Intermediate

40 mins

Teacher/Student led

Learning Goals

Learning Outcomes

Lesson Files

+70 XP

Pupils work on their own device

What you need:
Chromebook/Laptop/PC
Canva account (school email)

Editing Images with Canva, Part 1: Crop, Resize and Adjust

Students set up a canvas in Canva, place an image, crop and resize it, and adjust it with filters, brightness and contrast. This lesson counts towards outcome 3.8: students use these editing skills to build their digital montage in the montage lessons that follow.

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1 Start
2 The Words Editors Use
3 Hands-on: Open Canva and Place an Image
4 Hands-on: Crop and Resize
5 Hands-on: Filters, Brightness and Contrast
Quiz

1 - Start ~4 mins

Illustration for Start You are about to see the same photograph twice: once cropped in tight on one detail, and once wide. Look at Version 1 first and decide what it tells you happened, then look at Version 2.

Version 1	Version 2

Photo: "Shop Street, Galway", public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The thing to notice

Nothing was added and nothing was faked. The only decision was what to leave out, and it changed the story.

Today you learn the tools. Next lesson you decide when using them is honest.

Canva needs an account

Sign up with your school email. If you have not done that yet, tell your teacher now rather than working through it alone.

The photo for this lesson

Download the practice photo now: it is Version 2 above. Open it, then save it with right-click and Save image as. You will crop and adjust it in Canva.

👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

+5 XP

2 - The Words Editors Use ~5 mins

Five words you will meet in any image editor.

Word	What it means
Pixels	The tiny dots a picture is made of. More pixels, more detail.
Resolution	How sharp an image looks. Higher is sharper, and the file is bigger.
Cropping	Cutting away the edges to change what is in frame.
Resizing	Changing how big the whole image is, without cutting anything out.
Aspect ratio	The shape of the frame. Change it carelessly and everything stretches.

Crop and resize are not the same thing

Cropping removes part of the picture. Resizing keeps all of it and makes it bigger or smaller. These two are very easy to mix up, so check which one you mean before you use the word.

👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

+10 XP

3 - Hands-on: Open Canva and Place an Image ~8 mins

Set up a canvas of a known size and get a picture onto it.

+15 XP

4 - Hands-on: Crop and Resize ~12 mins

Two different jobs. Crop changes what is in the frame; resize changes how big the whole thing is.

+15 XP

5 - Hands-on: Filters, Brightness and Contrast ~9 mins

A filter changes the whole mood in one click. Brightness and contrast fix a photo that is genuinely too dark to read.

+15 XP

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Editing Images with Canva, Part 1: Crop, Resize and Adjust

Teacher Class Feed

1 - Start ~4 mins

2 - The Words Editors Use ~5 mins

3 - Hands-on: Open Canva and Place an Image ~8 mins

4 - Hands-on: Crop and Resize ~12 mins

5 - Hands-on: Filters, Brightness and Contrast ~9 mins

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