Fifth Grade Photoshop: Change That Background

This one you already know how to do if you’ve been following along. Because it is a must-have in a school environment, I’m going to step it out for you.

• Have your child or students open a photo of themselves in Photoshop
• Use the cropping tools learned here to crop themselves out of the background
• Go to select-inverse to select the individual rather than the background
• Edit-copy (this will copy the student’s cropped picture)
• Open a picture of the background they’ve chosen
• Edit-paste the picture they cropped into the background

Dog pasted in front of pyramids

Dog pasted in front of Stonehenge

Imagine, putting your students in the historic events you study together, in the landforms they learn about in science, or the natural math that appears in nature. Now, with this Photoshop lesson, that’s all possible.

PS–If you don’t have Photoshop, try the free download called GIMP.

–from 55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom. Preview available on Amazon.com and Scribd.com

Fifth Grade: Custom Shapes in Photoshop

Custom shapes are great fun in Photoshop, and one of the simplest skills to learn.

#1--select 'custom tool' and the 'shape'

• Open a picture in Photoshop
• Select the ‘custom shape tool on the left and again at the top (see example)
• Select the tool you’d like (crowns, fences, borders–I’ve selected a border and a frame)
• After you add a custom tool, select the ‘style’ at the top (see example
• Save, print. You’re done

BTW–I used Jing to grab the screen shots, add the arrows. Jing is a free download that’s better than Printkey, not quite as fast, but available online for free (something Printkey got away from).