Preliminary Task - AS Media Studies Evaluation

 AS Media Studies Evaluation

 The first thing I did for this college magazine was planning out what I could do for my front cover; it took lots of time to work out how I wanted it to look. I had a look on other magazines to get a rough idea of how I wanted it to look like; they included lots of thing, from titles and pictures, to pricing and cover lines. Eventually, I had completed my front cover, and moved on to my contents page.

In order to produce my college front cover and contents page, I had to use Adobe Photoshop. For me, this was rather difficult as I have never used the software before. I use lots of different tools to ensure that I produced my magazine properly, such as tools which were able to cut unwanted parts, changing backgrounds, changing texts by using strokes etc.

                        

The box above shows the rectangular marquee tool. This tool is used to cut unwanted images or text. However, I cannot do this correctly without selecting inverse. This allows me to keep the part I want and get rid of the unwanted sections. For example, the dotted lines which are surrounding the piece of text are the part which I want to keep, whilst the dotted lines surrounding the outline of the page is the bit I want to get rid of. By pressing the delete button, the text should be the only thing which hasn’t been deleted.

Now, because I have got the text which I want, I could place it onto my contents of front cover. I could place it behind an image, or in front. In order to do this, I have to find the layer with the title    “Priestley College” and drag it under or over any layer.  By using the magic wand tool, I can get rid of any unwanted bits of the text. I.e. the background in the text doesn’t match the building wall.

 The image above indicates the magic wand tool; notice how the background of the text doesn’t match the wall. By pressing delete, the white will disappear.

Now the white text has disappeared, I can get rid of the rest of the white within the holes of the text by doing the same thing again.

If I were to do this assignment brief again, I would ensure that I spend more time on the contents page and the front cover. It means that I don’t have to rush and mess things up. For example, I spent more time on my front cover than my contents page. Now one looks much better than the other. I would change my entire contents page, as I feel that I haven’t done enough work on it for it to be finished. If I had more time, I would make it look what I wanted it to look like.