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

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

What hardware and software have you used to plan your pages? How effective was it?

• To plan my pages I used the Introduction booklet to this task and completed all the tasks on this blog which helped me with several things such as; Magazine analysis, Music industries, Choosing my genre, Magazine publishers and Audience research etc.

• This then helped me to decide how and what my magazine would be about and look like. I then drew drafts of the front cover, contents and double page spread and uploaded them on the blog. As shown below.

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• Doing all the work in the booklet was really effective and helped a lot as it meant I had up to date knowledge on how to create a good magazine.

• If I hadn't have done all the tasks then I don't think my magazine would be as good as it is.

What hardware and software have you used to construct your pages? How effective was it?

• Technologies I used;

• Computer

• Camera

• Photoshop

• InDesign

• Blogger.com

• Slideshare.com

• Picnik.com

PhotoShop• I found PhotoShop very difficult and often get very stressed

trying to do things how I wanted to.

• I found getting the background on the front cover removed the most stressful thing to do as I kept cutting out the girl’s shoes as shown in the print screen to the right. In the end I decided to crop from the calves and below out to stop this stressful situation as shown on the bottom right.

• I don't think this has made my magazine not as good, in fact I think it looks better as it meant the image could be made bigger as my image is of good quality and very effective so by having it as big as possible is a good thing.•I think PhotoShop is effective as it allows you to edit your pictures and change things to how you want and even though I got stressed using it I know feel more confident in using it again.

Before

And

After

Front Cover

• An example of using the techonolgy Photoshop was on the front cover, I wanted to make the main image stand out and be more eye catching so I decided to add the effect outer glow onto it. The first step was selecting the image layer, right click and the effects will come up, I selected outer glow.

After I selected outer glow, this box came up and I changed the opacity level to create the outer glow and alter its thickness etc.

• I also learnt how to add shapes behind text as shown on the main headings – ‘Music’, ‘New’ and ‘Battle’ as I thought this made the cover more interesting and eye popping.

• As shown below in the print screens, I selected the shape tool and used a rectangle, chose the colour which was purple/lilac and then added the text on top of the shape.

• By doing this it made these headings stand out against the black background as the white text contrasted really well with the purple and made these headings look like they were coming off the page.

InDesign

• I found this software easier to use than PhotoShop as there was a limited range on what you could do which meant less room for mistakes and stress.

• Saying that though, the range of things you could do was still very good such as wrapping text around a bounding box.

Contents

• An example of using InDesign on my contents page is using drop shadows on my image boxes.

• I right clicked on the image that I wanted to have a drop shadow, selected effects, drop shadow and made the shadow as thick or thin as I wanted.

• I hadn't used this effect before so it makes the images more appealing and ‘cool’.

• Another new thing that I used, which was my favourite accomplishment was creating the big ‘R’ in the background of the page.

• To do this I created a new layer as I wanted the letter to be in the background and partially visible.

• I used the text tool to write the letter ‘R’ and then increased the size by typing 700pt into the box as shown below.

• Once it was the size I wanted, I right clicked on effects, then transparency and changed the level of transparency that I wanted which is shown in my final product.

Double Page Spread

BeforeWrapping text around a bounding box.

After- The text has now been ‘wrapped’, so that you can still see the

interview around the quotation.

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• The only downside to this software was trying to get the same colour purple I had used on my Front Cover. To ease this problem I decided to use different shades of purple anyway, this meant that my magazine looked more eye popping because different shades were used but it also meant that there was less room for mistake on my behalf.

• In conclusion I now feel confident in using InDesign and would happily use it again.

Blogger and Slideshare

• This was the first time I used both of these technologies and found it very easy.

• I thought using Blogger inside of using a Hard drive disk that previous years had done was a lot easier and meant that if a mistake was made it could be deleted or edited. It also meant that I could keep uploading things to show my progress throughout the task.

• I thought using Slideshare was also very effective as in the Preliminary Task I had to individually upload each slide of my power points but during this task by having the option to upload the complete power point it meant the tasks for done quicker and more information could be written on them without the hassle of uploading each one separately.

• I enjoyed using these two technologies and would use them again confidently.

Picnik.com

• I think I was the only of one of the few who used this website. Having used this before out of college, at home years ago to edit pictures I decided to use it for this task because of my struggles with editing images on PhotoShop.

Using Picnik to crop an image• To use picnik you first upload an image, you then will be bought to the ‘edit’ page where you can use all the different edit features

shown by the arrow.

• Below is how I cropped an image, I selected basic edits from the feature boxes, clicked crop and altered the size of the box till I got the size I wanted and then clicked ok. The image I wanted is shown on the next slide.

After I cropped the image as shown below, I went to the effects heading and selected Focal B&W which made the whole image black and white but with colour focus on the lips. When I got how much

of the lips I wanted in colour, I clicked ok and saved the image.

Overall

• Overall I have learnt a lot about technology when creating my magazine.

• I used new technologies such as Blogger and SlideShare that I never has used before and found that I had no trouble in using them.

• I found that I struggle when using Photoshop but feel that I’ve got better at it during this task.

• I find using InDesign easy and have no trouble using it.• I also incorporated my own knowledge from outside this task by

bringing in the knowledge I have from the editing website Picnik and created brilliant edited images.