Programmes and Websites

Programmes and Websites

To create my magazine and to complete my blog I have used many different programmes and websites to show the skills that I have developed throughout this course, the only problem with this is that sometimes the internet can be slow or be un-reliable and using free websites or programmes can make things be of a poor quality and be less professional as in a professional environment there would be large budgets and they would have all the programmes and equipment that would be needed to create a professional and quality looking magazine. This has at times hinder development and has forced me into finding different ways of doing things.

Photoshop

Photoshop is one of the better programmes on the college network computers, this has been helpful in creating a more professional looking magazine as this is the programme that is likely to have been used in the magazine industry to create magazine covers for big names like Kerrang and GQ which rely on their inspiring images and colours on front pages or DPS’. Because the college has the most up to date version of Photoshop it has been very successful and very few problems have arisen through this programme although sometimes on the College network, work and data can be lost or deleted due to the mass of work on one log in. This could have potentially created problems, another problem is that if you do not save regularly and there is a problem with the network you work could be lost due to simply a computer being faulty and closing down or their being a problem with the whole network and the computers closing down, this has meant that saving work regularly is important and has been vital throughout the creation of my magazine. This programme has been helpful for not only creating my magazine but also for editing images that went into my magazine, some of my pictures had borders around them which was done on Photoshop easily, it is also helpful to cut out any unnecessary backgrounds and to help make the people in my pictures look to the standard that you would see in a real life magazine. The other advantage of using Photoshop is that it made me take more time over taking my images, I really had to think about lighting and the camera angle so that I could easily edit them, the first image I tried to use on the programme was in poor lighting and from a poor camera, this helped me to then think about what I needed to change and helped me to create more professional and quality pictures. Overall I have enjoyed using this programme and have found it easy to use and grasp and has helped me create some really interesting and professional looking work, I will use it often in the future for things similar to this.

Flickr

Flickr was a useful website to analyse the work that I did and to look at the differences between certain magazines and see what where the same. It made pin-pointing the part of the magazine I was talking about easier rather than having to say (the picture in the bottom right hand corner of the page was done like this because..) I could simply put some text on this point so when the reader looked at it they could see exactly what I was talking about and understand what I was saying easier. I also found this helpful for comparing to other magazines, I could see where the things where on other magazines by boxing them and then relate this to my magazine. The problem with this website was that it was free on the college network and this caused it to be slow sometimes and not give the user use of all the different aspects of the website. I personally had quite a lot of problems with this website where it would not let me upload pictures some days then it would be fine on other days, this created problems in my schedule as when I wanted to do certain parts of work on Flickr I then had to wait and do at a later date because of the website being slow and not working. This was annoying and created problems throughout the creation of my blog.

Dafont

Dafont was a helpful website when I made my magazine because I could use different and more exciting fonts for my pages, by using this website I could have more professional looking interesting looking titles and a more professional looking Masthead, this was needed to show how i was going to reach out and attract my audience this is easily done with fonts and colours which through using Dafont I could really play with and create something powerful and interesting to the sort of audience I was aiming at. The problem with this website is that if the text is small and you want to make it large it loses a lot of its quality unless you actually download the image which is difficult with the college network set up the way it is and it takes time which means again you have to re-arrange your schedule and get on with other work whilst waiting for a website to work properly. This is because the College can only use the free version of the website.

Blogger

Blogger is the website we used to upload all of our work too so it was easy to find and be looked at and marked rather than having lots of bits of paper to keep hold of and keep neat, this was helpful and a lot easier to work with but also created a few problems that had to be avoided, because we only had use of the free part of the blogger website it wasn’t always working at its best, this meant sometimes bits of work would not upload properly and it is difficult to keep up to date with what has been finished and what isn’t then you find out on deadline day that a bunch of work has disappeared off of your blog and you have to search your user to find it so that it can be handed in on time. Although this was a problem I found blogger extremely useful and much prefer this than having to keep lots of papers together in a folder when they are likely to get crumpled and ripped. There was also a problem when we tried to print out or magazine pages with the colours not looking as clear but with the use of blogger the marker gets to see exactly what the work looks like from how it was first created.