Anita's Evaluation Q6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learnt a lot about new technology in the process of making my music magazine. The software that I used was Microsoft Publisher and Adobe Photoshop to construct the actual magazine and edit the photos. I have also used websites such as Slide Share and Slide.com to present my research and photos on. I have also learnt more about camera technologies and lenses.

Microsoft Publisher

I used Publisher to construct the front page, contents page and double page spread. I have learnt how to create a double page spread within it. It gave a clean professional look to our magazine. We experimented with the different tools and ways of using text boxes etc. We also used different sized fonts for the quotes within our double page spread. The text boxes and photos were easy to move around and arrange in Publisher.



Photoshop

I used Photoshop to manipulate all my photos. I have experience from doing photography as my other subject and also as a hobby outside of school, however, it was difficult to manipulate images for music magazine purposes, as it had to be a particular genre (in my case, funk music). I took a lot of different sets of photos to experiment with the content that would suit my magazine, and then I tried different editing techniques that would suit the magazine (construction example 1 and 2)



Google Picasa 3

I have also used a free software from google which lets me view photos easily. I also used it make collages of our draft designs.



Websites

In the course of writing my evaluation, I have experimented with different ways of presenting my work so it's easier to read and view. I have used slide share and also learnt a lot about blogger and the other tools in it such as adding hyper links, photos and videos.

Camera technologies

In the first set of photos of The Subverts I had a problem of taking the photos in low light, and I had to turn my ISO up to 1600 so that the photos came out really grainy and with a lot of noise. I found it hard to reduce the blur and also make sure that the people in the photos were correctly exposed. I then researched different types of lenses and found that I need a lens with a wider aperture so that more light goes into the camera and I could use a faster shutter speed as well as making sure the exposure was right. I then found this portrait lens and bought it to improve the quality of my images as I didn't have professional studio lights for my photos.