7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the college magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Since producing my preliminary task, I have exlpored more features of photoshop to make my magazine front cover look its best. For example, I used the feature that allowed me to adjust the lighting and contrast. Using this made my pictures look more glossy and realistic. I also used a soft eraser to go around the edges of all the pictures to make it not look so harsh against the background and other pictures. I used the ruler to put lines on my work to make sure everything was inline to make it look proffessional and authentic. I used the Magic Wand Tool to erase the background of my pictures. This is a more quicker and efficient way, which doesn't involve alot of effort. Using this gave me alot more time to edit the pictures and make them look how i want them to. I also used the Lasso Tool, which made it easier for me to select a bit of a picture that i wanted to move or adjust without it taking too long to select the image perfectly around the edges. I have learnt that I need to take up more space on my front cover to make it as interesting and eye catching as possible. For example, I have filled up space in my music magazine front cover by putting a sticker on the front, making the images bigger and featuring more subjects around the edges of the cover. Having different layers on Photoshop makes everything a lot easier. With these layers I am able to edit separate things on separate layers so that the editing wont effect any other part of the magazine. This makes it much easier to pay attention to detail, as I can edit small parts of the cover by putting them on other layers. I separated each person in my main image onto their own layer so that I could completely change the image and make it more, my own. I changed the lighting and contrast on each person and also positioned them closer in and placed two of them behind the masthead, and two in front to give it more variety. My preliminary task was less successful than my main products as I didn't have so much knowledge on how to use the Photoshop features. I also didn't have very many ideas and because I couldn't work Photoshop very well, so this also limited my idea's from developing. My skills with Photoshop, I feel, improved during the research and planning process, as I got lots more ideas and worked out how to develop these ideas using Photoshop.

I based the idea of the layout on two different issues of "ROCKSOUND". I used features from both. I got the idea of the composition of my photo from the issue on the left and on the cover on the right there are bands featured down the left hand side. There is also a cover line on the issue on the right which has a scruffy box around the writing, which is what I used when featuring bands on my cover. Both of these layouts are similar and are also very similar to mine. I needed to research other texts from magazine articles to know what sort of language I needed to use to target my audience and maintain the readers interest. I also needed to seek feedback from those within my target audience to see where I could approve in certain areas.