EVALUATION QUESTION 6

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

In order to create my music magazine, THE DROP, I had to learn how to use certain technologies, and make use of pieces of kit that I already had. All of these things contributed to my end product of a cover, contents page and DPS for my magazine which had a professional appearance and engaging content. 

CAMERA - photography

One of the most important pieces of kit which aided the creation of my magazine was my camera. It is a Nikon Coolpix S3100, which is a 14.0 megapixel camera with a '5x Wide Optical Zoom'. This was the camera that I used to take all of the photos for my magazine.

Obviously, taking photos of myself wasn't ever going to be as easy as taking them of someone else, however using the settings that my camera had to offer this task was made considerably easier. I used the self timer option on my camera, and by doing this I could delay the photo from taking until 10 seconds after I pressed the button, giving me plenty of time to position myself ready for the photograph.

 

COMPUTER

The other most important piece of kit in the creation of my magazine was the computer. This image shows my personal laptop which I keep at home, but obviously this wasn't the only computer I used to complete my magazine. The work which I completed in college was done on the standard PC that was available to me. Once I had taken any photos I needed to using my camera I then uploaded them to the computer using the SD card slot on the side of my laptop.

PHOTOSHOP

As well as using physical equipment to create my magazine, I also used the software on the computer in order to both edit and create my magazine. The main program that I used was Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.5 which was the edition which was accessible to be at college. At home on my laptop I have a different version of Photoshop however it was still compatible with the work I had done at college. I used Photoshop for two reasons: to edit the photos for my magazine, and also to create the actual documents.

Editing Photos

A lot of the photos that I took had background which I didn't want to be visible in my magazines, and therefore these images required cutting out. To do this I simply transferred these images from my 4GB SD card onto the computer and then saved them in a separate file. I opened them up into Photoshop and then I used techniques that I had learnt in my AS Graphics course which I have been taking along side AS Media. I already had a limited knowledge of Photoshop having played around with it at home and also used it on my work experience at a Graphic Design company whilst I was in Southmoor. I made use of three tools to cut out the images: Magic Wand, Quick Selection and Eraser as shown to the right.

This is the image which is on the cover of my magazine. I have included a 'before' and 'after' example of how I used Photoshop to both crop and edit a photo. I have completely removed the background and cropped the image considerably, as the legs and part of the skirt weren't needed on the cover. I have also used the sharpen tool to make my eyes a lot more prominent and slightly darker to enhance them. Other than that I haven't edited the image much because the look I was going for wasn't that of an over-edited glossy fashion/glamour magazine. This was the case for many of my other images throughout the pages, as I didn't want to falsely advertise perfect looking artists to a body-conscious audience.

Creating the Magazine

As well as editing photos on Photoshop I had to use it to create the actual magazine. This required a lot more skill and I had to make use of more tools in order to make the pages successful. I placed the images that I had edited into an A4 International Paper sized document and used tools such as Text and Shape to add boxes and my main bodies of text to the pages.

BLOGGER
Using this blog has been the means with which I am presenting my planning, progress, finished work and evaluation, therefore it has played a key part in the whole process of making my magazine. By actually talking through each thing that has contributed to my magazine has helped me in the evaluation of my work, and has also helped me see what it was that I was doing wrong, in order to better my work and improve my grade.