Sandra Dodd

I think it was probably six years ago when I first had Adobe
Photoshop, and it was a fairly big one (though home version), with
cloning and all. I used it to take specks off old photos I'd
scanned, and to crop photos. Sometimes I'd put captions in on the
image itself (as I did for the conference hotel photos at http://
sandradodd.com/abq ). I've isolated a person from a group photo, and
messed with scanner art (objects laid flat on the scanner's surface,
such as what's at http://sandradodd.com/museum ). The background of
the cover of Moving a Puddle was first made for the background of
http://sandradodd.com/hippieshirt (cloth scanned and then the image
lightened).

That computer started to glitch up after several years and switched
to a PC laptop, and so bought a very inexpensive "last year's model"
Adobe Photoshop Elements 2, a smaller version. No cloning, just
eyedropper... For a while after I got my new Mac I used a trial
version of Photoshop 4, and then put in the little Elements 2. (The
older, larger version doesn't work with OSX.)

Because Photoshop is still on that laptop which has now become
"Holly's computer," I've told her it's there, and that it's
basically KidPix and she should mess with it, but Holly's online life
involves chatting with other people (mostly people she met at HesFes
and at Live and Learn, which is cool). She just shrugs and says
maybe someday.


Last night Marty asked me for the disk because he wanted to try it.

You all probably know what I'm going to say. <g> Within half an
hour, Marty had discovered more than I ever had, had determined that
just about every function had options and settings, and figured out
how to do layers, add word bubbles and to reverse them and color them
and resize and how to make it look like someone's ghost was coming
out of them (if they were wearing black anyway) and how to resize
images and...

It reminded me of when he first got on roller blades. He just flew
like a bird that had been in a cage before and finally got the sky.

He was giddy. He called me in there at least ten times to show me
something really exciting. He played with it intently for two or
three hours.

The great thing for me now is that if I want to do something and
don't know how, Marty can help me.

It's an effect of everything Marty has ever played, done, thought and
seen. His hours of messing with KidPix came to fruition bigtime last
night. I'm glad I got to witness it (and help a little bit).

I wish this had happened before I bought Marty's Christmas stuff,
because a bigger, newer Photoshop might've been a great gift. But
he's about to have a job, and the Photoshop Elements isn't too
expensive, $80 or $100, if he gets more serious about it.

Sandra

Katie

> I wish this had happened before I bought Marty's Christmas stuff,
> because a bigger, newer Photoshop might've been a great gift. But
> he's about to have a job, and the Photoshop Elements isn't too
> expensive, $80 or $100, if he gets more serious about it.

If he decides to buy software, don't forget to check places like
JourneyEd.com (where Adobe Creative Suite 2.0 Premium sells for $380
instead of $1300). He would need a student ID or a letter from his
"school" - I wonder what the policy is for unschoolers/homeschoolers?

~Katie~

Sandra Dodd

Thanks!!

Maybe if we wanted to drop a bunch like that, I could write a letter
saying I'd like to "use it in our homeschooling."

When I bought this computer I wanted to buy Microsoft Word (stunning
that they don't come with a word processing program anymore), and the
salesman was cute. He said "You're a teacher, right?" I said no,
not really.

"Well your kids are students, right?" No, they're just home.

"But you're *teaching* them." And he looked at me really hard like
"HINT! AGREE!"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah." I said, and he sold me a student version for way
cheaper. <g>

Sandra

On Dec 16, 2005, at 11:08 AM, Katie wrote:

> If he decides to buy software, don't forget to check places like
> JourneyEd.com (where Adobe Creative Suite 2.0 Premium sells for $380
> instead of $1300). He would need a student ID or a letter from his
> "school" - I wonder what the policy is for unschoolers/homeschoolers?

Danielle Conger

Sandra Dodd wrote:

> It's an effect of everything Marty has ever played, done, thought and
> seen. His hours of messing with KidPix came to fruition bigtime last
> night. I'm glad I got to witness it (and help a little bit).


