provide credit card information, and even though I could cancel prior to the 30 days being over and not get charged, I know myself, I will get busy with 1000 other things, and forget to do it.

•  The things I could do without being a “Member” are things that I can do on any image manipulation site; crop, apply filters, add text, apply filters, etc. I am going to continue exploring and see what else is available.

Ribbett

• I really liked that this program jumped right into things that you can do with it. There was no registration or log in required. Once I chose what I wanted to attempt, there were helpful “tips” that walked you through the process.

• This program was actually very easy to use, I created a collage of pictures of my parents through the years (They recently celebrated 51 years of marriage). 

GIMP

• In order to use this application, it had to be downloaded first. I did download, but however; it ran extremely slow on my computer and kept shutting everything down.

paint.net

•  In order to use this application, it also had to be downloaded first as well. Upon reviewing the program, it appears to be very similar to Windows Paint, which I am familiar with, so I will check out the other options.

Pixia 

•  Pixia required the software to be downloaded. Upon reviewing their home page, it looked almost exactly like the paint.net homepage.

CorelDRAW

• CorelDraw also required the software to be downloaded, but did not require a credit card for the free trial. I could not get this program to load, once I downloaded it, it would not finalize the installation. I had to restart computer to get the installation to stop spinning randomly (I restarted after 30 minutes of it not going anywhere). Once I restarted, I discovered that it had actually installed, however, it stated that I needed a product key to register and use the program.

Seashore

• This program is an open-source image editor for the Apple IOS.

PhotoPlus

• This program said it was a free download, but once it was downloaded, it would not allow me to actually install it without a product key. 

      Upon reviewing the applications from which we were to make our selection, there were two that stood out to me as something that I might be familiar with.  Adobe Photoshop express; because we seem to use Adobe for so many things within the online environment, and CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, because I remember using Corel years and years ago when I did my undergrad and Word Perfect was the standard for creating documents, I believe Corel was incorporated into the Word Perfect publishing Suite.   Once I started opening the applications, my two top choices turned out to be the ones I had the most issues with.  In the end, I chose to use Ribbit.com.  I really liked that this program, I was able to jump right into the things that you can do with it. There was no registration or log in required.  Once I chose what I wanted to attempt, there were helpful “tips” that walked you through the process.  This program was actually very easy to use, I created a collage of pictures of my parents through the years (They recently celebrated 51 years of marriage).   

My Parents through 51 years together!

Thank you for reading about my thoughts regarding this unit. 

Please feel free to leave a comment.

Alice