Question 6

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

After starting this project, I have learnt how to use certain technologies such as Photoshop and PhotoPlus in order alter or manipulate images that I would want to use on my final music magazine product. In addition to this, I have used a professional SLR camera, Prezi and even Blogger. Therefore, a lot of the examples of screenshots, images and Prezi slides have been documented on this blog.

Also on this slide, I will document the screenshots that I took when going through the design process for my cover and contents page on Photoshop.

The first screenshot on the left shows how I altered the brightness and contrast of the image which I chose to use as the main image on my magazine front cover. I did this because when I first edited the image to make it black and white, the image was too dark and the background was too light. Therefore by altering the brightness I made it appear lighter and the contrast made it appear more clear. Also, the image on the right shows how I zoomed in on the image so that I could see a close up shot of the boys face. I then used the “Spot Healing Brush” which allowed me to click on the areas of skin which I wanted to blur, therefore I chose to use this on the face so that it looked clear and professional, but not too airbrushed.

After looking again at the image I chose to use, I found that it looked slight unprofessional as the audience would be able to tell that the young man was wearing a fake tattoo sleeve. Therefore, by using the Spot Healing Brush, I made the line of the sleeve more discreet by blurring it, then copy and pasting a section of the sleeve to “wrap” around the circular shape of the watch. This made the tattoo look more real and therefore made the image look more professional.

These two screenshots document what my final cover looked like. When designing this magazine cover in particular, I tried to apply the many recognisable codes and conventions, such as a pug, cover lines and bottom strip. The image on the right shows the strip of Layers that I used on Photoshop and how I have included all the features which relate to the RnB genre.

This screenshot shows how I began to design my magazine contents page on Page Plus. By using the colour tab, I used the paint tool and the drop down menu of fonts to get the exact same style for the word “Contents” as the masthead. This programme did not allow me to edit the image, so I opened the image in Photoshop and altered the brightness and contrast, then copied the image back into the Page Plus programme. Also, I tried to maintain a regular house style throughout my magazine by using the brown/white/black/red colour scheme. On the list of features on the contents page, I highlighted the Chris Brown interview in the familiar brown colour, so that the audience can easily recognise that it is the main story in the magazine.