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

Before i had started this task my skills on certain software was very limited. Since starting this piece of work it has developed my skills a great amount and has allowed me to become more educated on certain software's, which can benefit me in  later life.

Camera

Throughout my entire project the camera I used was a Nikon D300, due to this being the only camera that was available to me. while looking back at my photos, I felt that this camera gave off a high quality image. This camera i feel was very easy to use and this benefited in the duration of my photo taking process. Along with the camera I used a tripod, so that my pictures were steady and still. Also i used artificial lighting and a white backdrop to improve the quality and overall look of my photos, i feel these aspects were a huge factor in the quality of my photos and it enabled me to make the pictures look as professional as possible.

Computers

I used 3 different types of computers through this project. The first computer i used was in fact my own laptop. I used my own Acer laptop for mainly research and planning. Also i used my mums MacBook Air, in which i downloaded photoshop, so i was able to do the actual magazine at home. I also used the standard computers at school, this was for writing the evaluation questions, making the magazine and using them for research and planning. I already knew how to use these computers to an acceptable standard. The computers at school have the Windows 7 software, which i thought was a very good thing to be provided, due to the simplicity and my already able ability to use this software. 

Photoshop

I used Photoshop to construct both my magazine draft and final magazine piece, also it was used during the creation of my preliminary task. I used this software on my mums MacBook. At the start of the course I was not very experienced with Photoshop and found it hard to navigate. However towards the end of the course I was completely fine with it, my skills with photoshop progressed a lot. I learnt how to crop using both the magnetic lasso tool and also how to remove unwanted background from images using the magic eraser tool. Another tool which I frequently used was the spot healing tool, this was used in order to make my models skin clearer. To summarise, I feel that this course has provided me with a good knowledge of Photoshop. 

Animoto
Animoto is an animation feature which i used to present one of my evaluation question and also presented my 25 word pitch in my research and planning.

Slideshare
Slideshare was a feature I had used on the last part of the course when i was working on my evaluation questions, it is an effective way to share slides off of say Powerpoint and Word, this makes presentations look more professional and is easy to out into blogger and the work on it looks very good.

Other sites/Programmes

During the course I used several other programmes when completing this coursework. One of these was Blogger, it was my first time ever using this but i feel it was simple enough to use. I used blogger to post all of my coursework. I also used Spotify, this was to compile a 20 song playlist in my research, i was going to use sound cloud but due to my music genre a lot of my songs were not found on sound cloud but i did have a brief play around with it. I used Google Chrome, a simple thing to use but was vital during my coursework. i used this to complete my research. I learnt how to use all of these to the standard I needed. Another thing that i used was a memory stick, i used this so i could access my work from home. Email was also used in the transportation of my work from school to home and it allowed me to get on with my work at home.