Editing Research ( Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign)

Photoshop:

When I first needed to use photoshop I didn't have a lot of knowledge about it. I had used it a few times before but never got to grips with it as it looked too confusing and I couldn't get my head around it. I found this quick article by 'Digital Photography School' which as you can see there was five easy photoshops tips for beginners such as myself. This five tips became very effective when I started to use photoshop. One of the tips was about learning the keyboard shortcuts. You can't learn all of these straight away but after you pick up some of the common ones your editing becomes a lot faster and quicker.



Illustrator:

I bit like photoshop I had very little knowledge about what it was and how to use it. I had to fid something which would explain it to me and when and where I can use it. After looking around I found this short video on Adobe Illustrator website. In this video it explained an overview of what illustrator is capable of doing. In the video it suggested that it is great for creating art work such as logos and even printing. They mentioned its very popular for people such as graphic designers as you can create amazing pieces of art work it stunning quality.

InDesign:

After looking Adobe website and researching more about InDesign I realised just how much InDesign could do. When using InDesign you can create literally anything from business cards to a resume to a flyer. On Adobe's website there are loads of different tutorials such as creating a magazine cover.

Planning My Photo shoot

Equipment List:

I used three different cameras for my photo shoot which was
Cannon 5D SLR
Cannon 6D SLR
Cannon 600D SLR
I used two different lenses for my cameras which was:
300m
50m
I choose to take a few props with such as a guitar and a record but I didn't use either on my final photos as I preferred it with out.
My models originally wore checked shirts and then plain t shirts I liked using both as It gave me a mixture of photos. So I decided to try take some of both.
I wanted to try loads of locations like a train track and woods as this would suit my genre.

Institution

The main publishers of music magazines in the UK are Bauer, IPC and Future PLC. Bauer is a huge media group which is a worldwide empire offering over 300 magazines in 15 countries reaching over 22 million UK consumers every week. IPC or now known as Time Inc. UK are also one of the UK’s leading magazines publishers. IPC publish NME, which is a very popular magazine in my target audience. Future PLC offer a lot of magazines in several genres such as Technology, Games and Music. Future PLC has a wide range of rock/indie magazines but is not as popular as the likes of NME or Kerrang. But the company has over popular magazines, which have the same or similar target audience to mine.

Overall Bauer would be the best publishing company for my magazine as it caters for a very large audience, which is also the same as my target audience. The main advantage of using such a big company is their experience by doing other indie magazines such as Kerrang and Q. They would also be better to market my magazine better to my audience than I would be able to do independently. The others could of also worked but Future PLC don’t have a lot of experience with dealing with indie/rock magazines and IPC don’t have a market the size of Bauer.

Impact Of Technology

As stated by Peter Fraser, 'A broader version of conventional literacy, which enables, all visual, aural and digital forms, seeking to enable people to become thoughtful producers and interpreters of media'. From looking at this quote, I can see that there have been technological and institutional advances, within the magazine media industry, which have allowed companies to produce a product best suited for their audience. 

The first program I used that was new to me was blogger. I found I had to use this program on a weekly and sometimes even a daily basis during the planning stages of my coursework because this is where I upload all my work. It was very easy to use and is better than making a paper portfolio because it is possible to include, text, images and moving images in a way that looks professional and can be access easily online by anyone. However, I would not say it was always very reliable as I had some problems with loosing my work when drafts did not save or publish.  

The Internet was always going to be the most powerful tool through this project and without it I think I would of really struggled with the planning and presentation side of the coursework. The internet allowed me to access information about everything, get existing products to analyse for free to gain inspiration and also allowed me to use sites such as; blogger, Surveymonkey and social networking sites to share my surveys. The internet really was essential for everything I did and it allowed me to become a producer, not just a consumer, of media texts which supports what Gauntlett argued in 2001 because blogger let me reach a real audience with my work.

I also found being able to use SurveyMonkey really useful for my primary target audience. This site was also new to me and I found it really hepful because it allowed me to create many surveys and post them on many social sites to get answers and feedback from the public. This helped a lot when I came to create my final products as I knew my target audience and had a better understanding of how to reach out to them and represent them.

When taking photographs to use on my products I used a Digital SLR 5D Camera which I had very little experience with. I did not mange to take high quality photos at first as I did not know to use the manual settings and apature properly. Eventually after three lessons from my teachers and a lot of practice I became more and more familiar with it and manage to get a selection of images that looked professional enough to use, though as I said earlier this is still a skill I want to improve on.

I also used a lot of editing programs to create my products, the main one I used was Photoshop. I had used this at GCSE but felt I did not have a lot of knowledge that went beyond the basics so knew, especially after completing my prelim task, that I needed to learn a lot more about; adding images, creating documents, cropping images, erasing unwanted objects, adding text, adjusting images and working on layer effects. The more I used it the more I got used to it. I looked at websites online to find out more of the fundamentals and shortcuts. I think now I am a lot more confident with this software and I think my final work shows this because the editing all look professional.

Illustrator was another program I attempted to use, I used it when experimenting with creating texts for my masthead but in the end decided to go with a more simple design than the ones I tried using Illustrator. What I did learn about this program was it works with Photoshop and is quite similar to use.

InDesign was a very useful program that I used for finishing off my products once I had edited my images in Photoshop. I had never used it before so learned from my teachers and from watching online tutorials. What I liked about the program was how professional it could make my text layout look especially on my double page spread. I think I am now a lot more confident about using this software that was again similar in some ways to Photoshop.

Finally, I used the 5D again to film myself doing this evaluation this taught me how to put it onto film setting and use blue screen. The final evaluation edit will be edited in imovie, a program I have used before and know how to blue screen on as I did this during my GCSE. I will then post my video on YouTube or Vimeo and link it to blog which is another example of why the internet has been essential to this project.

Overall Technology has come along so much that it was my main asset throughout. With the access to all these tools such as the internet and photoshop I was able to make pieces at a professional level and share it with friends via the internet.

Flat Plans

 Cover:

The cover on the left way first attempt of creating a cover which would appeal and attract to my target audience. The left one lacked some of the basic common codes of music magazine cover. So I chosen the right hand side one as template to create my final cover as it includes a lot of the common codes and conventions and would trait to my target audience. The template is also easy to follow.

Contents: 

The contents page on the right is the one I decided to use for my final product as their is more room for content plus their are images that will attract my target audience as they are in places where people will instantly look/ The left one lacked content and had a lot of 'dead space' around the photo. I also think the one right lacked some sort of layout and when I was going to put text over my image it would be difficult to see and would lack the professionalism I wanted.

Double Page Spread:

This was my first design of creating a double page spread. I was happy with this first design as I looked at many examples online. I was going to use this for my final product as the layout was simple and effect.

I created another design and preferred this one. I still had a image of the main protagonist which takes up about 50% of the double page spread and also include a lot of room for content. The reason why I liked this  one more is that it spilt up the text more as it wasn't just a block of writing it also had a photo and it was into columns.