If you work with technical or scientific content, you know the content you present is often not visible to the naked eye. Examples are microbes, machine components, hidden aspects of nature, etc. You can facilitate deeper understanding by creating a magnified graphic. Enlarge one part of an object or one element of a system. By magnifying the part, the viewer can see the details of one part in the context of the whole object.
Show Context
To create a magnified graphic, find or create an enlarged and detailed view, such as an illustration or an extreme close-up photo. You will also need a standard big-picture view. Then, it’s easy to merge the two graphics to place the enlarged view in context.
Context is a powerful tool in visual learning. Viewers often gather many clues from the surrounding region of a picture, which significantly enhances their understanding.
Five Steps to Creating Your Magnified Graphic
Here is the process I used for a medical eLearning course. It’s a relatively quick process that takes five steps. Although I used Photoshop, you can use free image editors like Gimp or Aviary. (See my list of Image Editing Tools.) Also, you can achieve most of these steps in PowerPoint.
Step 1. Select or create the images
Collect your two photos or illustrations. I had two photos of catheters—a close-up photo of the catheter tip from the client (below left) and a photo of the entire catheter taken at one of those glamorous workplace photo shoots (below right). For this learning situation, it was important for learners to see the tip of the catheter, so I wanted to merge the photos below.
Step 1. Start with the magnified and the big picture images.
Step 2. Ensure the magnified graphic has a transparent background
First, I cut out the catheter from the blue background so that the enlarged photo’s background would be transparent. In PhotoShop, you can use the magic wand, eraser, or lasso tool.
Step 2. Create a transparent background on the enlargement.
Step 3. Overlay the enlarged image
Next, I placed the enlarged object on a layer above the big picture photo. Find an area where nothing important will be covered. That’s why I chose the upper right.
Step 3. Overlay the enlarged graphic.
Step 4. Use a shape to highlight the enlargement
I used a shape tool to draw an inset box or circle behind the enlarged object. In this case, an ellipse was the best shape, considering the constraints of the image and the shape of the enlargement. Although a rectangle would work, circles might be more conventional for enlargements because we associate that shape with a magnifying glass. (Though map insets are rectangle.) Outlining the shape will make it stand out against the background. In terms of visual hierarchy, this magnified region is the focal point.
Step 4. Draw an inset shape behind the enlargement.
Step 5. Visually connect the magnified graphic to its location
To help learners make the cognitive connection, I drew a second shape indicating what the enlarged object magnifies. In this case, I drew a narrow triangle with the pen tool to avoid covering anything. See an alternative approach further down.
Step 5. Connect the enlarged area to its original location.
The connector could also be a line or a wide cone as shown below. To avoid obstructing anything important in the image, make the cone partially transparent. I think this second approach is easier on the eyes and more conventional.
Step 5. An alternative connector: the transparent cone.
You can see how in many learning situations, overlaying an enlarged graphic in context can help a learner construct a more clear idea of how something is structured or how it operates.
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