Question 6

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

Throughout the process of creating my music magazine, I have used a range of programmes and hardware's. The programmes I had used were: Blogger, Glogster, Photoshop, InDesign and Prezi.

Blogger:

This website was one of them main programmes that I had used throughout my magazine production, as this is what I used as a way of presenting my work that I had completed over the weeks. Using the website was easy once I knew how to work it, as it was new to me when I first started the coursework.

Glogster
The website was used to present my music scene, to have a rough idea of the music artists that I would be putting in the magazine. I found this website difficult to use, as the images I was adding to the post were not going where I wanted them, and it was a little frustrating, but regardless of this, my intentions were still successful.

Photoshop

I found this programme confusing as I did not know how to use it. This was because I kept forgetting which tool did what, and often used the wrong tool. Mainly I had used filters, the eraser tool, quick selection tool, magic paint brush tool and the refine edge tool. One of the main difficulties I had come across, was getting rid of a background using the eraser, often I had erased some of the needed image instead of the background, but I managed to solve this problem by using the magic paintbrush toll, as it selected all the unwanted areas of the image and it was then easy to delete. However, sometimes this tool would select parts of the needed image, but it had become apparent that I could use the quick selection tool to alter the selected area to remove. Another difficulty I faced when editing photos, was adding items such as filters. I found this difficult, because they were a little hard to get the correct shade of filtering that you wanted, and you had to understand what some of the other options meant in order to find the right tool. Although I had come across a few difficulties, this programme was very helpful in creating the right effect, for example when adding a background image behind the photo used for the double page spread; I made the model image transparent in order for it to go in front of the background, and then used the refine edge tool to make the image look like it was taken in front of the background, instead of being a separate image.

InDesign
This programme was easy to use, as I had worked with it before, so I knew my way around it. The three section dividers on the page design were very helpful when creating my magazine. This was mostly useful when creating the front cover and my double page spread, as I needed to know where to place my content, and I was able to keep to the rule of thirds. The text tool was also very useful to me when creating kickers on my front cover as the text design helped me to create a certain sense of style to it and this was very easy to accomplish.

Prezi
Prezi was very problematic to use. On the main problems I faced when using this, was changing the order of the steps. This slowed down my work progress, as I could not get it to change to the right position, so I had to delete steps that I had previously made to add the other step into the correct position. The text tool in this programme was not very helpful to use, as you only had two text font sizes to choose from, making it hard to fit it in the right place with no over-lapping. Despite this, I still managed to complete the task.

Hardware used : Computers

Computers were used in every lesson to access the previously mentioned programmes, and to also access the internet when doing research. The college computers are very easy to use and find things on, there were no complications with using them.

Finepix Camera
I had used the camera when gathering images to use in my magazine. This was very easy to use, as I did not have to use many buttons or settings on it. The only difficulties I had with this, was I did not know how to turn flash on or off, but the setting was easily found in a drop down menu