Kris Leonard learned several new technologies in creating their media product. They gained experience using cameras and learned about features like autofocus and lighting effects. Kris also learned how to use tools in Photoshop like the text toolbar, polygonal lasso tool, and image adjustment levels. Additionally, they discovered software like Quark and Blogger that they were previously unaware of for page layout and organizing work.

1. 6. What have you learned about
technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
Kris Leonard

2. Camera
In creating my media product I had to use a camera
on quite a few occasions. Before this I had very
little experience with cameras but I now feel
comfortable in using them and I’m confident that if
given a camera and told to take a picture, I could
take quite a good one. I learned about ‘auto-
focus’ and how to put the camera into it. I also
learnt about different ways to go about setting the
lighting and how it effects the image and what
kind of message it gives. This is useful knowledge
to have for the future.

3. Photoshop
Prior to this I had little experience with using Photoshop. The production of this
media product has heightened my knowledge of what can be done using it and
has helped me to learn how to use a lot of the tools. For example:
The Text Toolbar-
This allows you to change the distance between
characters and lines, make the text make the text
wider, thinner, taller or shorter, change the colour, font and size of
font and size of the text and change whether the letters are all capital,
some capital, some capital or all lower case. It’s a good tool to
use for fitting certain fitting certain bits of text into certain spaces
and it also allows for more variation more variation rather than just
using different fonts.

4. Polygonal Lasso
Tool -
Another feature of Photoshop that I learned to use is the
Polygonal Lasso Tool. This helps to accurately cut out a certain
part of an image. It’s useful because it allows you to go in to a
lot of detail when cutting something out.
Adjusting the levels of an image
One of the things I found most useful in Photoshop is the option to
adjust levels on an image. This allowed for me to edit my image to
make it appear more grainy and urban so that it suited the style of my
magazine.

5. Quark
Quark is a software that I wasn’t even aware
existed before starting this project. I used it for
creating the text for the main body of my double
page spread. I found it useful as it was very easy to
used and had a lot of features to help me get the
sort of text that I desired.
One of these is the Text Linking Tool
This allows for text boxes to be linked together
which meant that I was able to sort my columns
accordingly.
Also, the sidebar was very useful. It
allowed me
to change the page layout, arrange
the style
sheets, change the colour of things
and keep on
top of the layers.

6. Again, I was unaware that blogger existed before starting this project. It is a very
useful tool for presenting work in an organised way.
Pictured below are some of the features available in Blogger. Even
though it acts more as a platform to present work it still allows for
some editing which is useful.
The Insert Image option allows you to put JPEG files on
to your blog.
These features allow for you to format your
text.
The ‘Spell-check’ option helps you to make sure
there are no spelling errors in your blog.