UNIT 4 > MODULE 2

Lesson 2: Acquiring Images for Web Graphics

Overview

In this lesson you will learn about different methods for acquiring digital images to work with in the creation of web graphics. Depending upon the resources available at your location, you will explore the use of scanning, digital cameras, and use of the Internet to acquire images.

In addition to capturing images using a scanner and digital camera, students will also be directed how to acquire images through various resources on the Internet. The instructor should remind students that images on the web are protected by copyright law and cannot be used unless written permission is given by the owner of the copyright, or the image is in the public domain. Students will be directed to a number of sites that offer royalty free or public domain images for educational purposes. In addition, students will be directed to search for commercial stock photography repositories using an Internet search engine.

Learner Outcomes

At the completion of this exercise, you will be able to:

Activities

In the following activities you will collect images using a variety of methods and sources. Save all images in your images subfolder.

  1. Your instructor will demonstrate how to acquire digital images through scanning and uploading pictures from a digital camera, depending upon the resources available at your location. If access to equipment is available, you will acquire one image from each source.

    The images will eventually be used to make a mini web photo album where the maximum picture size is 450 x 450 pixels. When scanning images or setting the quality settings on your digital camera, remember to think about the total number of pixels you are capturing and what final size you want the image to appear on the web page. It is a good idea to capture an image that has more pixels than you need, since a graphics program can be used to make the image smaller, but can't make the image larger without lowering the quality.
  2. The Internet provides a terrific source of images that can be used for creating web graphics. Remember what you learned about copyright and images on the Internet though. Images on the web are protected by copyright law and cannot be used unless written permission is given by the owner of the copyright, or the image is in the public domain. While images on the Internet are protected by copyright law, there are many sites that make images available for your use. There are many stock photography sites that provide images for a fee. There are also certain sites that allow the use of their images for personal or educational use without a fee. Make sure to read the copyright restrictions on these sites carefully. United States government websites are a good place to look for images that are in the public domain and do not have copyright restriction against their use. Use the following sites to find an image and download it for use in your web photo album. After you have looked at these sites, try searching on your own for sites that offer stock photography, royalty free images, images for educational use, or public domain images. Remember to look at the copyright requirements and use restrictions for using images on these sites. Share any good sites you find with your class.
  3. You should acquire at least three images from activities 1 and 2 combined. You will use these images in the next lesson. If you were unable to acquire three image because you did not have access to the necessary resources, your instructor may have images to share.

Resources/Online Documents

All done?

Make sure that you have acquired at least three images and have saved the files to your images folder. You will be using these images to complete the following lesson. Once you have three images, proceed to Lesson 3.