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

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The two main forms of technology that I used when creating my magazine was Adobe Photoshop and Indesign. Both Adobe Photoshop and Indesign are a software which allows me to create professional and realistic products with good quality outcomes opposed to using a software such as Paint. Adobe Photoshop is the best software to edit photos and remove the white back drop as it leaves a good quality photo that can be then used on other backgrounds. However I didn’t create my magazine using Photoshop as I did for GCSE. Instead I used a more advanced and professional software; Indesign.

Photoshop is the best software in order to remove the white back drop from the images as when I had finished cutting the background I was then able to edit my photos by either changing the colour levels or adding an effect to them. When adding an effect to a photo that has been taken outdoors makes the photo appear more professional as when taking the photo I used a canon 5500 1.8f 50mm lens which blurs the background and focuses on the model. To remove the white back drop off an image I clicked on Select and a drop down menu appeared, I then selected Colour Range and a new box appeared on screen. I used the ‘Add to sample’ picker to pick out the white background and when I was happy with my sample I clicked OK. I then right clicked and selected ‘Select Inverse’, all this means is that the dotted lines are now around my image and not around the background. I then edited my photo in ‘Quick Mask Mode’; I did this by filling my image with the paint brush tool in black. When I had finished this I right clicked and clicked ‘layer via copy’ and I had no white background on my image. I was then able to put my photo on a different coloured background.

I created my magazine using Indesign, this is the software that is used to make actual magazine. By using Indesign it enabled me to use tools and features that would allow me to produce a successful magazine. Compared to Photoshop the text wrap on Indesign is a lot better and easier to use, by using text wrap it allows you to have text going around an image and it fills in all the spaces available leaving you with no uneven white gaps. Another good feature used in Indesign is the ability to be able to make the edges around the photos round; I have used this in my double page spread where I have created a montage of different photos. Another good feature of using InDesign is the double pages, this allowed be to create an A3 contents page and spreads. By having these in A3 also allowed me to write a fair amount of text. I was also able to download a font off the internet and insert it onto InDesign to use for my masthead and sell lines. I found this quite useful as I was then able to make my magazine stand out instead of just having a plain boring font such as ‘Times New Roman’.

During this course I have been documenting all my work onto a blog; this is an easy and useful way for me to upload all my work. I used many different formats when creating my work, such as Microsoft word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Prezi, images and videos. When creating work on Microsoft word and PowerPoint I had to use Scribd, this is a very useful website where I was able to convert and publish my work as this allowed me to embed my work onto blogger. Another software that I used when planning my magazine was Prezi, this allowed me to create small presentations similar to PowerPoint but with more interaction as there are many paths with zooms, these paths enable you to navigate though each part of the presentation. I also used a software called Cam-studio, this enabled me to make a video of the progression of my work. For example when creating my preliminary task. Cam-studio allows you to record what’s happening on the screen; this could be by showing how you created a product or how you removed the background of an image.

The camera that I used when doing my photo shoot was a canon 5500 this is a professional camera that takes good quality images, this is because you can change the camera lens to suit the type of location such as when taking photos outside you can change the camera lens to 1.8f 50mm lens. As the camera is digital I was able to look through the photos when taking the pictures and delete the photos that I didn’t need as opposed to not using a digital camera as you would be waiting till the photo was printed, also you wouldn’t have been able to see if the photo was at a good quality. When I had finished my photo shoot it was easy to transfer the photos onto the computer. I did three photo shoots; they were based in the studio and in a location outside. In the studio I had a white back drop with professional lighting that would flash when I had taken a photo. By taking the photos in the studio with these lights enabled me to have a more professional quality image.