Evaluation: Q6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

Prior to this project, I was quite familiar with Photoshop so I was able to get started straight away with editing my phones in a professional manner. In GCSE media, I was taught the basic skills of Photoshop and how different tools are used to create certain effects. I have previously used Actions on Photoshop which are preset edits which enable you to 'play' the edit onto your image. I gave my images an authentic and rustic look which fits within the genre of the magazine and makes the overall image appear more classy and professional. Using these Action effects enable me to grasp the vibe of the magazine that I wouldn't have necessarily been able to capture without the tool. I also used the Magic tool a lot to remove the background from images, as well as the Patch tool to remove any small blemishes and make the image appear more soft. I enjoyed playing around with the brightness and hue's of the images as well, to make the colours appear more vivid on the magazine to really capture the essence of the magazine.

InDesign is a much more professional program to make magazines opposed to Photoshop. It provides you with a template which you can input onto each page, (eg. page numbers, issue numbers). This made the flow and creation of my magazine much quicker and really sped up the process of creating my magazine. This also allowed me to focus more on the content instead of wasting time creating necessary boxes which I would have had to create in Photoshop. The text input in InDesign allows you to fit your text around photos in a very simplistic way - Text wrap lets you select a picture and the text automatically fits around the picture just like that! You can also change the distance of which you which the text wrap fits around. InDesign also features a tool called Paragraph Styles; this enables you to set each part of text to a particular setting where it basically forms a duplicate of the main set style. This makes it a lot more easy and quick to create text such as titles and subheadings as you don't need to keep going back and change the font style and size for each format. You are also able to make colour swatches and save them onto the document so it was a lot easier to get the colours of my house style quickly when I needed them without losing them. Each tool I used on InDesign added a new, professional look to my magazine which made it clear as to why top magazine editors use this software to create their magazines. It's very quick, easy and reliable whilst creating an incredible end result. I found it very easy to work with and believe that these little changes really go a long way in contrast to Photoshop which all add up to make the final product look more appealing to the audience.

To take my images, I used a Canon SLR camera as it enabled me to take high quality images which is mandatory for any successful magazine. As my magazine needed to be completed to the best of my ability, I felt it was necessary to use a white screen as it allows the audience to focus on the model and nothing else. White screens are effective because they are very simple and plain, and can easily be edited on softwares such as Photoshop to enhance the image. The lights enabled me to change the way my images appeared and allowed me to create the best looking images for my shoot, and the lights also allowed me to cast the shadow I wanted so that the editing process was a lot easier and smoother. The lights and the SLR camera were the most important to me as they created high quality images which made my magazine look professional and realistic.