What have you learnt about technologies?

AS Media Studies

Photoshop As you can see, my skills regarding Photoshop have definitely become more refined and advanced. The main area I have developed in is editing. This includes both the editing of images and the editing or the shapes that formed my designs. I also became more familiar with each tool, enabling me to add different conventions into my magazine. For example, when I did my barcode for my front cover I was able to use the rectangular shape tool to add another white box behind it. Then I inserted a text box over the top, stating the issue number and date. This positioning made it look more professional as it is positioned like this in a lot of magazines. This is something I couldn’t originally do as I couldn’t use the shape tool. Also I wouldn’t have been able to arrange the layers so that the white box went behind the barcode.

More on PhotoshopIn terms of the tools I used in Photoshop, I began to find better ways of editing things which made the photos look like they were edited to a higher standard. Previously on my prelim I brightened the teeth of one of my shots by colouring them in in in an off white. This improved the look, but whilst doing my contents page for my main task I found that a more professional way was to use the magnetic lasso tool, and simply brighten the teeth. This was more subtle. With regards to my masthead, I also began to be able to use take advantage of every tool. I found out that you can rasterize layers, which made it easy for me to make shapes and puffs look distressed by simply erasing some of the out side of the tool with a paint splodge shaped brush. I also began to use the burn smudge and sharpen tool. This was mainly to edit pictures, and came in handy when I cut out images using the pen tool and placed them on a new background. The blur tool was particularly efficient as it got rid of any rough edges. Rather than simply putting a thick stroke around my font like I did at my prelim, I became more experience with using the blending options. I wanted all of my text to look 3D, so that it didn’t look like it had simply been stuck on the background. For certain fonts I put a tiny outer glow on my font and for others I put a drop shadow. This also made the cover look more dramatic, drawing the readers attention to the text rather than just the pictures. The pen tool became a basic necessity as I wanted the majority of my photos to “speak for themselves” so rather than having a complex background behind the image, I had to cut each person out from each picture, to ensure that there were no distractions for the reader.

Dafont

for my prelim I didn’t use this website for any of the fonts shown in either my front cover or contents. I simply found the boldest font I could in the fonts available in Photoshop. However whilst creating my main pieces I realised the importance of fonts. I also realised how important it was to choose a font that went well with the genre of magazine that you picked. By choosing to do a rock magazine I knew immediately that I needed a font that looked somewhat distressed. I found that using Dafont in my main task helped me greatly as the simple layout of the website, and the was it has big samples of each text allows you to see each font clearly. Using Dafont had a huge impact on my work as I was able to choose from a massive variety of fonts, ra6ther than a rather limited array of fonts in Photoshop.

Prezzi

Having never used Prezzi before my main task, I sometimes found adapting to it quite difficult. Although it has some large similarities to power point, like it’s separate slides, the navigation of Prezzi is very different. Whilst using Prezzi I learnt about how you can change the background to a selection of colours, format text to say whether it’s a subheading or the text’s body, add extra transitions, place arrows around an image, import images from google, and play a song for the audience whilst they look at your Prezzi. All of these skills improved the standard of each presentation I produced, making them more interesting and entertaining to watch.

Slide share and scribd

Both slide share and scribd enabled me to use programmes I was already familiar with, like Power Point and Microsoft Word, on my blog. I found that these two programmes were very beneficial as they prevented me from having to learn how to use another entirely new programme. By having a simple embed code that you just had to paste into the html section of your blog, it made it incredibly easy. In both programmes I simply had to fill in the details of my document, and embed it onto my blog.

Blogger

Blogger was on of the most important software's that I used throughout the course as it where I saved every task that I completed. After the prelim I became more experience with using the software. I progressed from simply writing the majority of tasks on my blog , to using other software along with blogger like Prezzi, slide share and scribd. Using these software's wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for gaining experience with blogger, as I wouldn’t have been able to embed each document onto the blog.

Cannon DSLR

With regards to the hardware I used throughout both my prelim and my main task I used the same cannon camera. However, I think based on the standard of images this wouldn’t be evident. For my preliminary activity all of my images were similar as the majority of them were medium close-ups. For my main task however I decided to do a large range of different shots. For example on my cover alone I have both a close-up shot of one singular character, and a distance shot of a band performing on stage. Gaining experience with the camera allowed me to use the camera more efficiently, as I knew which shot would look best at which angle.