Unsual Online Graphic Tools

Here’s an interesting Web-based graphics tool I ran into very circuitously. It started out with a message about dueling church signson the theme of what happens to your canine companion in the after life. However, I checked Snopes.com and found out that these were fake graphics, but that there’s an online tool to create more!

That tool is called http://www.says-it.com/churchsigns/. This is a fascinating tool in which you can select an image of a church sign, then change the text, fonts and colors to come up with a brand new version like the one below.

Church identifed as Holy Temple of Caffeina the Blessed. Sign says coffee, tea or Pepsi?

What really impresses me is that they are able to do this with and maintain a sense of photorealism. There’s some sophisticated programming here – but is there any educational value? Well, this is a good source of homemade social commentary, and with all the multimedia project we are encouraging our students to do, this kind of image could enhance a project.

At this point, I should add that you are not restricted to church signs. At http://www.says-it.com/, you can also do school signs, fast food signs, danger signs, official seals, Uncle Sam signs, video tape labels, delivery trucks, soda cans and more. There are times when it might be nice to generate some educational media in that area and have be licensed to you. I have to say that there was a nutrition course that could have benefited from a fake fast food sign or soda can.

The only problem is that the server gets easily overloaded – in fact, there’s a sign recommending that you try again if you get a “server error”. But I have to say it’s generally worth the wait. Or we can wait until the service is bought out by Google or Yahoo.

Achievement Badge: Blogged on a Wednesday

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