Frog+Baby+Makeover

OK, so I started off following the teacher's advice and downloading GIMP to do photo manipulations. This is how I scaled my images to the required 72 dpi. Beyond that, I spent HOURS trying to make some edited images worth posting, but they all looked terrible! I decided to give the Gimp a rest and explore another feature of my Kodak EasyShare C340 Camera that had hitherto gone ignored--the Kodak EasyShare Software that promises to make editing your photographs a cinch!
 * Frog Baby Makeover: Kathleen Pickens**

Finally, I was having fun again! Rather than wanting to smack my computer around for not layering the images the way I wanted, the Kodak EasyShare Software was really easy to use and enabled me to easily cancel changes and revert back to the saved image. I'll show you how FUN this is! All of the images below were edited from this first, initial picture of Frog Baby.

Initial image!**
 * [[image:frog1.jpg]]


 * Cropping** was super simple with the Crop tool giving you the option of Freehand or set sizing. I had problems with Gimp because I was not entirely sure how to move the lines around to crop the image the way I wanted. Kodak wins this battle!

Just for fun, I altered the **Scene Balance** settings. I went darker on the Exposure, took Shadow to the extreme, and took Highlight way down. I just wanted to soften the image and make it a little less "real".

Under "Fun Effects", I changed the image to "**Cartoon**". It is hard to tell in this tiny version, but it turned out really neat. I think this would be a great tool for adding images to stories for children.

How about the dramatic effects of "**Spotlight**" from the "Fun Effects" menu?

Children and adults alike will enjoy altering images to "**Fisheye**" from the "Fun Effects"!

This last post is "**Sunset**" from the "Scene Effects" menu.

I was beyond delighted with my results from using the editing software that came with my camera. It is so simple to use that teachers and librarians can easily manipulate images to suit their fancy without struggling through learning a lot of buttons. While the purposes of these modifications was for fun, they would be great to use in flyers, powerpoints, or simply to add visual interest to a photograph. I was also excited when I realized that I can import OTHER images into the Kodak software that were not even taken with my camera! For beginning technology students or persons with new digital cameras, I would highly recommend giving the software that comes with it a try. My fiancee will be so excited that I am actually using my camera now!