Main Task: Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Question 6:

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout making my music magazine, I have learnt a lot since creating my college magazine through the uses of Photoshop, the internet and the use of an SLR Camera.

I had been given access to an account on Blogger which is a free sign-up blog that allows you to upload text and images. I had to log in to begin creating posts where I would end up uploading and posting my finished magazine content. Although it is a very simple system that is easy to navigate, as with any technology there will be some form of issue that will be encountered. Every time I had to upload content, images had to be uploaded alongside it and it would not upload where I set it. Because of this it took me extra time to upload my work as I had to perfectly align my pictures in the right places. Because of the extra time spent on blogger I have efficiently learnt how to upload files and use a blogging site for the future if need be.

To begin creating both my music and college magazines, I had to use a Canon E05 400D camera to take the photographs needed for the magazines contents page, double spread and front cover. There were many places where I could take pictures and I had to make sure I picked the correct place with the correct lightning to help create a continuative magazine. From having to take these photographs I had to learn how to take pictures with the camera as it had to placed in the right spot for the picture to be taken, after I had to been taught to use it, it allowed me to continue on creating the magazine. I also had to make sure the battery was charged enough to take as many photos as I needed as since these cameras are extremely high quality, a lot of battery is used in taking many photos.

To properly start creating and piecing together my magazine I had to upload the pictures taken from the camera onto a PC onto my hard drive, from there I viewed the pictures on a bigger higher resolution screen to see the pictures in better quality to decide which pictures would work best for the magazine. To do this, I had place  to the cameras memory card into a memory card reader. I had learnt how to do this my past experiences of cameras and phones so there was no issue of me having to learn how to do this process.

After I had picked my photos I had to begin making the cover in Photoshop. The next task I had to do was cut out picture from its background so it could be placed over another background. I used the pen tool to specifically select around the picture to cut it out from the background, as shown below:

During the creation of my front cover, I had to do a lot of experimenting with layers and effects on these layers to learn what effects did what and how, which is helped me make what I ended up with for my final decided cover. I had learnt subtle effects on layers helped make the magazine look more creative and more alive than a bland magazine that had no effects.

For my Masthead and cover lines I had decided to use only one effect to give it the feel of authenticity which was ‘Drop Shadow’. Although just enabling it wasn’t enough, I had moved the distance, spread and size bars around to perfectly echo the masthead and cover-lines to make the font look really thick for it to shadow out.