The Bear That Ate Denver! You’re going to create a photo mashup today: editing two pictures and creating a new one from them. First, open Pixlr.com. There’s a link in the Photo Editing folder on our class page. Next, open the links for the Grizzly Bear picture and the Rocky Mountains picture. They are also in the Photo Editing folder. You should have several tabs open in Safari!

In Pixlr, click

and you will see:

Choose “Open image from URL”

Copy the entire URL (website address) for the Rocky Mountains picture, and paste it into the “Open Image URL” window.

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Now you need the second picture. Look in the black bar at the top of the Pixlr window. Click on FILE and then click on OPEN IMAGE URL:

Copy the entire URL (website address) for the Grizzly Bear picture, and paste it into the “Open Image URL” window.

At this point you should have both pictures in your Pixlr workspace:

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Look at the bear. He’s too big to fit into our mountains picture. You need to RESIZE the bear to make this work. Click on the bear picture to make sure you’ve chosen this one to work with. Look at your “Layers” or “Navigator” window and make sure you see the bear:

In the black bar at the top, click on IMAGE And then click on IMAGE SIZE

Change the WIDTH to 150 pixels: and click OK:

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Time to move our bear to Denver! Look in the tools on the left side. Find the lasso tool: Click on it and use your mouse to draw a rough outline around your bear:

In the black bar, click on EDIT and then click COPY 4

(Sometimes your keyboard shortcuts will work too!) Now click on your mountains picture and paste the bear in: in the black bar, click on EDIT and then PASTE.

Your mountains picture has a new layer with the bear in it! Choose the MOVE tool to

move your bear around.

If your bear doesn’t move, make sure that you are in the bear layer:

Choose the ERASER tool to start getting rid of the extra area around your bear: Look at the brush options….

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And choose one of the smaller brushes to work with first:

Use your mouse to erase the unwanted edges around your bear:

Once he’s looking good to you, click on the MOVE tool again

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And move your bear wherever you’d like in the picture.

TROUBLESHOOTING: If your bear doesn’t move… 1. Check to make sure you’re in the right layer. Still not working? 2. Click on EDIT at the top and choose DESELECT ALL.

Sometimes, Pixlr will leave a few tiny pixels selected, and you may not even be able to see them. It thinks you still want to work with THOSE pixels, so it refuses to do anything else until you DESELECT those pixels!

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Adding Text!

Choose the Text tool :

and click on the picture. Type in your title.

You can change the font, size, style and color in this box!

Don’t worry about centering or positioning the title here. Once you click OK, switch to the MOVE tool and move the title around so that you like it.

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SAVING: Go to FILE in the black bar and choose SAVE

Change the name, and move the quality slider up to 100%, then click OK

It will save it to your desktop. Drag it into your computer skills folder for safekeeping! ****************MORE FUN******************** Making a herd of bears…. Click on the layer with the bear in it. At the top in the black bar, click on LAYER and then choose DUPLICATE LAYER: Repeat as you wish to make several bears!

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The bears will be placed exactly on top of one another, so you’ll need to drag them apart to see all of them. Remember to check the layers – you will see lots of Layer 2 Copy!

Magic Wand tool: This selects all of the pixels that are the same color AND that are next to each other. Make sure you’re in the right layer!!

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We’re off to see the Wizard….

Using the paint bucket tool, Click on the big color block at the bottom to open the color selector window and click on the color you want to “paint” with **Click OK! 11

Click in the picture to paint with the bucket. You can also use the brush or the pencil tools once you’ve chosen a color. Using the Smudge tool: Make sure you’re in the right layer first. Click on the Smudge tool, and then look at the top under the black bar. Adjust the size and strength of your smudging – play with these options to figure out what’s best! Click and drag with your mouse to smudge.

Try the other tools and see what you can make them do – the best way to learn these is to play with them. When you’re ready, try getting a different set of photos and seeing what you can do with them. Remember to be school appropriate and have fun with this project!

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