7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the college magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Comparison of my Preliminary task and my Music magazine

Since starting my preliminary task, I feel that my Photoshop skills have improved drastically. This can be seen by the extra amount of things on the front cover. For my preliminary task, there is only one image and only a few of cover lines whereas, on my finished cover, I have included extra images, more cover lines and a footer. Also, with my preliminary task, there is no clear main cover line, something I have ensured I did not repeat for my finished product. Also, I only discovered how to fully use the magic wand tool once I had started my music magazine; something I only briefly knew how to use in the preliminary task. Thanks to this, I could cut out pictures better when it came to the double page spread. Another tool I didn't know how to use on the preliminary task was the drop shadow option in the effects menu. By using this, I allowed cover lines, mastheads and images to stand out from the page more, making it more appealing for the reader to pick it up. Also, I learned how to use layers effectively while creating the music magazine. This is how I created the effect of the masthead being behind the heads of the people in my main image on the front cover. One other Photoshop tool I only used while creating my music magazine is the ruler tools. In the preliminary task, some other the numbers in the circles indicating the page number are not in line with each other. But after learning about the ruler tool, I could inline everything for my music magazine and therefore, making it look more professional.

  In between doing the preliminary task and the main music magazine I created a readership profile on Photoshop. This helped enormously when it came to working with Photoshop. The main tool that I learned how to use while doing this was the magic wand tool as I had to cut out images that I acquired from Google.

   One tool I didn't have to use during the preliminary task but did for my music magazine is the spell checker. I had to use this to look for spelling and grammar mistakes in the body text of my main article. Although, I still had to proof read through the article encase there were any mistakes, which there were.

   Overall, I gained a lot of experience for completing my music magazine by producing the preliminary task and the readership profile. Without doing this, my music magazine would have not been as detailed.