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

Photoshop

To create my magazine, I used Photoshop. Photoshop is a graphics editing programme and I used this software to create my products. The following slides are going to show the tools I have used then I am going to show demonstrations to show how I have created some certain effects.

Layers

Having layers in Photoshop is a key thing when editing. They are used to add each section of the product as a new layer. Having new layers for everything is vital as then it can be easily changed or removed without having to touch the rest of the photo. I used this feature when adding my conventional features such as; photo, text, plugs, barcodes and features.

Quick selection tools

Throughout the process of editing my product, I used the quick selection tools (quick selection tool and magic selection tool) a lot, especially when cutting the background out of photos. This is a quick tool which automatically selects a wide area of the photo which is useful when you want to save time and do things quickly, it is very effective and a main use when I use Photoshop to dispose of areas in an image which are not wanted. This tool was useful mainly with my front cover and double page spread.

Brush tool

The brush tool was another main use when I was making my magazine. I used it to make the background of my front cover as I did the colour red and used the brush tool to paint it.

Spot healing brush tool

This tool was used to get rid of any blemishes on my models face. It gets ride of any blemishes on the models face by matching it with the skin colour of the models face and it then makes the blemish invisible. This tool is used a lot on models in magazines as it gives the model a clear complexion which is a strong convention. This tool is effective and a good way of achieving this clear look.

Eraser tool

I used this tool a lot in the process of making my magazine. I used it to remove certain aspects of the photos on my front cover and double page spread. I also used background eraser tool whilst editing to get a smooth outline around my model, especially the hairline as this was quite difficult. I made sure the eraser had a soft edge so that it looked natural and didn’t look obvious.

Text

This was a main tool that was used when making my magazine. It creates a new layer of text to the image. It gives you a range of fonts and colour to choose from, I used this tool a few times but also got text from dafont. Having this tool made my magazine look conventional as text is vital in a magazine.

Shape tool

This tool lets you add shapes to your image. I used this tool when I made my skyline, footer, banner and plug. I also used this tool a lot in my contents page as I had a lot of shapes to add different background colours to my contents.

Transform tools

I used the transform tools a lot when editing my product. It was an effective tool for scaling my photos, text and shapes so that they were the right size to fit my front cover, contents page and double page spread. I also used the rotate tool sometimes as well as my plug is slightly rotated to the side and also the main text that says ‘WILL’ and the shape behind it is slightly slanted to the left.

Paint bucket tool

I used this tool when wanting to fill in areas so that they were just one colour. For example my double page spread background is grey and I used this tool to fill it with the colour grey.

Demonstration of certain tools

This is the original image that I used for my front cover. Obviously, the background of the image isn’t suitable for my magazine so I need to remove the background. I did this by using the quick selection tool.

I used the quick selection tool to select all the areas I wanted to erase. I made sure I had a new layer then I deleted the selected areas. I filled in the new layer grey so that I could see the areas that needed smoothing with the brush tool. Also, I did this to see if there were any others areas of the photo that I missed and did not erase.

I then used the eraser tool, with soft edge, and went around the edges that were a bit too obvious that it was cut out and smoothed them down. I also erased the bit of hair that was sticking out at the top so that the hair was perfect. I think my photo looks better now that it has smoothed edges and looks like a photo of a front cover.

I opened a new page and then I dragged the photo onto it. I did this so that I could use the white background and paint it red. I then rescaled the image so it fit the page well.

I then used the spot healing brush to get rid of any blemishes on my models face. As you can see I have shown a before picture and an after picture. I think showing a before and after image shows how effective the tool is and how conventional my model now looks as this tool is used a lot in existing magazines.

I used the brush tool with soft edges and changed the colour to red. I added a new layer which went behind the photo so that if I went wrong I wouldn’t have to start again.

I went on dafont.com and found a font which I thought was suitable for the genre of my magazine. I then created a new layer in front of my existing image which shows the masthead, ‘RIOT!’.

I used the shape tool to create my skyline to add structure and then add text later. Then I used the text tool to add the text above the skyline layer my. I also created a star shape to put in between the artists name which I think looked good, I also made these by using the shape tool. I added this because it makes the magazine look conventional.

Prezi

Prezi is a website which allows you to design and create your own presentation in creative ways. Before beginning my media coursework, I hadn’t heard of this website before but I got told about it and got familiar with how it works and I have used it to complete some of my tasks. I chose to use this as I think it is a good and creative way of displaying my own work.

SlideShare

SlideShare is a Web 2.0 based slide hosting service. If you are a user of this website you can upload files so they are public or private. When creating my PowerPoints, I thought it was boring just having them as normal slides screen shotted onto my blog so I decided to use SlideShare to make my slides a bit more creative. I thought that using SlideShare was easy and accessible.

Blogger

Blogger is the website that I used to publish all of my media coursework. Being new to this site I had to find out how to do certain things like making new posts, adding links to Prezi and SlideShare and adding photos. I also had to keep it all organised and make sure I had everything that was needed in my media coursework. As I have used another blogging site before, it wasn’t really that hard to work out how to use it but it was a bit of a challenge in keeping it organised as using other blogs I didn’t really need to keep on top of it or keep it organised in a certain way. I am happy that I have found this site as I have worked out how to use it so I can possibly use it for my own interests out of college as it is easy to use.