Magazine Evaluation - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The process of creating the product has helped me greatly to learn new skills in software and camera. I was required to use and think more about the technology I used in order to make my task more effective. I believe that with the experience I've learnt in this task, it will be a huge benefit when I must carry out similar tasks in the future. I also believe that how I now use the camera when it comes to lighting and editing the pages has greatly improved during the process of this project.

During my preliminary task I didn't use InDesign at all because I just couldn't learn how to use it effectively in order t maintain the quality of work I had originally planned. I just found that designing my magazine in Photoshop was so much easier than doing it all in Indesign. Now I realise the real benefits of InDesign and have managed to work with it.

I used a my own Cannon camera as well as a school one to take my images. I now know how to use both much better than I did previously, from different settings in lighting and contrast to how to use depth of field to create a more engaging image. This has helped me not only for future use in school projects but for personal use as well.

When comparing my Front pages and Contents Pages from the school and music magazine I can see the strengths of my work and how I have improved. I can see how better use of mise-en-scene has made the music magazine look far more presentable and professional. The photography is much better with more interesting images and better use of lighting, this knowledge of camera effects and presentation is something I didn't know much about when first starting the project.

The online technologies I used were Blogger, Prezi, Dropbox (to transfer files from school to home) and SlideShare. I now see how effective they are in presenting work in a more interesting way like I have done in previous posts. My better use of ICT technologies in this task will help me in both this and other subjects in the future when it comes to presenting and documenting work and progress. Before this task I found creating a Prezi was very challenging and I could barely create a mediocre one, now I can create them with ease as I used it multiple times during my evaluation.

Finally, I have always felt the using Photoshop was my strongest part of my work, I had never struggled with creating what I wanted but I faced more problems in the music magazine than I did for the school one. These problems helped me improve in my ability. This was the first task that did cause me to find ways round tricky problems that I previously didn't know how to fix. One example being adding colour correction to the model on the double page, I wanted him to have a similar look to how professional magazines have theirs, with the use of the internet and messing about with the software, I found a professional looking colour correction.