Photoshop

During the process of making my media product, I have learnt a lot about Photoshop in terms of what it can do and the types of skills needed to use Photoshop properly to create what you want it to create. Following my designs, I had a clear image about how I wanted the magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread to turn out and as I was creating them, I encountered different ways in which to go about making them happen.What I learnt:• Drop shadow makes shapes stand out from the page and turn simple looking

shapes into things you’d find on real magazines• When cutting out images, the zoom feature accompanied by the lasso tool

allows you to select each pixel and delete it without compromising the original picture, allowing you to remove a background efficiently and creating an image ready to be placed onto any other background

• A grid can be placed over the project you are working on so that spacing and positioning is easier as the page is split up into equal parts; this helps with lining everything up

• I realised that if there was something that needed done, there was a way in Photoshop I just had to figure out what it was and how to do it, Google helped me to do this; for example, when creating the shadow of the model I knew it was possible but I didn’t know how to so I found a website via Google which showed me step by step and the end product turned out exactly how I wanted it

http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/cast_shadow/cast_shadow.htm

Blogger

When I first started using Blogger I had no idea what I was doing or how it worked. After figuring out the general idea and posted a few posts so that I understood more about what it allowed me to do. Blogger allowed me to express every piece of work systematically and all in one place so since the beginning of the whole process of creating this music magazine and all the planning and pre-production work that went into it. The site was very easy to use after I gripped the concept of it and it had everything I needed to post information of different formats for other people to see so that my AS Media work is easily accessible and well-presented.What I learnt:• Blog entries can be of a variety of formats and there is no limit to

what can be posted in terms of how it is presented• If there is a piece of work or a blog entry that needs to be moved I

didn’t have to delete it and post it again, I could simply adjust the date and it would appear in a different order on the blog page

• Embedding codes can be copied and pasted into the html section of a blog entry so that if work has been uploaded onto a separate website then that piece of work can be presented on the blog

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey helped a lot with the pre-production phase of the process of making my media product. When I first created my initial drafts of my audience research questionnaire I thought I’d have to print it off and physically hand it to people in order to gather enough results needed for reliable feedback. This was a very helpful and efficient alternative that, overall, made everything easier.What I learnt:• SurveyMonkey handles everything from the layout to the results

analysis, all you have to do is enter the question content and what type of question it is

• It gives you a unique external link to use in case you want to send your survey/questionnaire to someone over another online means of communication

• You can embed the survey/questionnaire on a website such as Facebook or Twitter

SoundCloud

SoundCloud allowed me to upload some recordings of me speaking to add a variety to my blog entries so that they are not all just written pieces of information. The use of sound is more engaging and adds a difference to how information is presented. It was simple to use as I could download the app on my phone and record straight from there, rather than using a computer with a microphone which I do not have access to, and allowed me to upload the sound file to the internet straight from my handset after it had been recorded. This made it accessible from the SoundCloud website and allowed me to add a title to the sound and then to embed the player of my sound on Blogger so that it could be played straight from my blog rather than the need of an external hyperlink. The sound quality was quite decent and even in the presence of background noise, my voice could be heard quite clearly, even after the uploading phase. Before I heard about SoundCloud, I never realised there was a website or an app that made this kind of service available and that is what I learnt about SoundCloud.

Slideshare

Slideshare enabled me to upload my work done on a Microsoft PowerPoint document so that a viewer of each slide could be created. I could then embed this viewer on a variety of sites such as Blogger and the work that I produced was viewable straight from my blog page. This site was easy to use as all you have to do is click upload and select the file you want it to create a viewer for. A title and information could be added if necessary but since I was posting it onto Blogger anyway, this was not needed. I was not aware that this service was available from a website and it was very helpful in the presentation of the work done in the process of creating my media product as a significant amount of it was done on PowerPoint presentations.

What else I have learnt

• A USB was very necessary for the process of production this whole school year as it enabled me to keep my work all in one place and gave me the ability to access my work from different computers, allowing me to work from home or from computers with a scanner etc.

• Before the start of this production and the need to scan in initial ideas and drafts I did not know how to use the scanners of the school connected with the computers. I learnt how to use these well enough that I had to tell other people how to use them

• I learnt how to take better pictures with a good quality camera and from the process of trial and error and experimenting, I figured out how to use a range of different shots when taking pictures of a model

• I also learnt that there is lots of resources and services available on the internet so that work and information can be presented in different ways for example SoundCloud, Slideshare etc.

• Facebook, Hotmail, Blackberry Messenger and Whatsapp Messenger were also used to send people my survey and to ask the models I used if I could use them for my music magazine