6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

When I first started the media course in September, one of my weakest points in my personal review was my Photoshop skills. During the construction of my product, I gradually became better on this program, and I am personally very happy and overwhelmed with how much more I know now about Photoshop, so this was a personal best for me. In order to develop these skills, I downloaded Photoshop onto my MacBook, this way I could practice various things in my own time, and also get used to working on my laptop as I had just got it at the beginning of construction. I felt that this project acted as bonding time also for my laptop and me as I was slowly figuring out how to properly use it. It was also very useful as I had all of my work on my laptop ready to work with whenever I wanted. Plus, we have Apple Macs in the classroom which I used for some of my construction as well as my own. At the start of the year, I had had very little experience from a Mac point of view and I personally highlighted that I needed to improve on this. Now, I am more confident with Macs and I feel that you achieve the best results on Apple Computers, this is because everything to me is set out in a professional and smart format, you can print screen easily, use Photoshop as well as other softwares, and have your work located on the desktop so it is easy to find (you can do all of this on most standard laptops and computers, but I just prefer Apple) Also, I had never heard of the program ‘InDesign’, and I had no idea how to use it. I managed to then create a product on this software, and I also figured something out that everyone using InDesign had an issue with, and I was very proud of myself for this. Within Photoshop, the Magnetic Lasso tool and the Curve tool were very useful for me and helped the construction of my product easier, the Shape and Fill Tools were also beneficial. And with InDesign, I would say that knowing how to wrap text around your images is crucial for a successful creation, if I couldn’t do this, then my pages would have been deeply affected. And, knowing to change the quality of the page from standard to high is also very important. Otherwise, your work looks blurred and unclear (this is what I figured out). In both of these software’s, it is important to know about the different layers and how the order of them can affect your product. Luckily, I have previously used Photoshop and I know from experience how important it is to make sure your layers are in the right order. I feel that both Photoshop and InDesign contributed to the success of this task for me, InDesign helped me with lining up

my text in even columns and enabling clear reading for my reader, also Photoshop helped me with creating the smaller details for my product, such as page numbers and Mastheads. I initially had no idea how to use InDesign, but after watching tutorials on YouTube, I gained more of a better idea of how to use it, and it took time, but I eventually got the hang of it. On the photo front, I had no issues with this as I have been doing Photography for five years now, so I am familiar with equipment and how to get a good result from an image. If my images didn’t turn out the desired way, I would simply re-shoot. Having my twin sister as my model was very convenient and if I needed her, she would always is ready within ten minutes. I would then go into Photoshop to edit my images, and I rarely did anything to them besides increase the Curve, this gave my images a nice light result that wasn’t too harsh or bright to the reader’s eyes, it also made my images look more clearer than they already were. I used a Nikon D3200 for all of my images and I really like this style of camera, as the image quality is amazing. For most of the images, I used a standard setting as I had all of the lights in the studio to support the camera and brighten my image. However, when I wasn’t in the studio, I experimented with the aperture settings on the camera, this altars how much focus is in an image, it also changes the lightness of the image if it is too high. I went for a setting of around 11-12 for my images of Tom’s Pick and the Merch Collection and I was very happy with the results. I also used the lens to zoom in on many of my photos, I did make sure that I didn’t zoom in too far however, as this would have made my images look slightly out of proportion and uneasy to look at.