AS RE-TAKE: Evaluation Question 6

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

I have used many different technologies in the process of constructing this product. To take my pictures I used a Canon EOS 1000D camera. This was my second time using the camera, with the first time being in the preliminary task; therefore I have had the chance to learn how to use this technology beforehand. The camera was put on a normal program with an auto flash on top of the camera to remove shadows from the model’s face.

I made sure that the camera was in the correct orientation when taking pictures. I took my pictures in a portrait orientation to fit as much of the subject as possible, excluding the unnecessary background which is why I chose to have a plain white background. At this point, I did find it difficult in getting my camera to focus well in few of my pictures. Below are two images, one is a focused image and the other is an unfocused image. I knew not to use an unfocused image in my magazine because this does not look professional at all.

A focused image shows all of the aspects in the image very clearly, while an unfocused image is quite blurry and does not show all of the aspects in the image clear enough. As a result, I chose to use the focused image on my front cover.

Focused image             Unfocused image

Another piece of technology that I used was Blogger via the Internet. I created an online account on Blogger.com – a blog publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. I didn’t find it easy at first to understand the service’s concept, for example, I cannot copy and paste images into a post unless it is converted into JPG, GIF or PNG files where I can then have upload them. Another example includes the fact that I have to copy and paste text from Microsoft Word to my post on Blogger. I also found it difficult to place images side by side and label them with text boxes, as it kept on moving to other positions preventing me from making creative displays of my work. This was time consuming and can be quite frustrating when texts and images appear in the wrong positions. However, I was able to overcome these weaknesses as I invested a lot more time in using Blogger, resulting in a decent record of my work put together.

Furthermore, I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 to help me create and edit my images with impact. My main use was to add text and edit images; I had already experienced using Photoshop in my preliminary task so I found it a lot easier to use it this time round. In my contents page, I added a thumbnail of my front cover and edited this by using Blending Options to add a drop shadow effect. To create texts boxes as well I used the Rectangle Tool and to make my pictures have a white background I used the magic eraser tool.

Thumbnail of front cover

Using magic eraser tool

To know how to do this I used YouTube to help me look at how to edit the photos on Photoshop. I watched video tutorials which were very handy and extremely helpful for me as I didn’t know what kind off tools to use in order to make my front cover and double page spread image have a white background. I decided to have a white background on my images because it makes texts and the colours stand out against the page.