Since entering my magazine to be re-submitted I have started work on my A2 coursework, which has demanded different Photoshop skills and knowledge to what I previously used to construct my initial magazine. Primarily, I have learnt through experience that it is extremely important to do basic things like naming layers; going back to my AS magazine was tricky at first, as none of the layers were labelled, so everything was very difficult to access. Furthermore, the amount of layers I had didn’t reflect the amount that I was actually using; nearly half of the layers for my front cover, contents page and double page spread were hidden and were no longer in use, and should have been deleted. Although it seems very obvious, tidying up my layers palette made constructing my magazine a lot easier. Another thing that I have learnt since re-entering my coursework is that if I needed to manipulate several layers at a time, I shouldn’t merge them (unless necessary), but I should put them into groups. I was forced to completely restart on several of the layers that I had previously merged, as I was now unable to access or manipulate the individual layers that they were made up of. Grouping layers has made the process much simpler, and, although it can take longer if there are several layers that need to be grouped, it still allows the freedom to move and edit layers individually or as a group. This has been invaluable when creating things like the white text in the red boxes on my front cover; if I wanted to make the text smaller, or increase the size of the box to fit around the text better, I was able to do it without a problem. Something which I have used much more this time round is the ‘Magic Wand Tool’. Before I had relied a lot more on the ‘Lasso Tool’ and the ‘Magnetic Lasso Tool’, which, although sometimes necessary, took a lot longer and didn’t give results as professional-looking as I wanted, as edges weren’t as refined. I hadn’t really used tools such as the ‘Magic Wand Tool’ very much when I first submitted my coursework, and it was only when I decided to resubmit it that I researched and attempted to follow Photoshop tutorials a lot more thoroughly. This gave me a much better grasp of basic Photoshop skills, and also introduced me to tools such as the ‘Magic Wand Tool’ (which was invaluable when copying and pasting fonts off www.dafont.com in order to get rid of the white background) and the ‘gradient tool’, which I used on my front cover. The tutorials I referenced when making the album cover to go on my double page spread were extremely useful and interesting in terms of my knowledge of Photoshop; I had never before used the ‘Match Colour Tool’ or the ‘Convert to Smart Object’ option, and, although I will need more practise at using these things before I understand them completely, I am much more aware of how different functions of Photoshop work. Furthermore, although at first I did not always completely understand the tutorials (such as not knowing what a tool was, where to access it etc.), with practise I can now work my way around Photoshop much more quickly, and can remember where to find most of the tools I use and which come under each options list (for example, I know that under ‘Filter’ I can access options such as ‘Liquify’, adjust the Noise or add a Blur, among many other things). As well as Photoshop I have used the website www.picnik.com to adjust the brightness, exposure, saturation etc. of the images I used in the contents page, so as to improve the look of them. This was a useful website to edit the images beforehand in a quick and easy way, so that I could then put them directly onto my contents page in their edited forms instead of having to go through lots of different options on Photoshop to see what looked best.
Another thing that I have learnt in terms of planning, is to create in advance all of the initial blog posts that I know I'll need to write; this way, I have a clear list of the initial posts that I will write, which, although I can add to it at a later date, really helps with the organisation of my posts.
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