Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Photoshop CS4 – I used Photoshop to create my magazine. Before I began this course I knew nothing about Photoshop but at the point when I produced my preliminary task I only had a basic understanding of it.

The main task helped me to understand and know more than the basics of Photoshop. The “Image>>Adjustments” helped me to edit my images in terms of effects but mainly using exposure, brightness and contrast.
I also learnt how to use the “magic wand tool” I used this when I wanted to put a different background in one of my images. This helped me if I was unable to get the background that I wanted.

The main thing that I learnt was about layers. This was essential when editing my work. It helped with putting images in front of one another and putting another layer underneath my main image so when printing it didn’t leave a space around the edge of my page.

Blogger –I used blogger to display my work from planning materials, preliminary task, initial ideas, my finished work and my evaluation.

It helps to display my work and progress and I can edit and keep updating my work.

Flickr – I have used Flickr to annotate and analyse some existing magazines and my own magazines. I used notes for this analysis.

I found that Flickr often crashed on me so I was unable to add notes to my images at times when I was working on a computer.

Photography – I am very interested in photography but thought I was never good at getting the right shots. When I took the photos for my main product I realised that even though I edited my images I was happy with the shots that I had taken. To get the best shots I needed to borrow an SLR camera. I tried taking each shot at different angles and some in different filters. For my front cover image I have edited it to look like I have used the sepia colour effect. For my contents page I have used either mono or normal colour effects for my images. The process of taking my shots helped me learn how to use an SLR camera, and Photoshop helped me with editing some of my images.