Question 6 – What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing

this product?

Sean Doel

Hardware

Hardware is the physical equipment that I have used to make my music magazine. These are things such as: • The Apple Mac• The Keyboard • The mouse • Camera • SD card and reader

The Apple MacThis is the Apple Mac that I used to make my Media magazine.• Processor – Intel Core 2 Duo (2 GHz)• RAM (Random Access Memory) – 1GB (667 MHz)

I had never used a Mac before I started this project. At first I found it very difficult and it took a while to adjust to using one. After a while I found it much easier to get used to and became better at using it. I found it especially useful for the tasks which involved using/editing pictures

The Mouse + Keyboard• I found the mouse different to what I would use on a Windows Pc. The

main reason for this is that on a Mac there is not a separate left and right click button.

• The main reason for the mouse is to click, drag and edit the things on the screen.

• The keyboard is very similar to any other keyboard on the market. The are some subtle differences such as keyboard shortcuts. An example of this is to screenshot you would use Cmd + Shift + 3 or Cmd + Shift 4.

The Camera For my music magazine is was necessary to use many photos that I had to take myself. For this I used a Nikon D3100 which is a SLR camera. • It has 14.8 million pixelsBecause of the high amount of megapixels and also the quality of the shutter I was able to take very detailed and high quality photos. I also had access to to a white screen and strobe lighting. This further enhanced the photos as it adds lighting to make the pictures stand out.

SD Card and Reader

• When I took the photos for the music magazine they were stored on an SD Card on the camera.

• To get them off of the camera I had to use a USB card reader to put them onto the Mac.

• From there I would save them onto the Mac so I could use them and edit it.

Software

• Software are the programs that are used to do things on the hardware. These are things such as:

• Photoshop• InDesign• PowerPoint • Word

Photoshop

• Photoshop is the program that I used to make most of the pages of my music magazine. It is very useful for many features to do with graphics and photo editing. These are some examples as to what I used it for and the different tools that the program incorporates:

This is the tool that is used to move the different components around on the page.

This is the magnetic lasso tool and this is used for when a picture needs to be cut out. It automatically follows the lines that need to be cut.

This is the fill bucket. It is used for when something needs to be coloured such as any boxes on the page.

This is the text tool. It is used to write words on the page. I used it for the front cover and also the contents page.

InDesign

• InDesign was the program that I used for the article page of my music magazine. This is because InDesign is very good for pages that involve lots of text as it makes it very easy to adjust and edit it. InDesign partnered well with Photoshop for the article page as the graphics were done on Photoshop and the text editing was done on InDesign.

When using InDesign the page had to be set as landscape as it was a double page spread.

I also had to set the page up in A3 so that each side of the paper would be an A4 size page.

This is the tool that is used to move things around on the page.

With this box I could change the layout of the text and the spaces between the paragraphs.

With this box I could change things such as the colours and effects used on the text.

Microsoft Word + PowerPoint

• Microsoft Word and PowerPoint were very useful in the planning, analysing and reviewing parts of the music magazine.

• I used Word to write the script for my main article page. This was useful because it made it easy to paste it into InDesign.

• PowerPoint was useful for the analysis and the reviews of the questions. Most of the review questions were made using PowerPoint as it was effective at getting the information across.