MY FIRST FRONT COVER:

This is my first go at a magazine front cover on Photoshop using my own photo for the front cover. The photo had to be a medium shot of my subject and it had to be portrait, obviously so it would fit the magazine cover correctly. I used the skills such as dodge and burn, cross process and unsharp mask on my picture to a simple ability and I hope to develop these skills so I can have a professional looking magazine for my final unit.

PHOTO SHOOT:

All these images were ones I chose from for my front cover. I wanted the third photo as I thought the flowers surrounded the edges of the frame nicely and would be perfect to put sell lines over the top, however I realised later that her hair was caught on the edge of the flower. Also my model was in an unnatural pose which looked slightly forced; this could make the target audience feel uncomfortable also.I wanted to  All these shots are perfectly in focus, portrait and are medium long shots of my model which is the type of photo you would particularly find on the front of most magazines, especially fashion/lifestyle magazines.

INDUCTION EVALUATION

Photography;

To take the photos for our magazine front cover, we used a Canon camera and shot the photos outside. It had to be a medium shot. The picture had to be in focus. To focus you use the focus ring on the end of the lens and to zoom in and out you twist the zoom ring on the lens. We tried landscape for the first few pictures to get used to focus but obviously we had to take the pictures portrait so it would fit on the magazine front. A lot of our pictures were not completely in focus as we used manual focus, but we got some nice ones that were in focus. We needed the sun to be behind us, so the camera was facing away from the sun, because if we were facing the sun, the pictures would have been too bright. We didn’t have any problems with eye line even though we didn’t use rule of thirds, which I should try out next time. We had various backgrounds, experimenting with different places in the park, both sat and stood up. A graffitied electrical box, trees, benches, tennis court and lampposts were all things we considered to be part of the picture and in the background. I worked with Belinda, and we worked really well with each other, taking it in turns to photograph and model, and neither of us were afraid to tell the other to do something different.

Photoshop;

I used several tools on Photoshop, including the ruler to keep all the writing in line. I used COMMAND + T to start working with an image and then to hold shift to make sure the image doesn’t get stretched. I found the layers very helpful, as you can work on just one layer at a time, but it was hard to not have them build up too much. I tried to use the 3D tool on some text, but it was my first use of this so it didn’t work completely well. I used drop shadow and bevel and emboss on some of my text to make it look less boring and more appealing. I used mainly black and white on most of my text, and I used a red circle and purple square to highlight certain parts on my magazine front page. I used red on one of my writing, but I mainly kept the writing at a low level of colour as the picture was already quiet bright, but if I was to do it again, I would change this. I think the strengths of my front cover is the bottom part of it because this took the most time and was more original that the rest of the page, it was different colours and had pictures on it. I forgot to put on a bar code so I need to add this next time. I think it was good that I used different fonts with each piece of writing, and changed colours and size of certain words, as it made it stand out more.

Skills Audit

AS Media Production: Technical Skills Audit Print Production

Name: Faye Costello       Tutor group: 1.35       Date: September 2013

Photographic Skills

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Manual Focus features Creative writing classes		N
Shutter Speed		N
Aperture control		N
A tripod		N
External flash		N
Self timer facility	Y		This feature is one of the only ones I have knowledge on a camera as I have used it on my own camera at home when I have wanted to be in the photograph as well as take it. You can set the timer to up to 20 seconds on most cameras and it is most effective when the camera is on a tripod so you don't have to hold it.
Light meter		N
Composition grids		N

Photoshop Skills

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Text control		N
Filters		N
Brushes		N
Layers		N
Opacity control		N
Shape creation		N
Brightness and contrast control		N
Dodge/Burn		N
Clone stamp tool		N
Colour curves adjustment		N
Magnetic lasso, polygon lasso tool		N
Cropping tool		N
Retouch tool		N

In Design Skills

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Margin and column guide creation		N
Inserting text in ID		N
Inserting images in ID		N
Resizing images in ID		N
Text manipulation – resizing, rotation		N
Text manipulation – controlling kerning and leading		N
Text flow creation		N
Text effects – drop shadow		N
Drop cap insert		N
Using transparent imagery in ID		N
Shape creation In design		N
Text wrapping		N
Exporting to PDF from In-design		N