Evaluation

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of

constructing this product?

• Throughout the process of creating my media product I learnt a lot of things. Some of these things were just expanding on knowledge that I already had, and some things I had to learn from the ground up to a level that was appropriate for me to then say I can use it in the production of my product.

• In this PowerPoint I will be going through things that I have learnt, whether or not I knew a bit about the product beforehand.

Apple iMac and it’s peripherals

• Throughout most of the process of creating our product, we were limited to the use of Apple iMacs. I was very unfamiliar with iMacs at first and required a fair bit of assistance to figure out what I was doing. Everything felt backwards to me since I was so used to a Windows PC.

• However, after a few weeks of using the Macs and completing some tasks I began to get the hang of it. I figured out where things were and was able to work independently on the Mac computers.

• Now that I am finishing my project I am more confident than ever with a Mac but would still prefer to use a Windows PC for tasks outside of photo-editing.

Adobe Photoshop

• Throughout my time making my magazine I was employing Adobe Photoshop. I used multiple versions, ranging from CS3on a mac, so CS5 and CS6 on a PC. Each of these versions are slightly different and play to their own strengths which allowed me to complete my magazine.

• CS3 on the Mac was very tricky for me to get to grips with at first. Compared to other software I would have used such as Microsoft Publisher, Photoshop does a lot more.

• Photoshop allowed me to insert images and edit them to my will, from the brightness and the contrast, to the colour levels, to a colour overlay, to an outline and even cropping the images as I wish. Once I had got the hang of the basics of Photoshop I found it easier trying to learn how to do most advanced techniques, such as the advanced level editing software that I had just mentioned.

• The other PC versions were somewhat similar but included a lot more features due to being newer. Surprisingly though some features were missing. I was originally creating my final document using Photoshop CS5, but this software lacked the ability to create contact sheets with ease which CS3 on a Mac could do. This meant I had to try and get access to another version of Photoshop to produce my contact sheets.Using Photoshop enabled me to make my images for the front covers brightness as close to possible. There were three main images on the front cover. Two of them were taken indoors and one was taken outside on an entirely different day. When I inserted all of these images the difference in brightness was easily noticeable. Luckily the brightness/contrast tool allowed me to overcome this problem and make the brightness of the images as close as possible until they looked the same brightness/contrast. Without the use of Photoshop I would have been stuck with one bright image.

• Photoshop also allows you to change the opacity of shapes with ease. This came into use with my double-page spread to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Also the white font contrasted really well with the darker background so employing the opacity tool here was a success.

• Also a lot of features available on Photoshop I never even had to use, such as the history brush tool. However the icons for the regular brush and the history brush tool are very similar so I was often making the mistake of using the history brush instead of the regular brush. This could have been fixed by using software that can do the same things as Photoshop whilst having a more user friendly interface.

This shows Photoshop CS3 on a Mac’s interface.

This shows Photoshop CS6 on a PC’s interface.

LUMIX 12X AVCHD Lite HD camera

• When it came down to taking my shots for my photo-shoot, I wanted to use the best camera I had access to. In this case the camera was the LUMIX 12X AVCHD LiteHD camera. The camera was more advanced than any I had used before and was capable of much more than I first anticipated.

• When I started taking shots I was doing the simple ‘take a high quality shot with flash on’ shot. However, this was upsetting my models as the flash was going into their eyes. I had to turn it off before I could take anymore shots.

• It took some intense playing around with the seemingly never-ending menus for me to figure out how to turn the flash off. This is also when I found out about other techniques this camera could utilise such as face recognition and burst shooting. All of these techniques helped to ensure that my photo-shoot was the best it could possibly be.

Samsung Galaxy S3

• The Samsung Galaxy S3, otherwise known as my phone, played a vital role in getting my work done. It also performed tasks I would have never thought possibly for a smartphone.

• Utilising this phones strengths I was able to send emails with my work attached so I could do it from home, I was able to keep myself on track with a calendar and built in reminders, I was able to write parts of my work and finish them off in the next lesson, at home or at the next available opportunity and many more.

• Of course I was able to do the thing I knew how to before such as surf the web and text people to receive impressions on my product.

The internet and all the websites inside of it

• When learning to use the iMacs, I had to make use of a new internet browser which was laid out differently and slightly slower than what I was used to. Safari achieved everything I expected it to, but the tasks I had to achieve were completed in a much more convoluted manner due to the restrictions of this software.

• Whilst on Safari I was introduced to three websites, Wordpress, Slideshare and Prezi, with each of them having their own uses.

• Wordpress was the website that contained my portfolio of work for this AS Media coursework. It was essentially a blog that I updated as I went on, adding in new work as and when it was created. This site also allowed me to comment on other peoples blogs and for me to comment on my blog, I was also able to share blog posts across social networking sites.

• Slideshare was the website which allowed me to upload PowerPoints and word documents. When these documents were on the website in question I could copy and paste a link into a wordpresspost which would then enbed the powerpoint or word document into the wordpress post and allow viewers to interact with the document partially.

• Prezi allows me to create documents using an online ‘kit’ and add text, autoshapes and images at my own will and then provide a link between these in an animated format. I could also follow pre-existing animations and just fill in the gaps. The software was very user friendly.