QUESTION 6 – TECHNOLOGY – WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

HARDWARE

• I used an iMac with an Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2GHz which means it can run Photoshop. It has 3gb of DDR2 Random Access Memory with a bus speed of 667 MHz which is quite slow but the 3gb means the mac can run different programs at the same time.

• I hadn't used an iMac before and I found the mouse difficult to get used to. The apple keyboard is mostly like ones I have used before.

• I used a Nikon D3100 camera and an iPhone 4s camera to take photographs.

• I used a generic card reader to transfer the pictures to the mac.

• I used an Ethernet cable to connect to the internet and the school server.

HARDWARE – MOUSE AND KEYBOARD

• I used the mouse to navigate across the software and to click areas with precision and accuracy.

• The mouse is not what I’m used to as it does not have a right and left click, this meant I had to use the control button on the keyboard if I want to do the equivalent to what I’m used to.

• I used the keyboard to type text for my magazine.

• The keyboard is different to what I used to and the command button is important.

NIKON D3100 – DIGITAL SLR

• I used the Nikon D3100 digital SLR 14.2Mp camera.

• I used a horseshoe flash trigger which sends an infrared signal to the strobe light.

• I have used the hemisphere 300 strobe light to make my pictures clearer and make the person stand out from the back. I had the power setting on medium so there isn’t too much exposure

• I put a soft box on the strobe light to disperse the light and give the subject a softer, rounder light.

• I had light shining on the backdrop to make the subject stand out and make the photo look better.

SOFTWARE

• I have used many pieces of software, the main software is the Mac OS X 10.5.8 which is what makes macs so unique, this was fairly easy to get used to.

• I used Safari a lot which is an internet browser, I use safari to access my blog and do research.

• I used Photoshop the most to make my magazine.

• I used InDesign to do my main article.

• I used word processing software Microsoft word to write my article and spell check it afterwards.

PHOTOSHOP

• In Photoshop I used the colour fill tool to make the background the colour I wanted. The text tool allowed me to type text and put it where I wanted to on the page, I could also adjust font size and colour.

• I used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out images and focus on the main subject.

• I used the spot healing tool to make my pictures look perfect and remove any imperfections.

• Using the free-transform tool was very important when sizing boxes and pictures.

INDESIGN

• I used InDesign to arrange my article text into paragraphs and select the number of columns I wanted for my magazine.

• When I used InDesign I imported a background that I designed in Photoshop and used the text box tool to draw boxes in the locations that I wanted to put my text

• I also used a tool which means if my text fills up the text box it will automatically continue into a different box that i have selected. This makes it easier to arrange text and make it fit into places without compromising the style or layout.

• When i had finished my article i had to save it as a JPEG file so i could upload it to my blog page. To save the file in the best quality i went to file, then export and changed the format to JPEG, i then selected the option to set the quality at "maximum".