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

Millie Bevan

Before my media productBefore I started the construction not only of my final media product but the preliminary task I was never aware of the wide range of programs available that I would be able to create it with. Using various programs allowed me to discover how creative you can be with your work. During the production of my music magazine I have used the following programs: • Photoshop• Microsoft Publisher• Microsoft PowerPoint• Slide share• Blogger• Sound cloud• Google drives – Google docs, forms etc• Different qualities of camera

PhotoshopBefore creating my magazine I had used Photoshop briefly in other subjects for other purposes however never fully understood it to its full capacity. I discovered a new amount of tools that can be used to create completely different effects, for example textures, changing the opacity, brightness, hues, tones and contrast of the image to change how it affects the audience/its importance. I also learnt how layers work together and are important in the ease of using Photoshop as a program. As the pictures I took usually had a background that I didn’t want to use for my final piece I used the magic wand tool and the quick selection tool which quickly select large chunks of the background and allow you to erase them immediately, this was useful because it saved a lot of time. A few other tools I often used was the blur tool to blur the edges of my images to make them softer and less sharp as this wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. I used the black and white effect and the opacity tuner the most on my images because I believe it fitted best with my colour scheme and theme throughout my product.

BloggerSharing work with my peers and my teacher over a blog was a totally new experience to me before this. I had never used a blog before and was unaware of the benefits it has. It is a fast and free way to publish your work not only to selected people but allows it to be viewed by anyone in the world. Blogger was easy to navigate which is a plus side for beginners like myself. Once you have published your posts you are able to go back and edit them and also rearrange the order they appear on your blog. Using blogger was a significantly casual approach to sharing my work and this appealed to me and it seemed to my peers also. Using blogger opened my eyes to how many different ways you can publish your work to the masses and also how much we can rely on technologies in the modern day because of how much we can do we them and how useful they really are.

Google driveNot only did we use Google drive for work that was related to the production of our product yet also theory work also. Google drive has numerous aspects to it that ensure your work is kept saved, all in one place and easy to access. The main thing I used on Google drive were the Google docs and Google forms. I used the Google docs to create the text of the interview for the double page spread of my music magazine, it is easy to use and more condensed than something like Microsoft word for example. I used the Google forms to create the questionnaire that I conducted as my audience research. On Google drive it is easy to share your work with any other Google user that you might want to, for instance your teacher or peers which condenses a lot of technologies into one, which is a lot less hassle than having different documents all over the place which shows you just how much a simple program can save effort, time and efficiency.

CamerasFirstly when I started to take images for my final production piece I was using my iPhone 5 camera which is 8 megapixels, with 1.5µ size pixels. I found whilst using this for my images that they often came out blurry and didn’t focus as well as id hoped. The capacity for images on a smartphone is not as much as a digital camera itself which meant when sending my pictures over to a computer I could only choose from limited sizes, this then affected the quality of my images and meant I had to edit them more in Photoshop. Using a camera phone allows you to transfer images easily by a cable or even simply by email. I then started to use a digital camera to take my pictures and I found they improved significantly, the image was more crisp, better colour and focus also. As it was better quality it prevented me doing too much editing when it came to using them for my magazine which overall for me was much better. Here are a comparison of two images, the first taken by a camera phone and second taken by a digital camera: