Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

When I began to construct my music magazine, the first piece of technology that I had to use was an Apple Mac. I have never used or worked on a Mac before as I have always used my Microsoft PC. I found that using a Mac for its specialised use became very fluent and easy to do after I had completed my preliminary tasks.

Before creating my preliminary product, I attempted to use the software programme called InDesign, I originally planned to use this for my preliminary task but found that it was too complex for the task that I had to complete with my current Mac experience. After opting against using InDesign, I decided to use a program called Pages. This programme was much easier to learn how to use in a short space of time and enables me to use this particular program more confidently, efficiently and to its full potential. I created this basic page to experiment with page layouts using InDesign. I used their text wrapped feature to enable me to insert an image around the text. I also used a feature to allow me to create a ‘two deck’ headline.

This was the trial draft for my contents page for my magazine, I used Pages to create this draft and then with this result I created my final product using Pages as well.

The camera that I used to take the pictures that were in my draft were taken on my iPhone 5s, I used the iSight camera as it produced pictures that were a high enough quality for my draft product. I was also very easy to use as I was already familiar with how it worked. I was also very easy to transfer my images onto the Mac as both pieces of hardware were Apple so they were compatible with each other.

 I then went onto using a DSLR camera to take my pictures for my final product as I felt that to have a product that looked sufficient, I required higher quality images. Fortunately, I had a friend that familiarised me with how the camera worked so I could use it to its full potential during a gig, where the band was performing.

I then went on to edit these images in Apple Mac’s preview software, as I didn’t want the background in some of the image and it allowed me to have a smoother crop, which resulted in the image looking higher quality. I used the lasso selection tool to remove most of the background, as the majority of it was black.

I then imported my images into Photoshop to adjust elements like lighting and colour balance as the lighting as the gig was constantly changing and I found it difficult to time the image capture with good lighting. My final images looked more professional and fitted in with the rest of my magazine.

After all of my images were edited to the standard I was happy with, I imported them into Pages. With this I then positioned them in the places indicated in my draft. Unfortunately, I found that my images has became transparent in the Photoshop editing process so I then used the online photo editing software site called Pixlr, I found this a lot easier to use that Photoshop so I used this site for quickness and convenience. I layer the image to make it less transparent, saved and the imported it back into Pages. Finally, I used Microsoft word to type up my articles but came into an issue when attempting to copy and paste the text. However, I resolved this issue with converting the document into a Rich Text format.