Welcome to this lesson on Image Editing. In this session, you’ll learn simple, beginner-friendly ways to edit pictures using easy tools. Image editing is useful because it helps you make clear, eye-catching images for school projects, posters, and social media — so your message is easy to understand. By the end of the lesson, you’ll know a few key editing skills and how to use them in a fair and responsible way.

Lesson Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

• Explain what image editing is and why people use it.
• Know important editing words, like cropping, resizing, filters, brightness, contrast, layers, and exporting.
• Practise editing images using the online tool Canva.
• Create your own graphic (like a poster or a title card).
• Think about what is okay and not okay to edit (being honest and kind).
• Review what you learned and talk about how you can use these skills.

Image editing means changing a digital picture using an editing tool (like Canva). You might edit an image to fix something small (like making it brighter), to add text, or to create a new design (like a poster). At its core, image editing helps you make visuals clearer, more interesting, and easier to understand.

Key terminology in this field includes:

• Pixels: Tiny dots that make up a picture on a screen. The more pixels you have, the more detail an image can show.
• Resolution: How clear and sharp an image looks. Higher resolution usually means a sharper image (but it can take up more space).

Applications of Image Editing

Image editing is used all the time online — for school posters, YouTube thumbnails, memes, and website images. For example, someone might edit a photo to make it brighter, crop out messy background bits, or add a title so people understand it quickly.

The Purpose of Editing Images

The main purpose of image editing is to help your image communicate your message. Editing can help you: make an image look clearer, fit the right size for a platform, highlight the important part, or make it more eye-catching. But it’s also important to edit responsibly — don’t use editing to trick people or make something untrue look real.

In this step, you’ll learn the main image-editing skills you’ll use in this lesson. When you understand these basics, you can make pictures look clearer, more focused, and better for sharing online — without changing the truth of what happened.

Cropping and Resizing

Cropping means cutting away parts of a picture you don’t need, so the most important part stands out. For example, you might crop a photo so we can see the person clearly, without a messy background.

Resizing means changing how big the image is (its width and height). You might resize an image to fit a profile picture, a poster, or a slide. It’s important to keep the aspect ratio (the shape of the image) the same, so the picture doesn’t look stretched or squashed.

Filters

Filters are ready-made effects you can add to change how an image looks. Some filters make a photo black and white, warmer, cooler, or “vintage.” Filters can change the mood of an image — but you should still make sure the picture looks realistic and not misleading.

Brightness and Contrast

Brightness controls how light or dark the whole image is. If a photo is too dark, you can brighten it so you can actually see what’s happening.

Contrast controls the difference between light areas and dark areas. Higher contrast can make details stand out more, but if you go too far, you can lose important detail (parts can turn into bright white or very dark patches).

Layering

Layering means you can place items on top of each other — like stickers, shapes, and text — without wrecking the original photo. This is helpful for making posters, thumbnails, or adding labels to an image. The best part is you can move layers around, edit them, or delete them one at a time.

Exporting

Exporting means saving your finished image in the right file type so you can share it. Two common types are:

• JPG: Great for photos and usually smaller in file size.
• PNG: Great for graphics, text, and logos (and it can keep transparent backgrounds).

Choosing the right format helps your image look good and work properly wherever you upload it.

In this step, you will start using Canva, a free online tool for creating and editing images and graphics. Canva is beginner-friendly, so it’s a great place to practise the image editing skills you’re learning in this lesson.

Follow these step-by-step instructions to get started:

1. Open your web browser and go to the Canva website: Canva.
2. If you don’t have an account yet, you will need to sign up. Use your school email address, follow the on-screen steps, and log in.
3. Once you are logged in, click the button labelled “Create a design” in the top right corner of the screen.
4. From the options that appear, select “Custom size”. This lets you choose the size of your design. For example, type 800 pixels for the width and 600 pixels for the height, then click “Create new design”.
5. With your blank design open, look at the menu on the left. Click “Uploads”.
6. Then select “Upload files” and choose an image from your device. When it uploads, drag it onto your canvas to place it.

If you get stuck, Canva has a built-in search/help option (usually near the top) where you can type what you need, like “crop” or “resize,” and it will show you how.

In this step, you will learn how to crop and resize images using Canva. These skills help you focus on the most important part of a picture and make sure it fits neatly in your design.

Cropping means cutting away the parts you don’t need (like extra background). Resizing means changing how big or small the image is. It’s important to keep the same shape (proportions) so your image doesn’t look stretched or squashed.

In the image to the right, you can see an example of cropping on a map of Ireland. The crop box lets you frame only the section you want to show.

Guide to Cropping

Follow these steps to crop an image in Canva. The crop toolbar (shown in the image to the right) helps you choose what stays and what gets removed:

1. Click on the image you placed on your canvas to select it.
2. Look at the toolbar at the top of the screen and click “Crop”.
3. Drag the edges or corners of the crop frame to keep only the part you want.
4. When it looks right, click “Done” to apply the crop.

Guide to Resizing

1. Select the image by clicking on it.
2. To resize quickly, drag the corner handles around the image. (Corner handles are best because they help keep the shape.)
3. If you want a specific size, use the size boxes in the top toolbar to type in the width and height.

Practice Activity

By mastering cropping and resizing, your designs will look cleaner, more focused, and more professional.