Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

For contructing my magazine front cover I used Adobe Photoshop CS2, for my contents page and double page spread I used QuarkXpress. I had very little previous experience with both programs before starting this project.

QuarkXpress:

 

I used Quark to create my contents page and Double Page Spread. The program is used by professionals all over the world and has all the tools necessary to create very attractive documents. Upon starting to use this program I soon found out how to include images, text, different fonts etc at great ease. I found it very helpful that you can create columns very easily and the text will flow smoothly through the layout you have created. I have been very impressed with what you can do on Quark and would definately use it again rather than move to another program such as Photoshop to make my contents and double page spread.

Adobe Photoshop:

Before starting this project I had not used photoshop at all, it seemed quite alien to me but it soon became an incredibly useful tool for me.

 

 It was quite a hard program to get used to mainly because there is so much you can do with it. Once I had grasped the basics I started to edit photos with the greatest of ease. I specifically found the Stamp Tool to be a great function. Creating professional looking photos was definately a big part of my magazine creation. I created my front cover with Photoshop, using fonts, colours and layering images throughout. Being able to manipulate images and text endlessly creates a very good user-friendly system. It was easy to create exactly what I wanted with not a lot of hassle. I learnt a lot about the layering on Photoshop throughout my learning, they can be used to help in a variety of ways. Linking some together and rasterizing them helped me greatly. To be able to use the photo editing functions of Photoshop I had to learn how to use a Digital single lens reflex DSLR camera, I had used similar cameras before so this was not too hard for me to use. I did pick up some tips though on how to take a good picture that will go well in a magazine. I think I have used some good images throughout.

Blogger:

I have used Blogger all the way through my coursework to keep track of and manage all my work and learning. It is a very easy to use website and has been very useful for me when looking back and work and storing images etc.

Changing the appearance of my blog has been very easy and looks very attractive. Throughout blogging my work I have been including screenshots, videos and slideshows very easily. This has helped me to show my work in quite unconventional ways and makes the blog a lot more 'readable'.

Windows Movie Maker and Digital Video Camera:

I decided to gain some feedback on my magazine from a few people who agreed to be interviewed for their opinions. For this is used a Sony Digital video camera, I had used this before so had knowledge of how to work it as well as use a tripod.

A program I was unfamiliar with was Windows Movie Maker which I have on my laptop at home. This program was very helpful to me and was very simple to use. It enabled me to edit the videos I had of the interviews and add a soundtrack to make the videos a lot more interesting. I decided to make one of my videos black and white rather than colour, this was very simple and gave a good effect. Learning how to edit videos on this program will be helpful throughout my time at college and hopefully further into life.


YouTube:

Once I had filmed the interviews on a digital camera and edited them appropriately for my blog I had to find a way to embed them for simple viewing. The best way to do this was to use YouTube, I have uploaded videos to YouTube before this project so this wasn't a hard task for me, I did have to learn how to embed the video to my blog though. This is a very simple process that involves using the HTML code editor in Blogger. Having these videos on my blog has been very useful as I can evaluate the answers given in the interviews and refer back to the answers with great ease.