Week #3 Blog on Media Literacy and Photo Editing

Media Literacy and Powerful Images

This week I learned about the specifics of media literacy. It wasn’t too difficult for me to grasp this concept as I have been “media literate” for most of my life. Someone who is media literate can evaluate, access and create media on many different platforms using many different apps. Media literacy is important because it makes people better equipped to obtain reliable information, work, and interact with one another in the modern world. 

One thing I noticed about media literacy is that it increases with time, given that a person continues using and interacting with media. An example is social media. If one hadn’t been involved in social media since the early 2000’s he might wonder what had happened to all of his friends on Myspace and would likely have no idea what a meme was. This may sound funny, but such a lack of media literacy would likely make it extremely difficult for a person to interact with others in the modern world. The same is true of computer software such as Microsoft Office, anti-malware, and image editors like Adobe Photoshop. If you don’t keep them up to date and learn about similar programs, they are no longer relevant and likely will not function properly on certain platforms.

After watching the TED Talks video this week, I also learned the importance of using images to get a message across. Despite all of my experience with media including an Adobe Photoshop class, generating my own memes and editing my own videos, I never knew about the existence of online photo-editors until this week. Honestly I found myself dreading the photo editing portion of this assignment because I am terrible at using Photoshop. Things became even worse for me after I tried using Pixlr and Photomonkey with no success. I was starting to become frustrated and think that to do even the most basic things, I would have to make a purchase. 

That’s when I got lucky and came across Picozu. This web app can be used both on a computer and a smartphone and allows for free advanced editing that for the most part, you could only find in Photoshop or Gimp. Picozu allows you to create unique images with advanced layering features and I found it quite easy to combine three images into one. By adjusting the lighting and contrast, and adding text with the app I was actually able to make the images look like they belonged together and create a powerful message. I found this app far easier to use than Photoshop, and I was relieved at how simple the whole thing wound up being. The message I created was inspired by the proverb “When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money.” I made sure to give the image a bleak, sad look and worded the text as a question so it would feel like a call to action. Here is the image I created: