Evaluation - Question 6

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

When making my magazine the main piece of technology that I used to actually create and design my magazine was Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is a piece of software that allows you to edit images e.g. retouch, reshape, distort images; as a result, this enabled me to create a realistic and professional magazine. Therefore, Photoshop enabled me to use a variety of effects on the images within my magazine e.g. one effect that I used a lot on my images was editing the exposure of the photo; by simply tweaking this I was able to chose the section of a photo where there could be more exposure than another section as a result creating an effective photo. Another effect that I used on my front cover image was changing the photo to black and white which was an effect also available on Photoshop. In addition another feature I used massively throughout my magazine was "drop shadow" this created a small shadow underneath or to the side (you are able to choose the direction in which you want the shadow to be placed) of an image or text; this simple effect could literally make an image or a piece of text more effective then it just being plain.


To take the photos for my magazine I used one of the most important pieces of technology within my magazine which is the camera; the camera that I used was the Canon 550D DSLR. As the camera is a digital camera it put me at an advantages as opposed to other cameras; this is because, this camera enabled me to view the photos instantly after they had been taken therefore, I could easily delete ones that weren't needed, or could re-take photos if the previous weren't right. This is in contrast to other cameras as some will not show the photo instantly instead the photographer would have to go and get the photo's developed and only then will they be able to view them. This can be very time consuming because when the photographer views the photos and they don't feel like any of them are to high standard or they are just not right, the photographer would have then have to redo the photoshoot. When using this camera, conducted two photoshoots one on location and one in the studio - therefore, this offered the magazine a variety of different background to make the magazine more diverse and interesting. In the studio I set up a white back drop, with trigger lighting on; by doing so enabled my images to be more professional as without this they could have come out dim and unprofessional. During the studio photoshoot another camera which was linked to an interval meter was set up at the back; this allowed me to create a time lapse of my photoshoot. My second photoshoot was on location for this I used (>).


Every week we had to create a diary explaining what we had been working on that week, this could be in a variety of forms e.g. text, video, cam studio etc. As opposed to just text, I have used video a lot to create my diaries; the majority of these have been created with my iPod's camera as I can easily plug this into my computer and upload it straight away. Cam studio is another piece of software that I have used; this is a program that allows you to record the screen of your computer/laptop, during this you able to use a microphone to record over the top in which you can discuss what is being shown on screen.


Throughout the creation of my magazine I have done a variety of tasks such as research (to research my main sources have been Google/Wikipedia) which have been presented on programs such as Microsoft Word and Microsft Powerpoint. I have then used the website 'Scribd' to upload these to my blog. Another website I used to create presentations was 'Prezi' instead of having different slides for a presentation it instead enables the user to create a path in which they want the order of their presentation to go in. I could then quickly get the embed code and paste this into the 'html' section when you create a new post of blogger. Blogger is the main platform I have used to document my work e.g. upload presentations, weekly diaries, upload finished work etc. The use of blogger has also enabled me to get feedback of my work much quicker as my work can easily be viewed as opposed to printing multiple piece of work and handing them in to get marked as this can take much longer.