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?

From when I did the preliminary task up to the main task, my photoshop skills improved a lot, and I think it shows looking at the college magazine compared to the music one. The music magazine seems to look a lot more professional, and I think that by doing research into other music magazines, and by researching my target audience I was able to create a better and professional looking product that attracts my audience. 

I think that the most obvious improvements from my college magazine to the music one were the images, the colour scheme, and the layout. By doing research into other music magazines I learnt many codes and conventions of magazines, and tried to include them in my own magazine to make the magazine look realistic. I learnt about how important images are for a magazine, and so the images in the music magazine are better planned and are more fitting to it's audience. Also, the text in my college magazine is quite difficult to read in some parts, so I learnt that for my music magazine to work better, I had to have a clear layout that would allow the audience to find things clearly and actually be able to read the text. 

Specifically, the photoshop techniques that I improved in were text allignment, the polygon lasso tool and feathering edges which I used to cut people out of images, using photoshop rulers and also colour picking. I learnt that by using text allignment, I could make the text look more interesting, and make it stand out against other text on the page, I could also make it fit better in specific areas. By using the polygon lasso tool and by feathering edges, I learnt that I could cut people out of backgrounds a lot more accurately than by using the quick selection tool, and by feathering it I could give the image a softer look against it's new background. I also learnt how to use photoshop rulers to line things up on a page and make the layout look clear and professional to the audience. I also learnt that picking colours is very important in order to attract my audience, and by picking colours such as blue and yellow, the blue is a relaxing cool colour, where as the yellow is a bright colour that excites the audience and makes them want to learn more. These are also two colours (particularly the blue) that would not typically be found on a music magazine, so gives a fresh new flavour that attracts the audience.