Evaluation question six

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

The use of technology played a vital role in helping me to create my own media product. Whilst creating my product I learnt a lot about the ways in which technology is used and how I could apply this technology to improve my product.

Whilst doing my research into existing music magazines I used the internet to get images from music magazines and I used microsoft word to write up my analysis. I also used the internet when creating my blog. I had no previous experience with blogspot.com but now I am able to use the website efficiently.

The first new part of technology I learnt to use was the Canon SLR digital camera This was very different from a small digital camera that I am used to using as many of the setting were different however it did not take me long to get used to. I used this camera to take the pictures for my front page, contents and double page spread. The camera helped my photo's to come out looking professional and realistic this was because the camera was 12 megapixles. Whilst taking my photos of my chosen models I had many things to take into consideration such as lighting and props. When taking pictures for my front page it was daylight so there was no problem with lighting. On the other hand when taking pictures for my double page spread it was slightly darker so therefore I had to change the settings on the camera and turn the flash on.

I then learnt how to upload the pictures onto a mac computer using an USB wire and trasfer them onto a USB memory stick. I found this fairly simple and straight forward as I ahd done this previously during my preliminary task.

The most challenging point of creating my media product was using photoshop elements 8 as I had only used it previously when doing my preliminary task. The first thing I learnt was that every seperate part of the photo has to have its own 'layer'. This is so you are able to edit different parts of the photo without changing the whole photo. With this tool you are also able to 'hide' parts of the photo.

Another feature of photoshop that I learnt was how to adjust the colour of my photo to make certain elements stand out. I used this a lot because I noticed that as I added my text over the top of the image the text become harder to do this and this tool allowed me the darken the background underneath the text so the writting was clearer. I also used this tool to add a shadow under my pug to make it stand out more.

I also learnt how to use the 'fill' tool, this allowed me put block colours onto my front page such as the pug and the banner along the bottom. With this tool I was able to change the transparancy so the writting become clearer and the background was still visable.

The final feature that I learnt from photoshop was the use of the 'text box', which enabled me to write text on my magazine. I had used this tool previously in my preliminary task so found it quite easy to use but I was able to expand my knowledge by learning how to change the colour, font size and font style.

Overall I learnt that I need to back-up all of my work as photoshop is unrealiable as I experienced when the mac computer kept crashing. However photoshop can be fun, very precise but also difficult to use.