Activity - Multimedia Tools Basic Tutorials

GIMP Basic Image Manipulation Tutorial

1. Find an image you would like , for example a group image you would like to put on your website. If you don't have one, take one with your tablet. If you can't find one you can also download the one available from this topic.
   
2. If you took the image with your tablet, upload it your ownCloud account so you can access it from any computer
3. Start GIMP from the Start menu
4. Open the image
5. Now let's say we just want a part of this image to put it in a very specific section of a website for example. You use the Crop tool for this from Tool -> Transform Tools -> Crop.  Use your mouse to select the region of interest, you can resize the active restangle until you are happy then press Enter to see the final crop.
6. Save your work as GIMP file (for future GIMP work).  File -> Save As (file extension .xcf).
   
7. Export your new image as an image (to be used either on a website or somewhere else). File -> Export As (file extension .jpg for images and .png for most other graphics is a good way to start)
   

Audacity Basic Audio Editing

1. Locate an audio file on computer. If you don't have one. Use the island-girl.mp3 music recording available for download from this topic. Audio file extension should be .WAV, .AIFF or .MP3. If the optional ffmpeg library is installed it could be any type of extension.
   
2. Start Audacity and import song into it, File -> Import -> Audio. You could also drag and drop the file.
   
3. Observe wavelength. This one is a stereo waveform with two channels: top is the left channel and bottom the right channel.
   
4. Listen to the audio by pressing play button. You can stop it at any time.
   
5. Zoom in and out of the audio waveform. Observe the time of the audio at the top of the waveform.
6. Try to select 10 seconds (for example between minute 3:00 and 3:10) by clicking and dragging.
7. You will see a darker selection on the waveform. You could play this 10 seconds by pressing SPACE key or play button. It will only play the 10 seconds and you will see a green arrow indicator. You can stop the playing at any time.
   
8. Let's say you only want to keep this 10 seconds and cut out everything else. There is an easy way: click on Edit -> Remove Audio or Labels - > Trim Audio
9. Now we have a short sample of our original song. Let's first save our project with File -> Save Project As. This will save a file for audacity audio editing only .
   
10. Now let's make a sound file so other can play this file with their player. File -> Export. Keep same name and choose the audio format, for example the popular .mp3 and better yet an open source one such as .ogg.