Learn. Show. Repeat.

Tag: images

  • Taking up the Challenge

    At the beginning of this year I wrote a to-do list of activities to develop my digital skills. One of the areas that I wanted to work on was my visual design skills so my list item was to participate in the Daily UI Design Challenge where each day for 100 days (except weekends) you receive an email prompts that gives you the ‘topic’ for the day.

    Well it’s now June and I’ve finally started.

    I’m using PowerPoint to create my designs for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s a program I have easy access to. Secondly, it’s a design challenge and I wanted to see what I can produce with what I have.

    Here’s a few of the designs that I’ve created so far:[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5007″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”5008″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”5009″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5010″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5011″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”5012″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Essentially the designs are combinations of shapes and text boxes. I’ve played with their colour, transparency, outline thickness (called weight) and alignment. I’ve added shadows and even used the edit points’ feature in PowerPoint to manipulate regular shapes into something different.

    While I’m hoping to improve my design skills over the 100 days, I’m already finding that in completing each challenge I’m thinking more about how a person might interact with what I’m designing. Is what they need to do obvious? Does it make sense? Would it be easy to use? I think these questions are also applicable to digital learning design and we need to talk to users to find out and refine and improve.

    There are lots of people sharing their designs on Twitter via the hashtag #DailyUI and also on a site called Dribbble (which is a good place for design inspiration). I’m enjoying the chance to be more creative, experiment and play with design so am looking forward to the next Daily UI email. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]

  • Working with Images in eLearning (part 2)

    In my last post, I covered some terminology associated with images and different image file types. For part 2, I’m going to share 10 tips when using images in Articulate Storyline and for some you’ll need to click on the image and go to the Format tab under Picture Tools.

    Tip #1

    Break the text-on-one-side-and-image-on-the-other habit! Go full screen with your images and overlay the text. There’s lots of way to do this, here’s some ideas that I wrote in another post along with links to even more ideas.

    Tip #2

    When you want to resize an image (larger or smaller), drag it from the corner to keep it in proportion. Dragging from a mid-point can make the image look stretched.

    Tip #3

    Remove parts of the image you don’t need by using the Crop tool which is on the right-hand side of the Format ribbon. Unlike Storyline, you can crop an image to a shape in PowerPoint (it could then be saved and inserted into your Storyline project).

    Tip #4

    If you have a few images on a slide, you create even spacing between them. Select all the images and click on Align. There’s a few options but I generally use Distribute Vertically or Distribute Horizontally. This also works for other objects such as shapes or buttons.

    Tip #5

    You can move images around on your slides using the arrows on the keyboard. If you want to move your image 1 pixel at a time, hold down the Ctrl key while you press the arrow keys. Again, this works for other objects too.

    Tip #6

    If you want to have different images in the same positon across a few slides, start by placing the first image where you want it to be. Then you’ll need to find out its position on the slide, so right-click and select Size and Position. Next, click on the Position tab and take note of the horizontal and vertical position. Go to each of your other images, follow the same steps and when you get to the Position tab, type in the position information from your first image.

    Tip #7

    If you insert a picture but then decide you want to change rather than deleting it and reinserting another, there’s an option on the left-hand side of the Format ribbon called Change Picture. When clicked on you’ll be able to choose another image and it will replace the current one.

    Tip #8

    Some people use Ctrl C (to copy) and Ctrl V (to paste) but I still use the mouse! If you want to maintain the alignment of images when you copy and paste, hold down the Shift key and Control key and then move your mouse to the edge of the image. When you see a + sign and dotted rectangle, left-click and drag your mouse. This also works for other objects on the slide.

    Tip #9

    Sometimes you don’t want your images to sit squarely on the slide and while you can rotate them manually, the Format tab has some built-in options in Rotate. I find the Flip Vertical and Flip Horizontal options useful to create a mirror reverse of the original image and if you click on More Rotation Options and the Size tab, you can set the degree of rotation.

    Tip #10

    Storyline does have some basic image editing options on the left-hand side of the Format ribbon. You can adjust the brightness, contrast and recolour. I’ve also used these options when creating additional image states to make the new states look different to the original.

     

    So, there’s a few tips for working with images in Storyline that will help improve the look of your eLearning modules. If you have any other tips, please share them in the comments area.

    I’ve also created a short video that demonstrates how to do many of the above tips, click on the image below to watch.

    Tips when working with images video

  • Working with Images in eLearning (part 1)

    As eLearning developers we regularly work with images in our projects and while we aren’t all graphic designers, it helps to have a basic knowledge of the terminology around image properties and file types which is what this post is about.

