The document discusses various technologies the author learned about through creating a music magazine project. The author recorded audio clips using an Edirol recorder to collect audience feedback. Adobe Audition allowed editing of audio files, such as deleting unwanted background noise. A blog platform like Blogger made it easy to publish posts and receive feedback. A USB stick stored all work files. PowerPoint and SlideShare helped create and share presentations. Adobe Photoshop was used extensively to manipulate images, such as cropping, changing colors, and adding effects to create the desired aesthetic for presenting an artist. Learning to use these technologies helped improve the author's skills and create a more professional product.

1. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

2. EDIROLThis device was used when I was collecting feedback from audiences and potential consumers in which they’d respond to simple open-ended questions that allowed them to elaborate upon their opinions. This I effect, helped me with my audience research prior to creating my magazine. The short audio files are displayed on the screen displaying all necessary details for each recording. I have learnt that through using EDIROL RECORDERS I can easily record short or long audio clips whenever I may want to experiment with a range of mediums in order to expand my technological knowledge.

3. Adobe AuditionI was completely unfamiliar with this program as I had never heard of it before, however once I played around with it a bit I found that it wasn’t too difficult to operate once you understand what each factor does. However, initially it appeared extremely complicated due to its complex format and so it took a while to find out how to upload my audio file from the EDIROL device and then organise and edit the files. This program enabled me to delete outlier parts of the recording such as unwanted background talking, laughing or even silence. After figuring out how to move around the files and place them in a consecutive order I realised how useful these element was towards composing my coursework.

4. BlogI had never used ‘BLOGGER’ before however, I found it extremely accessible and straight-forward, I was easily able to publish new posts as well as maintaining the ability to edit previous posts multiple amount of times in order to constantly improve my work to ensure it has been produced to the best of my ability. On ‘BLOGGER’ we would receive feedback from teachers giving advice as to how well we are doing surrounding the concept of deadlines, practical work and written work. Ultimately, I found it extremely efficient and useful in generating my entire coursework requirements. At one point I came across the difficulty of blogger not being able to post the file format of my Photoshop file, and so I had to change the format to a JPEG in order for it to work and support the functioning of BLOGGER. I now feel completely comfortable posting slideshows, written text and importing images whatever the format may be and even changing the order of the date in which the blog was posted in order to enhance organisation & structure.

5. USB StickMy USB was my essential ingredient throughout the created of my music magazine, it held all data from written analysis’ crafted on word to my full product created in Adobe PhotoShop. It provided me with the security that my mass of work was safely stored with this device. Additionally, as it is a mobile mechanism, this enabled me to share my work with others on different computers as well as continuing to improve my work outside of the classroom.

6. PowerpointMicrosoft Powerpoint helped me to create slideshows in order to neatly present my work in one structured manner, as opposed to posting amass of images onto my blog for example. I believe that without this program my work would have ended up severely unorganised and without order.

7. SlideShareSlideShare proved to be very useful to me as it enabled me to upload presentations straight from a Powerpoint format, then onto my blog. I found this process extremely quick and efficient, it would simple provide me with a link in which I would then post into my blog box. Evidently, I used this program a significant amount of times as I found that it organised my work exceedingly well and presented it well making it seem more professional.

8. Adobe PhotoshopAdobe Photoshop was the core program within constructing my full product. It was through this how I created and manipulated aspects of my front cover, contents page and double-page spread. Photoshop allowed me to alter the size of text, adding effects of them, cropping and rendering images to my desired appearance as well as airbrushing, adjusting lighting and even completely changing the colour of an item of clothing in order to make it more fitting for the image I aimed to portray. This program was quite easy to use once I became familiar with the range of tools, however I have clearly made an improvement in terms of skills and knowledge from when I constructed my school magazine. Initially, it was quite confusing as I did not know which tools to use and when each specific one was the best one to use depending on the item I was manipulating, however, even now I am still learning new things and coming across options that I was completely unaware of before. Once I got the hang of it and I had developed a clearer understanding of how to operate the program I found that it made my work look increasingly more professional and realistic and time progressed.

9. Adobe Photoshop – Cropping an ImageOriginal ImageThe cropping tool is an ideal and easy to use tool in which allows you to manipulate a selected area of an original photograph, extracted a smaller segment of it.

10. This program also allowed me to completely change the colour of a particular segment, for example if I didn’t think the original colour of an item of clothing was ideal in terms of illustrating an artists image, I would just use the magnetic lasso tool to highlight a specific area, then change the hue of it. However the edges sometimes appeared to harsh and unrealistic and so, in result of this I used the ‘blur tool’ to go around the edges. I also had to alter the size of the blur tool as t was far too large.In order for me to have portrayed a specific image for my artist, for example, the band, I wanted to present quite an edgy sense and so through altering the contrast I was able to create a strong, vivid, harsh feel.ORIGINAL IMAGE

11. Adobe Photoshop – Creating my mastheadIn order to make my mast head more appealing, I double-clicked on the appropriate layer, following this action, a box containing a range of different effects appeared. I tested out several different ones including ‘inner shadow’, ‘outer glow’ & stroke, also when I chose these effects Photoshop allowed me to alter certain aspects such as the ‘opacity’ and ‘noise’. I had not initially been aware that these settings could be modified to your desire and so after exploring different tab and experimenting I found this extremely useful as the default size of the stroke for example was too small and so in order to create an appropriate size for the effect I changed this setting to craft my ideal masthead that I believed would appeal to my target audience.