While all my kids are far more game savvy than I, Sam's skills just
astound me. At 5, he's so adept at Ages of Mythology, creating his own
game scenarios and everything. We got together with another local
unschooling family this week, and the 10 year old was asking Sam how to
do stuff in AoM. The critical thinking skills just blow me away!



~~Danielle
Emily (8), Julia (6), Sam (5)
http://www.danielleconger.com/Homeschool/Welcomehome.html

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"With our thoughts, we make the world." ~~Buddha

liza sabater

Hey Sandra,

Love this story! This is the way I've basically developed my
technologist skills, tinkering around with software and hardware. So
I'm going to share with you a little secret. Actually, the worst kept
secret in the web dev business : GIMP [ www.gimp.org ], an open-
source and free alternative to Photoshop :

http://www.gimp.org/about/introduction.html

> GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a
> freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching,
> image composition and image authoring.
>
> It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program,
> an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch
> processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image
> format converter, etc.
>
> GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented
> with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The
> advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest
> task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily
> scripted.
>
> GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But
> basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.
Tell Marty it's my merry secular holiday gift to him ;-)

Cheers,
liza




On Dec 16 2005, at 09:28, Sandra Dodd wrote:

> I think it was probably six years ago when I first had Adobe
> Photoshop, and it was a fairly big one (though home version), with
> cloning and all. I used it to take specks off old photos I'd
> scanned, and to crop photos. Sometimes I'd put captions in on the
> image itself (as I did for the conference hotel photos at http://
> sandradodd.com/abq ). I've isolated a person from a group photo, and
> messed with scanner art (objects laid flat on the scanner's surface,
> such as what's at http://sandradodd.com/museum ). The background of
> the cover of Moving a Puddle was first made for the background of
> http://sandradodd.com/hippieshirt (cloth scanned and then the image
> lightened).
>
> That computer started to glitch up after several years and switched
> to a PC laptop, and so bought a very inexpensive "last year's model"
> Adobe Photoshop Elements 2, a smaller version. No cloning, just
> eyedropper... For a while after I got my new Mac I used a trial
> version of Photoshop 4, and then put in the little Elements 2. (The
> older, larger version doesn't work with OSX.)
>
> Because Photoshop is still on that laptop which has now become
> "Holly's computer," I've told her it's there, and that it's
> basically KidPix and she should mess with it, but Holly's online life
> involves chatting with other people (mostly people she met at HesFes
> and at Live and Learn, which is cool). She just shrugs and says
> maybe someday.
>
>
> Last night Marty asked me for the disk because he wanted to try it.
>
> You all probably know what I'm going to say. <g> Within half an
> hour, Marty had discovered more than I ever had, had determined that
> just about every function had options and settings, and figured out
> how to do layers, add word bubbles and to reverse them and color them
> and resize and how to make it look like someone's ghost was coming
> out of them (if they were wearing black anyway) and how to resize
> images and...
>
> It reminded me of when he first got on roller blades. He just flew
> like a bird that had been in a cage before and finally got the sky.
>
> He was giddy. He called me in there at least ten times to show me
> something really exciting. He played with it intently for two or
> three hours.
>
> The great thing for me now is that if I want to do something and
> don't know how, Marty can help me.
>
> It's an effect of everything Marty has ever played, done, thought and
> seen. His hours of messing with KidPix came to fruition bigtime last
> night. I'm glad I got to witness it (and help a little bit).
>
> I wish this had happened before I bought Marty's Christmas stuff,
> because a bigger, newer Photoshop might've been a great gift. But
> he's about to have a job, and the Photoshop Elements isn't too
> expensive, $80 or $100, if he gets more serious about it.
>
> Sandra
>
>
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Sandra Dodd

THANKS!!


On Dec 17, 2005, at 9:45 AM, liza sabater wrote:

> > GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But
> > basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.
> Tell Marty it's my merry secular holiday gift to him ;-)