Quick and Easy: Using Preview for Image Feedback
Sometimes a tech solution is simple and waiting right under your nose. Consider the scenario of providing feedback on students’ digital images. For many instructors, what should be simple is instead a hassle. The options seem to range from providing text that is apart from the image — to frantically learning a program like Photoshop to insert image elements.
We’ve found at MCAD that the mac Preview application is a great way for instructors to accomplish this image-feedback task, with very little time or effort. In the example here, the image has been submitted within a post to the discussion board of the MCAD Blackboard environment.
The first step is to download the student image from Blackboard to your mac, saving it as your own new image. Now open your version of the student image with Preview.
Above is the image in Preview. The most efficient way to provide feedback is to have the markup toolbar exposed — under View, click on the “Show Markup Bar” option—or simply click on the “Toolbox” icon next to the search bar.
From here, it’s really up to you and the feedback you want. By clicking on the “Shapes” toolbar, for example, you can choose a circle to call out a specific part of the image. Then you can choose an arrow pointing to the circled area. Finally you can insert a text box at the end of the arrow and enter some commentary. Each of these notation markup tools are easily formatted (for size, positioning, orientation) after they’re inserted into the image.
After your feedback markup is in place and you’ve saved the image, go back into the discussion board, reply to the student’s submission post, and insert your marked-up version of their image.
Of course, image feedback with Preview works great outside of Blackboard, too — such as attaching the marked-up image as an email. So the next time you have an image requiring your feedback, don’t forget about Preview!
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