Evaluation Question 6

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

During the process of constructing my project, I used a variety of different technologies in order to help me successfully construct my project. The main equipment I have used during this process is a Canon 1000d Camera, Adobe Photoshop CS5 extended, Adobe Indesign CS5 extended, Blogger along with the other facilities that the Internet has to offer. Microsoft word was also used to a degree when drafting out the contents for my double page spread.

The first piece of Software that I was taught during this course was Adobe Photoshop CS4, an image manipulation program created by Adobe. The Software consists of a number of tools which were very useful in constructing my magazine as it allowed me to change the brightness, saturation and contrast of images, resize them, apply effects such as shadows and glows to images and text and many other things in which photoshop has to offer. 

Using photoshop allowed me to do all the thing i wanted to do making it easier to put my ideas into practise and develop them on my front cover and contents page. If I was to use a different program for creating all three pages, I wouldn't have been able to create the visual effects that i wanted to be shown on each page in the way that Photoshop allows me too for example, programmes such as Paint would be inconvenient as there are limited options and tools to choose from and its lack of technology within the programme would have prevented my magazine from looking professional therefore Adobe Photoshop is the more sensible choice of Software for creating a detailed piece of work such as a music magazine.

My double page spread constructed on a slightly different programme called Adobe InDesign which is a Software that can be used to create magazine articles and other forms of print media. As we were not introduced to InDesign during the process of our preliminary task construction I had to get to grips with how the programme really worked and how this could benefit my double page spread. InDesign consists of many tools just like Photoshop but also allows you to 'Text Wrap' which allows you import an image or a separate piece of text into a written article allowing the text to wrap around the images instead of making the text cover the image or be hidden by the image.This programme was the most appropriate programme to use for the double page spread as it allowed you to display columns in which text could be put in to help structure the page like other music magazine double page spreads published in the music magazines we currently see today. 

This was the camera that I used to take the pictures that I will later use for my Front Page, Contents Page and Double Page Spread, and this shirt pocket-sized camera has many useful features that I used to make sure my images where taken in the best possible quality. Arguably the most useful feature was the automatic scene-selector that has been built into the camera, allowing the camera to select which scene mode (out of 18 different settings) would best suit the mise-en-scene, shot composition and the mode of address present in my scene. Without this feature at my disposal my photoshoot would have taken a considerably longer time to get the required shots and I doubt my photos would have been in the same quality as they are now. This particular camera also has a 5x Optical Zoom, 4 means of reducing the blur of an image, an Electronic Vibration Reduction and even a Skin Softening feature to reduce the appearance of uneven skin tonnes. All of these features together helped to ensure that my pictures were as high quality as possible, and without these tools at my disposal my pictures would have appeared grainy, blurry and unsuitable for use in my Media Product.

Lastly, we have Blogger. Blogger is an online tool which gave me the ability to record all of my work online in the form of a blog, without the need for folders with print-outs of my work and having to work on paper which would make loosing work very easy. Blogger has many tools and features that I have used to make my blog easy to navigate for not only myself but who ever visits my blog such as the ability to assign labels to a post which allows me to create a list of links that made my blog much easier to navigate and contributed to presenting my work in a more professional order. Without this, I would have had to print of all of my work and place it in a folder with the use of dividers. This would have been very time consuming therefore I believe blogger was the most convenient and affective way to present my work.