There are plenty of tools to help you create – and beautify! – content. Maybe you need to edit an image you got from Unsplash. Perhaps you are looking for a way to make beautiful brochures or flyers. Or you might need to modify a PDF document. Bookmark the following tools – they’ll make your life a lot easier.
A few notes:
- These are tools I use often. It is very likely that there are better tools out there . If you have some, share them with me! They will be featured in future newsletters.
- You might need to create an account for some of these resources. Don’t panic. All of the resources covered below are free!
- Some of these tools are not intuitive. If you are interested in learning more, press buttons and explore. I’m also always happy to talk tech, so lemme know if you need help 😄
Photo Editing
Wish you had Photoshop on your computer? That’s OK if you don’t have it – you can just head over to Photopea.com for a Photoshop-like experience. Photopea is free to use and has a ton of the high-end features that Photoshop does. It even let’s you import and export .psd files and Figma files!
Removing Backgrounds
It used to be a painstaking task to remove the background from images. But there are tons of free tools to do that for us now (in fact, Google Slides has it built-in!). Let’s look at Adobe Express – they have a special tool to remove the background of images. And it’s pretty dang good. You can see it removed the background from my ugly twin brother and I posing for selfies. To be clear, he’s the ugly one.
Simple Data Visualization
If you find yourself in need of some simple data visualization and you don’t feel like wrestling with Excel or Google Sheets, head over to Google’s Data GIF Maker. There are a few different templates you can choose from. Entering the data and customizing the look of the image is super simple. You can even export your work as an animated GIF. Be sure to export in HD, not SD.
Working with PDFs
DocHub is a wonderful solution when you need to work with PDFs. While you can link DocHub to your Google Drive or OneDrive, I don’t. I upload PDFs if I need to clean them up, change the order of the pages, merge PDFs, rotate pages, or add some text. You can even send faxes from DocHub (I believe that will set you back a buck or two). And you can upload your signature so when it comes time to signing, you can just click on your signature and it’s inserted automatically.
Word Clouds
There are a ton of word cloud generators out there too – I like WordClouds.com. The interface is easy to use and there are a lot of customization options. Not only are word clouds a great way to convey main ideas, but they can be revealing – load in a recording of your class to expose the actual themes. Take a look at the FLCC mission and vision statements:
Slideshow Templates
Want to amp up your next presentation? Head over to Slides Carnival and choose from hundreds of professionally designed slide shows that you can adapt to your presentation. Just be on the lookout for what presentation software (Canva, PowerPoint, or Google Slides) is compatible with each template.
Color Palette Generator
If you have a hard time choosing matching colors for your presentation, be sure to check out coolors.co. You’ll be presented with five random colors (but you can manually input some if you’d like). Just keep hitting space until you see a color you like and then lock it in. Repeat until you have a sweet color palette that matches. This tool also has colorblind-friendly versions of the palette you choose and you can upload an image and coolors will extract a color palette for you. It’s pretty slick.
