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Online Learning Toolkit

This toolkit was developed to provide resources and tools for librarians who are engaged in online learning efforts at their institution, whether in full course management systems or as stand-alone tools to incorporate into web pages or instruction sessio

Photos and Images

Image Tools - Most Common

  • Adobe Photoshop (not free) is the image editing software used by most web and desktop publishing professionals the world over. While learning Photoshop can be a daunting task, adeptness with the program allows users to enhance and/or alter digital images in a seemingly infinite number of ways.
  • Photoshop Elements (not free) is a less expensive version of Photoshop with fewer bells and whistles.
  • Flickr (free) is a photo and video sharing website. You can upload images from your desktop, email, or camera phone. Manage and share image/collections using privacy controls.
  • iPhoto (not free) is part of Apple's iLife software that comes installed on all new Macs or can be bought separately, iPhoto is an excellent way to manage and present your digital image collection. In addition to its elegantly simple interface and powerful options for publishing/sharing your photos, and includes robust image editing tools as well.
  • Picasa (free) is Google's image manager and editor that quickly and smartly modifies digital images, offering a smart interface and a sense of fun, with "warmify" and "I'm feeling lucky" being two of the image effect options. Picasa makes it easy to turn one's images into collages, posters, movies, and other goodies. For anyone who wants to quickly view, manage, and edit the 100s and 1000s of pictures one can generate with a digital camera, Picassa is the best solution.
  • Pixlr Pixlr hosts a series of web-based photo editors. Pixlr Editor is a free online photo editor with a professional touch. Pixlr Express is for quick fixes, and Pixlr-o-matic will allow you to experiment with retro effects.
  • Snag IT: (not free). Robust screen capture software to capture all or parts of screens and edit, including adding captions.

Other Screen Capture Tools (Free)

  • Aviary Just put "http://aviary.com" in the front of any webpage URL ... that webpage then comes up inside an image editor, including graphics and effects editor. This is a free scaled down version of Photoshop.
  • Bug Shooting is a screenshot utility that was developed for software testers who use bug tracking systems. Ability to highlight, notate and/or crop areas of the screenshot. Screenshots can also be sent to Skype or a default E-Mail application.
  • Easy Capture captures screen shot, include windows screen capture, scrolling windows screen capture, selected-regions screen capture. It also allow you to edit the screen captures and add balloon stamps.
  • Firefox Plugins - eight tools for capturing screenshots in Firefox 3
  • Gadwin can perform full screen captures, or only capture a specific window, with some editing features.
  • Greenshot saves a screenshot or a part of the screen to a file. Apply text and shapes to the screenshot. Offers capture of window, region or full screenshot and supports several image formats.
  • Hard Copy is screen capture software - to print or save the current window or screen-- whether you are taking screenshots to produce documentation, printing off records, or anything else. Not as robust as Gadwin or Snag it-- so if you don't want to annotate it's fine. You could import it into a graphics program to annotate.
  • Jing A free screencapture and screencast utility, with the built-in ability to share via web, twitter, IM, or a blog.
  • Mac Screencapture A screencapture utility is built into Mac OS X. This URL will give you the keystroke instructions.
  • MWSnap is a program for taking screen captures of a desktop, an active window,menu, or a specified part of the screen. The program supports BMP, JPG, TIFF,PNG and GIF formats, with user selected color depth and quality settings. It also includes a zooming tool, a screen ruler and a color picker as well as system wide hotkeys and preset selection sizes.
  • Pearl Crescent Page Saver captures an image (png) of a complete web page, not just the bit you can see on your screen, but the whole page. This is a plug-in for Firefox and the basic version is free.
  • Safari Snapshooter saves an instant picture of any webpage to your desktop. After you create an account at http://www.talkingletter.com, a free copy of The Snapshooter is sent to you by e-mail.
  • Skitch is a webservice (beta) to upload pictures from cameras, capture screenshots, add captions and text.
  • WebKut is an AIR application that allows you to capture web pages, or parts of them in a very simple way. It provides you 3 capture options: the entire page, the current view, or only a selection.
  • Websnapshot allows you to enter the Url and press Snap. Or Drag&Drop it from your browser. Click on the Thumbnails to Save.
  • xvidcap: Screencast application for Linux. It allows you to capture either parts of the full screen of your Linux desktop.

Image Resources

  • AdAccess Over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955
  • AICTS: Art Images for College Teaching royalty-free image exchange resource for the educational community
  • American Memory from the Library of Congress
  • Art Stor (a subscription image database)
  • Creative Commons Search for pictures/videos which can be used for non-commercial use
  • Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 - 1920 Over 9,000 images, with database information, relating to the early history of advertising in the United States
  • Flickr Flickr is home to over five billion of the world’s photos. Search for images that have Creative Commons licensing.
  • Harvard's VIA service focusing on artistic and cultural materials at Harvard
  • Illinois Harvest Collection (UIUC) Search for collections with images.
  • Image Repositories for E-Learning gathered from the University of Nottingham
  • iStockPhoto iStockphoto is the internet’s original member-generated image and design community. Find your inspiration on the world's leading royalty-free stock destination.
  • University of Maryland Library guides with links to image resources
  • National Gallery of Art
  • CARLI digital collections Illinois Collection
  • Picture Chicago UIUC & UIC joint collection
  • University of Michigan Image Source
  • UW-Madison In Situ Visual Resources Database
  • Digital Library Collections University of Minnesota Libraries
  • WikiMedia Commons A database of 4,000,000+ freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute.