Evaluation: Using Technology-Creative Tools

Use of creative tools in both my preliminary task and main task helped to great extent to gather my final product to industry standard. Throughout use of Adobe Photoshop helped me to sustain graphics and other standard editing routines when configuring both my images and templates, more importantly allowing me to take into account the work subjected to professionally produced media formats such as magazines in the modern day workplace.

When in the photo-shoot stage of my project, the viewership of taken images could be significantly increased through the instant preview of possible layouts and sizes in accordance to how my images would compliment my designed template and background. This I found gave me improved clarity in my vision as to how I would go about constructing what would eventually be my final product.

Seemingly straight-forward appliances such as printing technology evidently became a critical part of my progress in regards to how I could critically review my work and establish further a well received piece of work. By utilizing the availability of printing before and after completion of both my college magazine and music magazine, I could perfect aspects such as colouring and font size step by step; ensuring a well evaluated final outcome in the production of both tasks.

Use of computers not only allowed access to creative image editing programs, but to resources pivotal to areas such as my research; being the internet. It is through this that I could freely examine numerous magazine covers to pick up upon industry practice and other frequently used techniques. The very fact that I could utilize all these brands of technical appliances under the control of one computer in a single location more then allowed me to be increasingly organized and of more pace carry out overdue work.

Use of Adobe Photoshop in both tasks greatly gave me the ability to produce graphics and customize the appearance of captured images. Although such a program proved pivotal to the progress of my work, the version of such a program present in the school IT areas did not allow me to work with much flexibility concerning how and what I could create within the program. Specific features were absent in this addition, meaning I found myself working with Photoshop to a greater extent at home, rather then school (due to my computer holding CS4, a much more advanced and capable version).

When editing my images, I corrected frequently imbalances of colour and saturation, making use of both the burn tool (darken) and dodge tool (lighten). By doing this I found I could shoot images with less concern and draw more focus to the subjects on camera, and not the camera itself. This customization of lighting within the image was of great convenience to me, as the concept for all pieces of work contained elements of shadow and increase of lightness. This was especially in relevance to my music magazine, where the implication of lightning graphics (of which too were allowed through the use of such software) meant a slight overlay of lightness around the skin area became vital to maintain slight realism. A clone stamp tool was also used to a degree in both tasks to abbreviate an understanding of the practice taken within the media industry when models are “photoshopped” to perfection. Due to this, I took the opportunity to highlight this point and remove areas of spots, red eye and other possible glitches present in the image due to the environment.