Photoshop or equivalent for homework year 7

[herecomesthsun]

Ds has just started a very academic secondary school but has effectively come home with 3 art projects for homework this weekend. He is not artistic and never liked crafts much, but is doing his best to get on with it. He is an enthusiastic mathematician and likes computers though.

I think he would really enjoy adding 1 pic to another pic to make designs and posters for his science/ history posters etc. but we don't know how to do this.

We only have Chrome at home, though I have a Windows 10 laptop for work. I can't upload Photoshop to Chrome and can't upload any app to my work computer as it is all managed by central admin.

I can apparently buy into pic monkey but have never heard of it till I googled just now and don't know how good it would be. There is a free 1 week trial we could take out, but presumably I would have to give them my card details etc, and I am always wary of getting embroiled in stuff like that.

Does anyone have any advice on the best way to go with apps that support this sort of homework?

I am thinking about getting him his own laptop eventually and it would certainly be a consideration what sort of apps he will need or could use.

I'd greatly appreciate your thoughts on this too.

Photoshop for y7 projects is really overkill. They’re probably expecting them either to be done by hand (drawn or literally cut/pasted) or the basics of a poster can easily be done on Word or Publisher.

BTW I teach sixth form subjects that involve a heavy use of Adobe products and I definitely don’t expect students to have access to it at home. It’s expensive and requires a decent computer so it’s fine just to use college computers for their projects.

yes I agree, we never had photoshop and my three have all gone right through secondary and out the other end (almost - ds2 in yr 12).

Word us pretty good actually, Google will tell you how to do things you don't know(I discovered yesterday how to make part of an image transparent!)

Photopea might be worth trying in these circumstances as it’s like Photoshop but in browser. I haven’t tried it myself but heard good things.

I think it’s a great idea to get secondary age kids into graphics software if they’re interested!

Oh and it’s free.

If it is poster making, have a look at Canva - free online software.

Yes actually, second Canva, it's great

Photoshop CC can be downloaded into any browser, so I don't understand the Chrome thing?

£9.99 per month subscription which can be cancelled at any time. I think you can get a free trial.

For 'make a poster' homeworks, DD uses Word and/or collages.
Anything else is too stressful.

Canva looks good. We found it is possible to go on it and make a poster quite easily signing up for free, but there are watermarks on a couple of the pictures (hopefully school won't mind). I won't pay for a subscription yet, while we investigate alternatives, but thanks very much for the suggestion, I think that will be very useful.

Very grateful for your ideas.

If you want copyright (and thus watermark) -free pictures, Imlike pixels.com or pixabay.com.

argh stupid iPad. I like Pexels.com and yy pixabay.com

I really honestly doubt school will mind watermarks on there!

Pixlr and GIMP are good and free!

PowerPoint easy to copy and paste into too

For copyright free and genuinely free pics of high quality register at the Unsplash website