Throughout the process of making my final products, I feel as though I have learnt a huge amount about different technology and how to use it in order to get the best results from it.
The first piece of technology I used was my Sony Cybershot 12.1megapixel camera, as I used it to take all my photographs for my final pieces. As I brought the camera brand new it took a lot of time getting used to the different settings on it and when to use a certain setting or lighting in order to get the best effect. However for my preliminary task I used a different camera which only contained 8 megapixels, this meant that the photo quality and resolution was a better by 4 megapixels.
However during the main production of my product I used a technology software programme called Photoshop in order to manipulate all my images and create my three final pieces. Throughout the process I learnt a lot about Photoshop as I had very little experience with it in the past. I learnt how many of the features worked and how to use them appropriately. The first feature I mastered was the layering as every time you added something new to your work you had to do a new designated layer of which you can go back and edit any time without affecting any other surrounding images or text you may also have on the page. Layers are very useful as you can easily move them around, turn them on and off and also delete them without deleting anything else on your work. The one thing I found particularly hard about layers is that you have to move which ever layer you want to be the dominant one on top e.g. if you want a picture over the top of your masthead you have to put the picture layer above the masthead layer, this can be difficult sometimes when you have many different layers. I also learnt how to use the gradient tool as I used this tool in order to drag the black background across the page to darken one side of my models face slightly as I wanted to portray her as turning bad. Furthermore I used the dodge and burn tool, I used the burn tool to darken one side of her face with along with some of the patches I wanted to darken more and the dodge tool to lighten the other half of her face and her eyes. These two tools came in great use as they highlighted the lights and dark to create great contrast. Another tool that was useful was the magic wand tool as I used this tool to create my film strip on my double page spread. I put all the different photographs on different layers, I then placed the film strip in a layer on top and clicked inside the empty spaces of the film strip with the magic wand and my photos appeared behind the film strip to create a very eye catching photo collection of my model. Another feature I found useful was the toolbox as you could change the brightness, saturation, size, shape and numerous more things of the image. Finally I used the crop tool often in order to crop pictures to fit the space I had to use or to get rid of a background in the back of the photo that I did not want there and also the Lasso tool to cut something out. I also learnt basic skills like how to fill things with colour via the filling bucket, how to add text, change the colour, size and font of the text and move things around using the drag tool.
Although these were the two main technology products I used to create my products I also used Mac computers to do the work on, the internet to search and analysis other music magazines and finally a USB to save all my work on just in case the computer crashed or any technical errors were raised.
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