Online Image Generators

Most of us don’t have the time or the artistic talent to create specialized graphics or logos for projects. Enter the Online Image Generator! These handy-dandy tools let you create many types of images – framed pictures, slide shows, comic-style captions, trading cards, calendars, and much more. Graphics are a great way to convey information and can add some fun and creativity to your web sites. Create customized images for your PowerPoint presentations and other projects.

Why use this tool?
You can create trading cards or READ posters of yourself to help others get to know you better. Other possibilities include creating a calendar with an image related to what you’re promoting that month, or a mosaic with multiple images related to your books, videos, or other resources. The possibilities are endless! As is the time you can spend playing around with these sites—beware!

Trading Card Maker

created with Trading Card Maker by Vaughn Branom

There’s a ton of librarians out there that have created their own Librarian Trading Cards. Librarians at Carleton College are using trading cards (with a proprietary design) as a way to reach their students.

ALA READ mini-poster

Another option to make a poster is at Motivator:

: created with Motivator at BigHugeLabs

There’s also a Flickr group for READ posters.

One of the nice features of Motivator and Trading Card Maker is that they will easily allow you credit the source of your photo if you choose one from Flickr (you have to check the “Add credit to image” box with Motivator; Trading Card Maker automatically inserts the credit).

Activity #3: For this discovery exercise, we want you to have fun. Make a READ poster and/or a trading card!

1. Use Motivator, ALA READ mini-posters, and/or Trading Card Maker to make at least one READ poster or trading card. You can use an image you’ve already saved (to your hard drive/H drive/flash drive), one from Flickr’s Creative Commons sets (FlickrCC is another great tool for searching for such images–make sure the “For Editing” box is checked), or one from your own Flickr account.

2. Save the image(s) you create to your computer (hard drive, H-drive, or flash drive).

3. Upload your image to your ”sandbox” in the TarletonSandbox wiki (here are the instructions).

4. In your comment or blog post here, be sure to include attribution (the source of your photo), and a link to your image (or tell us where it is). And remember to be tasteful too!

Feeling more adventurous?

Optional Activity: Try out one of these other online image generators and post your results:

Calendar	Movie Poster	Mosaic Maker
Captioner	Magazine Cover	BeFunky

There are other image generators at BigHugeLabs and at GlassGiant, some of which require photos or other images, and some that do not (text-only). There are other online generators out there (feel free to find one and tell us about it), but an advantage to those at BigHugeLabs is that they work well with Flickr and that most have an “add credit to image” checkbox that automatically inserts photo attribution into your creation. If the image generator does not insert attibution for a photo, be sure to do so in your caption, comment, or blog post. Be careful about using copyrighted images!

If you’d like to play around with an image generator that does not require a photo (text-only or other), try some of those at BigHugeLabs or GlassGiant, or one of these:

Wordle

Catalog Card

Newspaper Clipping