Algot--this is really great stuff, you've developed quite a project with useful scaffolding tools for the students. Thanks for writing the overview page, <a href="http://runeman.org/tips/oo/labeled-pictures/plants_of_our_town.html" target="_blank">http://runeman.org/tips/oo/labeled-pictures/plants_of_our_town.html</a> as well. I've been working with this yesterday/today and have had some luck. What I haven't been able to do yet is export my annotated image to a jpeg or other image format. I can crop and export that cropped image, but when I try and export the image with the caption only the image shows. When I lock the layer (a fairly new concept to me) I can get both the image and annotation to export as image file, but now it isn't cropped and it exports the whole page. Thanks for the advise on Twain scanners as well. I've explored help but to no avail. Is there a way to annotate an image, crop to fit, and more or less simply export all to an image? David <div class="gmail_quote"> On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM, Algot Runeman <<a href="mailto:algot.runeman@verizon.net">algot.runeman@verizon.net</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> David, While it may go beyond your immediate plans a bit (exporting when done), I would like to recommend the drawing tools found in OpenOffice.org because the ability to annotate and do extensive markup is quite extensive. In addition, the annotations can immediately become part of a document. In my own classroom, teaching computer skills, one project we did, called "Butterbox" was based on the drawing tools (first in Clarisworks, then MSWord). I have recently converted the project to OpenOffice.org. In the Writer tool, go to the View Menu --> Toolbars --> Drawing so that the drawing tools will be available. You can also get a sample project page for "Plants of Our Town" which is an Openoffice.org Writer document incorporating a labeled jpeg image and some sample text. <a href="http://runeman.org/tips/oo/labeled-pictures/plants_of_our_town.odt" target="_blank">http://runeman.org/tips/oo/labeled-pictures/plants_of_our_town.odt</a> A tutorial for how I created the example is located there, too. <a href="http://runeman.org/tips/oo/labeled-pictures/plants_of_our_town.html" target="_blank">http://runeman.org/tips/oo/labeled-pictures/plants_of_our_town.html</a> In relation to your other recent post, any scanner that lists "Twain" (<a href="http://www.twain.org" target="_blank">http://www.twain.org</a>) compatibility should work with Ubuntu. OpenOffice can even directly scan to a document (Insert Menu --> Picture --> Scan). OpenOffice will also work fine with images that have been saved previously, of course. Direct manipulation of a picture may better be done in the Gimp or some other simpler tool. I have used KolourPaint for some simple graphic labeling and image cropping. Find more extensive Openoffice Draw tool notes on the project I called "Butterbox" at: <a href="http://runeman.org/mosssig/" target="_blank">http://runeman.org/mosssig/</a> Good luck in developing your students' skills. Here's hoping that open source plays a successful role for you and for them. --Algot<div><div></div><div class="h5"> David Groos wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Hi All, I want students to be able to annotate images, such as photos taken through a microscope, adding arrows and labels to parts of the image, for example. It might also be nice if there were contrast/brightness/saturation controls. Need the ability to export back to jpeg/png. I don't want really any other capabilities. I just used GIMP for the first time and I had to wade through 'layers' and tons of other concepts that I don't need but it does look awesome. Does anyone have advice on software that would be good for this need? This is a very key app in a science classroom and will form part of the basic set of apps for my program. Thanks! David </blockquote> </div></div> -- ------------------------- Algot Runeman 47 Walnut Street, Natick MA 01760 508-655-8399 <a href="mailto:algot.runeman@verizon.net" target="_blank">algot.runeman@verizon.net</a> Web Site: <a href="http://www.runeman.org" target="_blank">http://www.runeman.org</a> Open Source Blog: <a href="http://mosssig.wordpress.com" target="_blank">http://mosssig.wordpress.com</a> MOSS SIG Mailing List: <a href="http://groups.google.com/mosssig2" target="_blank">http://groups.google.com/mosssig2</a> </blockquote></div>