What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of

Constructing This Product?

Evaluation: Question Six

Preliminary Task

The preliminary task also required the use of Photoshop. Whilst this prospect was daunting to others, I found the program easy to use once I became reacquainted with it as I had previous experience using the program, which allowed me to produce a college magazine of an expectable standard for my first try.

To begin the preliminary task I had to create a blogger

account. This was an easy process but It did take

sometime to get used to using blogger as it was

different to other social media sites I’ve previously used.

Research

When going about my research, I predominantly used the search engine Google as that is what I normally used. Google led me to reliable sites where I could better my understanding of things such as socio-economic codes and magazine conventions. When displaying my findings of magazine conventions on my blog I used a website called ‘Slideshare’. I had never previously used this website before, and whilst I found it easy enough to upload my PowerPoint presentation to the site, I struggled a bit when it came to uploading the slideshare to my blog. In order to do this, I had to acquire the HTML code of the PowerPoint and paste into a blog post, which was simple to do once I figured it out.

PlanningA key point of my planning was constructing a flat plan for the pages of my magazine. I

did this using Photoshop as it was easier for me to manipulate shapes using this program

than it was with PowerPoint, for example. Making a plat plan helped with

experimenting with layouts, and also gave me a good temple to follow when it came to

actually constructing my magazine.

When taking photos for my magazine, it was important to plan out what my model would wear. I reflected upon my own wardrobe and the clothing preferences of my target audience, and decided to dress my model in

simple clothing. In the cover and DPS image, she is wearing a simple vest-top that matches the colour of her

lipstick, and in the contents image her clothing, a black pop-punk t-shirt,

represents the style of music that my magazine is about.

Production

When producing the images for my magazine, I used my own Nikon camera to capture the photos, whereas during the preliminary task I simply used by phone. Using an actual camera made the images a better quality, making them suitable for use in my magazine. As I captured the photo’s within my own home, I had to get creative when it came to lighting. I didn’t even consider lighting when capturing images during the preliminary task so this was a new challenge for me. Choosing to take photos in front of a white wall in my home, I gathered lamps and desk lights to aim at the model and in order to fully illuminate the images. I placed the lights at different angles in order to lessen shadows, or create shadows where I wanted them.

First try at taking photos

Second try at taking photos

Post-Production

When constructing my magazine I had to edit my images a lot more than during the preliminary task. I discovered that manipulating the brightness and colours of the images was a lot more difficult than simply toggling the brightness settings. In order to improve the quality of the image I duplicated the image layer, then toggled with the brightness on only one layer. Once I brightened the image appropriately, I overplayed the edited layer and altered the opacity in order to improve the base image layer. I also used the sharpen tool in order to eliminate any blurry areas on the image.

Post-Production

I also used the cropping tool a lot when editing my images as parts of the images needed to be removed in order for it to look more professional. The spot healing brush tool was also very effective when editing image as it made the process of removing the models blemishes easier. Experimenting with tools such as these helped to make the editing process go more smoothly and saved a lot of time.

Evaluation

When constructing my evaluation I have used various sites, predominantly Prezzi, SlideShare and Blogger. Prezzi allowed me to be more creative when presenting my findings as the animation made it more dynamic than a simple PowerPoint that I would incorporate via SlideShare. I also found that including images throughout my evaluation was beneficial as it reinforced my points and also provided evidence of my work. It also made my evaluation presentations more diverse.