Adobe Photoshop is graphics editing software that allows users to manipulate photos by adjusting features like brightness, layers, and effects. The document discusses using Photoshop to edit photos for a magazine cover design coursework, learning how to properly manipulate lighting and add blur and fade effects. Serif Photo Plus is also used to edit most photos for the coursework, enabling adjustments to contrast, brightness, saturation, and cropping. Microsoft Publisher is utilized to design the magazine pages, applying rotated and edited photos alongside imported text. A personal camera is used to take photos for the coursework, and the document discusses learning more about the camera's zoom through using it for the project. Blogger, Facebook, Survey Monkey, and Sl

1. Adobe Photoshop is a software in which is a graphics editing software. The software enables you to add layers, edit photos, adjust contrast and brightness, blend, effect on all your images, for example, blur, strobe and so on. It is a software used a lot by web designers and professionals to manipulate and transform pictures. I have been using this software in school for five years now, and I have created a variety of things from video clips to my music magazine. Although I have used this software many times before, this time when creating my coursework I learnt how to edit photos properly and manipulate the photos. I used this software for editing my main central image on my front cover. I transformed the lighting, and also added effects in, such as fade and blur. This gave my image a more professional touch to it. I used this software to edit my front cover photo. I also produced my first design of my features page on this software, although I didn’t use this page. Adobe Photoshop

2. Serif Photo Plus Software Serif Photo Plus is a software made from Microsoft Office which is a web design program. This software is new to me and I have never used it before. I decided to use this software as it was a software specifically designed to edit photos and adapt them, similarly to Adobe Photoshop. I learnt so much using this software. First of all, I learnt how to work the program, and eventually after some time, I was really comfortable with using it. I was able to make my own colour that I specifically wanted, edit photos how I wanted, changing them from grey scale back to colour and so on. I used this software to actually edit all of my photos except for my main image on my front cover. It enabled me to change contrast and brightness, the saturation and even crop unwanted parts out of the image. This software enables you to make multiple things such as business cards to editing images. You are able to remove red eye, remove unwanted items from pictures, paint and blend the images, crop, straighten images and much more.

3. Microsoft Publisher Microsoft Publisher, is a desktop publishing application from Microsoft Office. It differs from Microsoft Word, as this is a page layout and design rather than writing and text. Microsoft Publisher is famous and very popular however a very effective program. I have used Publisher many times before, as it is quite a basic and easy software to use, however still gives you great results. Publisher enables you to make all sorts of publications such as brochures, posters, business cards and much more and holds templates for all these things. I used this program for all my final pieces of my coursework. I found this software a lot easier to use than anything else, and had everything I needed to make a successful magazine pages. I was able to transfer my edited photos in, import text in, chose my colours and this helped enormously. Although I was fairly common with this software, I had never created anything like this coursework before on here, I simply used Publisher for making brochures or posters, however I learnt how to use it and got too know it even more, by finding small tools such as rotations, to make a more effective magazine design of all my pages.

4. Camera In order to take photos for my media coursework I used my own personal Olympus camera. This camera only had 7.2 mega pixels, however the images always come out clear. On this camera, you can obviously use a variety of shot angles, for example medium close ups, high and low angle shots and so on. This camera also enables you to take successful long and short distance shots, portrait shots and landscape shots. This camera has a very clear zoom, which enabled me to zoom in on detail of things, for example zoom in properly on the model without it being blurred or fuzzy, it still remained clear. The zoom is 5x. I used this camera to take every single photo I took for my media coursework. All the photos I didn’t use for my coursework pieces I still uploaded to my blog so everybody can see why and what they were like. Although this is my own personal camera, whilst I was taking my photos for media, I found out things that I didn’t even know existed. For example, I wasn’t sure about the zoom of the camera for long distance shots, however I tested this out while I was taking my photos and worked out how to do this successfully, so I actually learnt something from my own camera!

5. Blogger Blogger is a blog publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. Blogger enables you to create a personal blog for any purposes, social to educational. I used Blogger for my coursework. I used this program to show my slow process to making my magazine pieces for my AS coursework. I have never experienced Blogger before. However, I adapted to it really quickly. I found it very simple to upload images and my own work, and write about them, changing the fonts, colours and alignments. It made my work look organised and clear, adding variety with different sizes and colours of font. After using Blogger for my AS media studies coursework, I will definitely use it again. I found it a great software to use as it was very simple to use, and lets you show and produce your work in a variety of different ways, making a more creative approach.

6. Facebook Facebook is a social networking site. This site enables you to communicate with everybody around the world. All you need, is a facebook account to access it. This enables you to contact people on the opposite side of the world. Facebook is connected to a variety of other things, for example Survey Monkey launches it’s questionnaires via facebook, as facebook is so popular in today's society. I used facebook as part of my media coursework, to get my peers to answer my questionnaires on my music magazine pages. This was sent over a comment on to the persons profile. Once answered, these messages and answers were sent back to me so I could analyse the results. Although I am always on facebook, I learnt that you could send out other links from other websites for example Survey Monkey and also learnt facebook can be in hand for education purposes not just chatting with friends!

7. Survey Monkey Survey Monkey is a company online in which is free and enables you to create surveys. I used Survey Monkey to create a questionnaire to ask my target audience what they wanted in my magazine. There are templates to make your own questionnaire and a guide a long the way to help you with it all. Survey Monkey was new to me and I have never used it before. It was a very helpful website, as it not only let me produce a questionnaire, but also analysed all my results for me and conducted my results in a table. I learnt so much by using Survey Monkey. It taught me how to make a effective and professional questionnaire, giving me a guide a long the way to tell me what to do and what works best. It also helped me analysed all my results and saved an enormous amount of time to conduct all my results which was very helpful. I would definitely use Survey Monkey again.

8. Slide Share Slide Share is an online website in which enables you to upload videos and power points online. This also lets you embed these on to other websites, for example embedding them on to Blogger for media coursework! I used Slide Share to upload my power point presentations, for example this one on to my blog for my media AS coursework. I have never used Slide Share before, however I learnt a lot. I learnt how to work the website and also it gives you the opportunity to edit all your presentations too. I would again use Slide Share again, as I found it a very helpful and useful subject.