Evaluation 6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

For this product i used a few various pieces of technology. The first being a digital camera to take the pictures. It was important that i learnt to make sure i used the correct settings for the photos being taken, long short close ups, moving images etc. The mastering of the technology was easy enough as its something i use on a regular basis, however getting the technique of the shots right was the important part, making sure the lighting was right and the focus was right, this was the difficult part of the picture taking process but i feel i overcame it well.

The other main piece of technology i had to learn to use correctly was photo shop. This took alot of work to accomplish, considering this is a very high tech professional piece of software i believe that my final product i created was pretty well giving my lack of experience on the software. I learnt how to use various aspects of the software like mastering how to use the magnetic lasso tool, this could be a painstakingly slow process and required alot of concentration on the photo or image you are trying to cut of it all messes up and you find yourself having to start again. Adjustment of the brightness and colours on the page was also another tricky task, it was difficult to not always select all the layers which could then change everything as opposed to just the one bit you wanted to edit. The the use of the hue and saturation elements of the programme. The use of the magic wand was also another skill i feel i mastered to perfect my work. This allowed you to select whole chunks of information at a time, however in doing this it could sometimes not always select the right things, it was important it was only used on simple things like text or it would not work correctly.

To show what i have learnt in the progression of the project i have included a construction analysis of the front page of my blog below to demonstrate the tools i used and what i learnt.

I started by gathering myself a background, this is a grey background of a wall in the underground tunnel, this will serve as a good back layer underneath the other backgrounds.

The i added a black square background over the top of the grey layer and added on a textual effect to this layer, this text was found on DaFont.com , then creating this merged two layers together to make this black background and text as one layer.

Cutting out my main band image, and erasing the two further back members who don't fit in the image well and cutting out the image of the train using the magnetic lasso tool i then add these two images to the page. ( of magnetic lasso tool bar, image during process of being cut, and page so far)

I then have added Bright blue lines, along the banner where the headline is and the top and bottom of the black part of the background, this then makes these areas stand out, it also starts to show a development in the page as it seems to be coming together better. This is done simply using the paint tool.

I then added the title which was again discovered at Dafont.com, this I then edited by using the blue colour again, selecting it with the dropper tool, then using the paint tool drawing the blue around the title, this is a long process and incredibly fiddly.

I then added the barcode and poster images along the bottom of the page, this i done again by simply by selecting these images and pasting them onto the photo shop document and resizing them. The blue effect around the edge of the posters was again made in the same way at the title had, using the paint brush tool.

I then added all the text onto the page, this was done simply using the texts on the photo shop software, Changing the PLUS to blue was done easily by using the tin of paint tool and using the dropper to select the correct colour.