Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In the proccess of constructing this product, I have gained knowledge and skills in many areas of technology.

I had never used photoshop before starting the creation of my magazine so I have learnt alot from this, I have used the crop and lassoo tool to isolate images from their background. I have used effects to add vibrancy to my pictures and changed saturation levels to give a deeper colour. I enjoyed experimenting with the effects and learning how to make a picture look like it was drawn in charcoal, posterise it etc. I also learnt how to replace parts of an image using the clone tool and used the eraser on my cropped images to tidy them up.

This first image shows the original photo edited in the plasterize setting.

The Second image has the hue and saturation setting enhanced to 100%

This third screenshot is the image drawn in Charcoal

I learnt how to use layers in photoshop and text effects such as neon, glass, chrome, fire etc around letters. I learnt how to keep a background layer, I used a background from photoshop as a layer to give the golden glow, then cropped the crowd from another image and then used the lassoo tool to cut the figure out of the original image and move it on top of the previous layers.

In producing my magazine, I have learnt that Facebook is not only a social networking site but a way of promotion, communication and recieving feedback. See my previous post for using new technologies. I have worked out how to use it as a company page as well as a personal page.

I had never used a blog before I started media studies, it has been interesting looking at other people's work in progress and being able to give and recieve feedback. However, I have not been satisfied with blogger because of its lack of flexibility, for example not being able to change text modes simply like it can be done in  microsoft word. I also was unfortunate enough to lose an hours worth of work as it did not seem to save as it was typing. On the other hand, I have been impressed by  how proffesional I have been able to make my work look and how the blog times can be altered.

Although it was not relevant to my magazine brief, I was able to use Logic Pro on Apple computers to compose the soundtrack to someone else's film brief. As a music technology student, I was taught how to vary sound levels to create suspense (as the film was based on a thriller), write music suit the chosen genre and then transfer the files onto movie maker to be layered. I may be using Logic Pro next year for media studies if I choose to do the film/video brief for my coursework.

I used microsft publisher to store my planning, this was the best program to use as the pages were easy to arrange and it kept everything in order. I did the analysis for my cover page, double page spread and contents page in publisher and then carried them to the blog using screenshots.