My First Cover

Induction evaluation

The first piece of work I have completed for AS Media Production is the magazine front cover.  I used photography and Photoshop to make my front cover. I had never used Photoshop before in detail other than using the brightness setting once.

This was the first time I had used full manual focus on a camera and this proved more difficult than I first anticipated as in most of pictures I took, the main focal point (the person) was blurred and out of focus. The person in this picture is the main focal point I ensured I used the rule of thirds when positioning the eye line in the picture because this is the best way to get an accurately planned image. To keep a steadier base when using the camera I used the ‘T-stance’.

Having never used Photoshop before, I was just beginning to learn some of the tools. For the title I used the emboss tool to give it a 3D-like effect which would appeal to younger people (the audience I chose to target). The use of many colours allowed me to make the magazine as open to both genders as possible however I realize that stereotypically girls would buy more magazines so I included pink at the top in the eye line of the person on there as it would direct their eyes to it and as a sells line, it could entice them into reading into it and buying the magazine. I used as many selling techniques as I thought appropriate such as exclusivities, ellipsis, reward lines, rhetorical questions, exclamation marks and quotes.  When I was experimenting with different tools, I opened up another image which I took and used the lasso tool to cut around the head and I then inserted the newly trimmed head into my magazine as another way of getting people to read on by only having that and “Page 7” written.

I had difficulty with using manual focus as a result the majority of the shots I took were not focused on the person or were still blurred around the edges and so it took me quite a number of attempts before I managed to get the shot seen on my cover. When using Photoshop, I could not use most tools efficiently and this led to problems when creating my cover. I tried to make my image fit the cover as it was a little bit too big however when I did, it stretched the image and so I had to find out how to undo it and resize the image without contorting it. Another problem I encountered was when using the layers panel, when I wanted to move a certain part such as the “EXCLUSIVE” I did not have it selected in the layers panel and so I ended up moving other set pieces of the cover.

From doing this I have learned some useful skills in the taking of images and use of the camera such as the T-stance and manual focus. Also within Photoshop I learned how to insert images, text and shapes and also how to manipulate these in many ways to produce my front cover.

This is my front cover.