skills devel

1. Before this task I wasn’t very good with photoshop as I had only used it twice
before. The preliminary task allowed me to experiment with it however I could
only use the basic tools such as ‘text’ and ‘shapes’.
During this task I found my feet much more. I experimented more with
importing in images; editing images; editing text; using fonts that were not
already on the computer and also with the tools on the tool bar.
I used the lasso tool to
cut off a section of the
head which I then put
back in place to over lap
the masthead.
I edited the spacing between the
lines of text to make it more
compact and close together to
give it the effect I wanted it to
have.
I edited the opacity of the
rectangle behind the main
cover line using the
opacity bar above the list
of layers.
I edited the image itself
by selecting the layer
and the edit option.
The strengths are that it looks like a music
magazine cover page would look like. The fonts
relates to indie/rock, the main image has been
edited to look appealing to the audience.
Although it’s a convincing cover page it could
look slightly more realistic in terms of the plain
background. I could’ve used secondary images to
make the page more interesting.
The easier parts were adding in the text
and shapes, and changing the colours of
both.
However, the more challenging aspects of
it were things like: cutting out parts of the
image, editing the image. But over all
everything was easy enough to grasp and I
feel much more confident on photoshop
now.
I feel that I’ve improved a lot since
producing my preliminary task.

2. The contents page and double page spread was much more challenging as I’d
never used Quark before. I found it much easier to learn than I expected as
everything was very straight forward. Compared to my preliminary task I’ve
definitely improved with the use of codes and conventions and DTP to produce
the products.
Strengths: I think that it looks professional and realistic;
the colours used on the page all go together well; the
layout is clear and easy to read and access information.
Weaknesses: I think that the masthead on the top
banner doesn’t stand out well enough, I would’ve maybe
used a black outline to make it sit off the banner more,
the same applies for the title.
The hardest parts of creating the contents page was
getting the text to fit the spaces. For example, under
regular the text didn’t go to the bottom of the space so I
had to play around with the spacing between the lines.
This was also the case for the featured content as the
text didn’t all come to the same line on the bottom so I
had to add extra information on some articles.
The easier parts are similar to photoshop. I had no trouble
with importing images, text (from word to quark), adding
in text using the text boxes, drawing shapes for
banners/backgrounds.

3. Despite having used Quark to complete my contents page before
producing my double page spread, I feel as though the dps was the
harder out of the two. I felt it harder to arrange the texts as I had to
go through and make sure every word was on its own line and not
split up. Using quark wasn’t a problem when it came to the dps
however deciding on a layout for the page was hard.
There were no tools that I found hard with
producing the dps as it was quite straight
forward. There wasn’t much editing to do
with any images and other than scanning
through the text to make it all correct it was
straight forward.
I found importing images and text and
also adding in text boxes for the title,
quotes etc easy. One thing that was quite
hard was getting the surrounding body
text to stop around the boarders around
the quote.