Through the process of creating this magazine I have learnt a lot of new skills when using technology when in comparison with my preliminary and even my draft magazine and many of these are focused around Photoshop.
Since my preliminary I have learnt a lot more about layering my pieces and how much of a difference one small change in layering can make a big difference. An example of this is my logo from my draft in contrast to my final design logo. The splat effect that I used to show the creative side of the genre got moved from in front of the text to behind it on my final design. I just experimented with this because my feedback told me that the logo seemed a bit too extreme in front of the text. Therefore I changed the layering and the effect now looks a little more subtle and I believe fits the genre of music more now.
A big tool that I learnt about and really enjoyed using during this task would be the filter gallery when trying to manipulate my images before putting them on my magazine. My draft showed a lot of very bland and boring pictures which wouldn’t interest the reader and then stop them from buying it. Therefore I started using the filter gallery for my final design. This was a lot of fun as it allowed me to quickly experiment with a lot of varied yet good quality pre-set effects. Some of these would never suit my genre or a music magazine however with enough experimenting I found the perfect set of effects that I could use and that would suit my magazine well.
I also used custom brushes on my final piece of coursework while they also appeared on my draft work. However my draft work took some criticism for how I used them. Therefore I experimented again and chose a better looking brush that gave a better effect. I used the same custom brush on my title for both my draft and my final design while the smoke effect brush I used during my final piece did change to a more subtle one for a more professional looking and more believable look for my magazine. I started using these to give my magazine a fresh and unique effect which would catch the eye of the reader quickly and hopefully draw them in to my magazine.
Another technique I used was blurring tools. I only used these on my final design and that was because my draft design was a poor looking magazine mainly because of the poor cutting out of my pictures. A good way to use the blur tool is to make the pictures look more rounded and make them look as if they fit in the magazine and are not just layered on top. Again, this tool really helped me create a good quality and attractive magazine with a huge improvement in contrast with my draft design.
However I also learnt one or two skills on other technology while designing my magazine. These overall made a huge difference to my final magazine making it look a lot more professional and believable that it could be a real magazine.
I learnt a lot about photos and how important a good quality camera is. My draft pictures were taken by using my phone which has a five mega pixel camera with a single LED flash. The pictures seemed clear on the phone and when previewed but then when it came to resizing the picture quality dropped massively and left my magazine looking very unprofessional. I therefore then switched to a Sony Xperia Arc S with 8.1 megapixel camera and a single LED flash. These pictures were instantly a huge improvement when they were put into Photoshop. They were better for resizing and gave a better effect when they were manipulated in the filter gallery. This made my magazine look more professional and made a lot more attractive piece. This taught me the lesson that the use of a great quality camera will really help improve the overall look of the magazine.
This project also taught me that there are a huge amount of tips and advice on how to improve your photo shop skills or how to get a very well looking piece scattered on the internet. I used the internet for tips on many things. One example would the tips I searched for online about how to make it easier to cut out images. My draft magazine shows very clearly that my cutting out skill was not exactly brilliant. However with the aid of some tips online I improved and managed to create some good looking images on my final magazine. A second example would be how to use the filter gallery and how to get a good effect on some of my pictures. My draft magazine also showed a very limited skill level when adding effects to my magazine. The internet and the tips I found online helped me find some good effects which I did use on a couple of my pictures, including the double page spread picture which has taken a drastic change since the draft design.
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