6)      What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing my product?

Whilst creating ECHO I used several technologies, some of which I was experienced in using, making it very easy to develop my work and some of which were new to me and challenging as I learnt to use them. I used both Publisher and Word to create my pages, these are both programmes that I was used to working with and so I was able to apply my knowledge and get the most out of them. In Word I was able to create my two page spread article with Rihanna and copy and paste it into my Publisher document in which I was developing the two page spread. In Publisher, I created text boxes in three columns to paste my article into and I inserted the images for the page, created quote text boxes and a title for the article. In addition, I was new to using Photoshop Elements for photo editing, as well as an online photo editor, ‘Picnik’. I developed the skills in Photoshop to remove backgrounds from images using the ‘magic wand’ tool, to use the airbrush tool so that skin looks clearer, and to adjust the brightness of the images using the contrast and lighting tool. These tools made my images look more professional and made the magazine look better organised as images on the same page didn’t have contrasting backgrounds. Using Photoshop allowed me to layer my images and also made it easy for me to cut out the backgrounds of my pictures. In the majority of my images there was a busy background unsuitable for the magazine and so I had to put each of my images into Photoshop and change the background so that it was pure white, or the colour of the page. The website ‘Picnik’ was very helpful in editing my images for things like contrast, brightness and sharpness which was necessary so that the images looked high quality on the pages. I also developed the skills to operate blogger.com, prior to my magazine production I had not used any websites on which you create a blog and I had to learn to save Publisher documents and JPEG documents in order to be able to upload my posts onto the blog.