Question 6: Technology – What have you learnt about technologies from

the process of constructing this product?

Hardware

Hardware is all the equipment and physical things that have been used in order to create the ending product.

Examples of hardware I have used:

Apple MAC computer

Mouse and Keyboard

Fujifilm finepix

iPhone 5

Apple MAC computer

The Apple MAC has been the main piece of hardware that I have used to create my magazine. It is the Mac OS X, version 10.6.8. Using it has allowed me to use the main piece of software I used – photoshop. By using this I had to learn many different things as it is different from windows computers, things such as dragging a picture straight onto the desktop and inserting them from there. But by using it, it has allowed me to create a more professional looking ending product due to the use of photoshop and indesign which are not available on windows computers.

Mouse and Keyboard

The keyboard and mouse have allowed me to be able to control the Apple MAC. The Model Number of the mouse I have used is A1152 and the model number for the Keyboard I’ve used is A1242. The keyboard took some getting used to as it things were in different places and it could do different things, such as being able to adjust the brightness and volume and also being able to take screenshots.

Fujifilm Finepix S8200

This camera has 16 megapixels; Sensor type: CMOS; Optical zoom: 40x; HD video: Full HD 1080p.It had many different setting options for me to choose from to suit the location that I was in, there was also effects on the camera that I could select if I chose to do this. I used the indoor setting in order for the lighting to be correct. Before you take the photo, you half push down the button for the camera to focus and then you push it down all the way for it to take the photo. This function was extremely important as an out of focus picture wouldn’t have been any good.

iPhone 5

Model A1429. I used my iPhone to take a photo at a concert I was at. I used the photo in the contents page of my magazine. In order for the camera to focus on him I had to tap the screen to where I wanted it to focus. By doing this it would also make it easier for him to be seen in the photo. As the lights behind him were really bright and were moving quickly, the phone’s camera would focus on them, leaving him in the darkness.

Software

Software includes all of the programmes on the computer that helped me put my magazine together.

Examples of software I have used:

Photoshop

Indesign

Wordpress

Photoshop

I learnt how to do many new things by using photoshop. I used it to edit photo’s that I took and to plan out and put together my cover, contents page and article.

Going into ‘Image’ and then ‘Adjustments’ gave me the option of many different ways that I could edit my photo’s.

Crop tool

Spot healing brush tool

Move tool

Horizontal type toolLine tool

These are the tools that I most commonly used whilst making my magazine pages.

By going into ‘Filter’ there were more options for ways in which I could edit photo’s.

Indesign

I placed my article that I had prepared on photoshop onto indesign in order for me to place the text on there and have more options with what to do with the text.

This option which is in the upper right corner of the screen allowed me to choose how many columns I wanted my text to be in.

This is the control panel in indesign, I didn’t use many of the options, as I didn’t have that much to do to the text, other than insert it into three columns and re-align it so that it was even.

The reason I used indesign was because it has many more options for text and you can do a lot more with text on here, rather than photoshop. I carefully looked through the fonts until I found some that suited my magazine. I wanted them to be plain but there were lots of different versions of this so it took a few times until I was happy with the font I had chosen.

Wordpress

I used wordpress to keep a log of what I was doing and how my magazine was coming together, using individual posts and creating pages in which I would post.

I also included planning questions for my cover, contents page and article before I did them and some of the idea’s I had didn’t always go just as I thought they would.

I also did posts to show the before and after editing photo’s to show the difference and to show how I made subtle changes that had a big impact.