Evaluation 6

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

I have learnt many different technologiesI have adapted to using the Mac computers, which before this project I had never used. At first it was strange as the set-up was very unfamiliar to me. All computers that I had used in the past used microsoft windows software, where as this was obviously not the case with the Mac computers All of the icons and programmes were arranged differently, so it took a bit of time for me to get used to it. I liked some features of the Mac computers however, I think that I would have preferred to use a computer with software that I was more familiar with. The main technology that has been vital during the whole production process is the photoshop software. I first used this software when completing my preliminary task. To begin with I 

found it extremely difficult to use. There were so many different settings and tools that made the software just bewildering for someone like me who had never used it before. One tool that I found particularly hard to use was the magnetic lasso tool. I remember using this in both my preliminary task and my main coursework production. I used the tool to cut out people from images and it was a very frustrating process. You needed a very steady hand and lots of patience to be able to cut out the images neatly. I was also new to blogging, i didn't like the idea at first but after i posted some of my work and got used to it i like the idea and found it interesting using different fonts and colours. An advantage of blogger is that it eliminates the large amount of time spent on making a folder look attractive. The main benefits of blogger is that it is simple, quick and teachers can help you at anytime because they have access to this. My camera managed pretty well in these conditions, I had to use the brightest flash available and luckily still managed to get a few amazing photos. I was extremely pleased with the pictures until I uploaded them onto the computer and found that unfortunately many of them looked grainy and not as sharp as I had hoped. Also, due to the bright flash the model's  face looked fluorescent white, with little or no definition showing her features. As the front cover was the first page I produced, much of photoshop was still completely new to me and so it took me a while to find the desired effects I wanted to add to my title. I used the effects column that runs down the right-hand side, combining effects until I was happy with the overall look of my title. Another very useful tool was the scale option on the move tool. This allowed me to re-size any images without stretching or altering the proportion of the image. The eyedropper tool also came in handy, as it allowed me to take a colour from one section of the page and use it for another section or feature on the page. I frequently used it to select the shade of red used for thetitle, so that I could use it elsewhere on the page, helping to keep with the colour scheme of the page.