Objectives of Assignment:

First, I would like you to become better photographers through technique and awareness.

Second, I would like you to develop/enhance your “darkroom skills” through the use of photo editing tools.

And Third, to experience and expand your photo organizing and sharing toolkit.

This will be accomplished through several separate but related assignments including photographing a specific topic,editing the images, and sharing the images online.

The “default” photo management programs on most computers are iPhoto on the Mac side, and Windows Picture Manager on the PC. However there are many solutions on both sides. For the assignments, I will suggest some basic programs but you are free to use whatever tools you would like as long as they are of equal or greater value. In other words, please don’t simplify the assignment any more than it already is, but you may complify it to your heart’s content. Although the default programs are widely used, the advantages of independent cloud-based services got a head start especially when combined with social media sites. The changes in consumer photo use (photographing food for Facebook?) and the continual grasp for marketshare in the wild world of cloud-based photo services including storage, sharing, and fast access to printing, etc. continuously accelerates the pace of evolution of such programs makes it hard to specify expectations let alone write instructions.

Here are primers for Picasa, Google's free half-cloud based cross-platform photo editing and management program, and Flickr (sorry about the entry ad), another web-based photo management system. Both videos are different from what you will see in today's version. Google recently changed/embedded Picasa into its Google Drive, and Flickr has aggressively added to its feature set. You should be able to use your google account name/email to set up a Flickr account.