    A ‘pixel’ is the unit of measurement used for digital images and when you see the size of an image, let’s say 450 x 300, the first number is always the width and the second is the height:

    width then height

    The resolution of an image is different and is usually expressed as pixels per inch (ppi) or dots per inch (dpi) and this describes how many pixels there are in a liner inch. When sourcing images from a photo website I look for a high ppi or dpi number:

    In this example I’d choose the medium (or maybe the large) over the small as it would be a higher quality and better for resizing.

    There’s two main categories of images – Bitmap and Vector – and here’s the difference between the two:

    Bitmap images are made up of pixels of different colours, they often have large file sizes and when you resize a bitmap graphic larger than the original, it tends to lose quality and become grainy or pixelated.

    Vector images use mathematical expressions to represent the image, they tend to have small file sizes and are scalable so when you resize them larger, which means that they don’t lose quality. However, vector images typically require software to create and edit. You may be able to edit the vector image in PowerPoint as Tom Kuhlmann describes here.

    It’s also handy to know the differences between the most common image file formats so that you’ll be able to use the right type depending on your purpose.

    Types of bitmap image formats:

    JPEG or JPG (stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group) – supports millions of colours and are used for displaying digital photos in a compressed format. You can’t have a transparent background with a JPEG and they tend to lose quality the more times you edit and save them.

    PNG (Portable Network Graphics) – an alternative to GIF images and can support millions of colours as well as transparent backgrounds.

    GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) – only supports 256 colours but they can have a transparent background (one colour can be transparent) and can also be used for creating simple animations.

    TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) – great for when you want to display high quality images for printed documents.

    Types of vector image formats:

    EPS (stands for Encapsulated PostScript) – this format supports both bitmap and vector images and are created with drawing programs like Photoshop.

    WMF (Windows Metafile) – also supports bitmap and vector images and was used for Microsoft Clip Art. These files can be edited in PowerPoint.

    SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) – this is a newer format for web graphics that support interactivity on newer web browsers and is also good for animations.

    So that’s a brief overview of image terminology and file formats. If you’re interested in learning more about image formats as well as visual design, Connie Malamed has a great book called ‘Visual Design Solutions’ which I referred to in putting this post together. In part 2 of working with images, I’ll share some tips (and a video) that I’ve found useful when working with images in Storyline.

  • 4 Ideas for Combining Text and Images in eLearning

    E-Learning Heroes Challenge #152 – Combining Text and Images in E-Learning. The brief: This week, your challenge is to share an example to demonstrate how text and images can be used in e-learning.

    For this challenge I shared four simple ideas that were all created within Storyline. Click the image below to see what I shared for the challenge:

    Click to view demo

     

    Slide 1: Text coming out of the image

    For the title page, I wanted the text to look like it was coming out of the skyline and to create this effect, there’s actually two of the same images placed exactly on top of each other. However, the image at the front has been cropped:

    Cropped image

    In the timeline, the complete image is at the bottom and the cropped at the top:

    timeline

    Placing the text box in the middle creates the effect that it’s coming out from behind the buildings but really it’s just coming out from behind the cropped image. There’s a ‘Fly In’ animation on the text with the duration set to 3.5 seconds and coming in from the bottom (set in Effect Options).

    Slide 2: Text overlay 1

    This slide full screen image with a rectangle shape containing some text) placed to the right. The shape has a ‘Fly In’ animation (1 sec duration and coming in from the right). I also made the shape slightly transparent by right-clicking on it, selecting ‘Format Shape’ and adjusting the transparency to 25%.

    Slide 3: Text overlay 2

    On this slide, I coloured the background pale grey, and positioned my image at the top of the slide. Then I added a rectangle that slightly covered the image and didn’t completely fill the space at the bottom. The text itself sits in a text box on top of the shape and I applied a fade animation (1 sec duration). From the ‘Effect Options’ dropdown I chose ‘By Paragraph’ which makes each paragraph of text appear separately.

    Slide 4: Question

    This slide wasn’t built using a quiz slide (but it could be) which meant I needed to create everything from scratch. I started with my background image and added two new states – a correct and incorrect:

    correct and incorrect states for background image

    For each of the new states, I went to the ‘Format’ tab and increased the brightness by 10% and recoloured the images:

    format tab

    Then I added four rectangles, one for the question and one for each answer. For the demo, Option C is the correct answer, so I also created a state for each option:

    answer states

    Lastly, I added a layer that contains a button to replay the demo (the trigger is to jump to the first slide when the button is clicked) and also prevents another answer being selected (go to ‘Layer Properties’ and tick the box next to ‘Prevent the user from clicking on the base layer’).

    Then I needed to add triggers to each answer option to make it all work:

    answer triggers

    So that’s how I created each of my slides for this challenge. There were lots of other creative ideas shared by community members in this challenge and you if have ideas, please share them in the comments area below.

    All images used in this demo came from Death to the Stock Photo.