The original image above becomes a more dynamic work. This enables all the available shapes, arrows, callouts and equations as layer masks. I have recently discovered the “Mask image” pull-down menu. Typically, I click on crop and free crop the image to edit it or shift crop the image to keep the keep the scale the same but resize the image. This is a function that has been hiding in plain sight. These are functions that you’d typically have to execute in Photoshop, but with some creative licence and next-level understanding of the “Crop,” “Arrange” and “Image options…”, you can achieve the effects easily. The three I’ll outline below work as layer masks and filters. Recently I’ve explored some advanced functions in Google Drawings. From back to front there is 1) a rectangle shape with a transparent line border and a complementary color fill, 2) the image itself and 3) a number of callout text boxes with the vocab words. That is what I have done in the image above.

It is easy to insert shapes, callouts, overlays and backgrounds in Drawings. (Yay, Pixabay!) Here I focused on Spanish vocabulary, but this could as easily be cell structure, anatomy and physiology, art history, geography and more. Here is a simple example that I mocked up in a matter minutes.

This post focuses on editing images using layers and masks. Since Drawings is a Google App, you have the same ability to share, embed, and download the images in multiple formats, including. venn diagrams, KWL charts, flow charts) and edit images. It is an easy way to create simple graphics (e.g. Google Drawings is G Suite for Education app that every educator should know about.

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