What have you learnt about technologies from the process of construct-ing the product?

Throughout the course of forming my music magazine, I have used a range of applications and equipment. Some applications I have had previ-ous experience with such as Pho-toshop but using Photoshop again has formed an addition to the skill I already acquire to use it. A pro-gramme I haven’t been that familiar with is Adobe Indesign. As this is my first time using the programme, I have progressed from how I was at the beginning of the course, before my magazine had been finished, as apposed to the end of the course, when I have finished my magazine. The media programmes in general all add the simplicity of creating a magazine look authentic and as real as it can possibly be. Photoshop is simple, once learnt, how to edit pictures to add to the magazine product and Indesign for the maga-zine structure itself is easy to teach new users how to create a new and realistic looking magazine. When using Photoshop, I used a range of methods to edit images such as removing backgrounds of my taken images through colour range, and then added a mask to remove or add any excess parts which have been left out of the image itself. Then

additional effects were used such as refine edge to sharpen/soften edges and addition smoothing effects to finalise the image. Also when taking the images itself which I used for my magazine, I used a range of technological equip-ment such as, cameras, lights, back-ground screens etc. as a result from taking the images myself and having hand on experience taking the im-ages, it has furthermore helped me progress in using these tools and helped me gain knowledge of how to use them in the future. When using the camera, I used a canon 550 DSLR; and there have been a number of benefits from using this camera. As I have used this camera before it is not completely rare for me, one main part of it being helpful is the simple fact that it is digital. As it is digital, I can take many photos in a fast period of time, unlike using a non digital and having to get the picture printed etc. As taking the pictures was made easy, deleted the ones I didn’t like was even easier with a digital camera. While doing this I also got another camera to be taken of the shots from a ‘behind the scenes’ perspective.

Here is an image of the camera I used taken by myself.

Once I took all my images using the digital camera, I then uploaded them and the first programme I used was Adobe Photoshop. This was very easy to use for me as I have even used it before, and I used Photo-shop’s simplicity to my advantage. I used the colour range tool and mask tool to remove the white back-grounds of the photos I have taken, which was fairly easy due to the equipment I had set up previously during the photo shoot.

Having these multiple options for taking my images (for example having different colour background screens) have also helped with the variety added to my magazine im-ages as they then don’t have to be kept all the same, in the same kind of way, also having the option for

different methods of doing the main photos such as different types of cameras available, also helps add to the experience being used with the cameras and all other equipment provided.

The internet was also a tool I used very frequently as it helped me gain knowledge about music magazines as there are plenty of ways to further my knowledge about music maga-zines such as examples of work, im-ages of magazine pages etc. Through the internet, I have used more tools through it to do many of my work such as Prezi, blogger, Issu, etc.