Music Magazine Evaluation- Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the process of constructing my media product I learnt a lot about the technology that I used to help me construct my magazine and those skills I had learnt before I used them again, developed and enforced them. I used photoshop CS3 to create and finish my media product, but a problem I faced was that my knowledge of photoshop and my skills in photoshop were very limited.

Because of this I had to spend a lot of time fooling around with the tools and watching some tutorials as well as having my teacher direct me as to how I can accomplish certain tasks and with what tools. In the end my knowledge of photoshop CS3 was just over basic as I constructed my media product and I learned how small effects such as bevel and emboss or even strokes can have the biggest impact on my work. Also I taught myself about rendering and image, in this case adding a camera flare to symbolise something in my magazine and to add a little pizzazz to the image.

I have developed my photo shop skills very much during the process of making this magazine. I learnt about using bevel emboss, drop shadow, glows, render-camera flare, render- editors notes, camera flare,  strokes, burn tool, canvas A3, stamp tool, and various other tools.

To start off with I learnt about the guidelines of making a magazine and used photoshop skills to help me enforce those guidelines. For example to line up my masthead, cover lines, my puff, my bar code, etc. I used the grid tool on photoshop instead of using wild estimates or drawing the lines, and this saved me a lot of time and was thoroughly more accurate.

Then I used these tools and guidance to start laying out my media products without the pictures, so I had a basic understanding of what colour scheme, fonts and layout I was attempting.

My photos were taken in different locations and only one of the overall 3 pictures had a natural background, the others I used my photoshop skills to cut my subject out of the background and then insert him onto a black background. Also in my front page I used the same technique to put my model in front of my masthead.

I used Da font.com (http://www.dafont.com/) to download fonts that I could use to make my magazine stand out further and interlink it with my photoshop work. Also in order to respect copyright laws of the website and of the authors I only downloaded the “free” or “free for use” fonts.

I also looked into advanced technologies to show the examiner that I am up to date with my knowledge or the virtual market, and how technology plays a key role in everyday life (especially young and teenage life) and exploited that by generating my own black berry messenger bar code using the following site: 

·         http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

I used a Canon E0S 400D Digital camera to take all but 2 of my images, the other two were taken with a  Nikon Coolpix S3100, and the camera was high in quality giving the photos I took a polished look and in very little need of photoshop editing depending on how well the pictures were taken.

Also I learnt that flash isn’t always the best solution for lighting as is indoor lighting as it tends to create a distracting shadow behind the subject so I used natural sunlight.  

Although I used this same camera for my preliminary task (college magazine) which is fairly similar I found that with the main task I learnt more about the cameras functions and how to use it to create my desired affect. For example to capture the image the red dots that I saw when I looked through had to be lined up with my models eyes to capture a good image, and that in sunlight the image wont capture because when the red dot sight isn’t lined up with the subjects eyes the picture doesn’t get taken or the picture itself doesn’t come well. Also I learnt about the different settings and about how to use different camera angles to really blow up the representation of my model.

The main problems I faced whilst using the camera was the different camera angles and obtaining camera shots at the right angle and keeping it straight whilst using it so that my pictures did not come out tilted creating more editing work for me and wasting time. I would say this is due to my lack of experience and skill in taking professional photos.

I resolved this problem by taking multiple shots (10-20 of one pose) and by tuning the setting of the camera I adjusted the camera to snap 4 photos in one click (increasing shutter speed) so that I saved as much time as I could, and by taking multiple shots I was bound to eventually end up with the right kind of picture, it was just a case of narrowing down and selecting.

I also learnt that photoshop created JPEG files which was needed to upload my finished products on to my blog as blogger does not allow you to upload images unless the images are JPEG files. After creating the JPEG file I would upload my work onto my blog.