Video: Editing a photograph

This video shows skills that I used on all of the photographs that I edited. But this video shows how I edited a photograph of my main model for the front cover. Please click the full screen button to view the video fully.

Before and After Editing the Photographs

Before and After Editing Photographs

Friday 25th March 2011 - Completion of Production

After several weeks of working on my front page, contents and double page spread article, I have finished my production work. Now that I have done so, I can move on to the evaluation questions. In the evaluation process I will answer the following questions:

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

In addition to these questions I will also be providing evidence of audience feedback, their thoughts and views on my print work...

Double Page Spread 2nd Draft

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I found flaws in my double page spread as well. The first draft had way too much text on it which made it look over crowded. The images were too small as well which made it look like the text was making the model feel smaller. The most common double page article convention was also missing: page numbers. 

The second draft (above) is a rectified version of the first draft. I removed a lot of the text so that it would not look overcrowded. I made the images much more bigger as well. I inserted page numbers at the bottom in accordance to the contents page. I redesigned the title as well, to something much more interesting and appealing. I slightly repositioned the text at the top of the page as well.

Double Page Spread 1st Draft

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This is the first shot at my double page spread article.

Double Page Spread Article 2nd Draft (Final)

Xclusive Interview With Jasmine 2

Double Page Spread Article 1st Draft

Xclusive Interview with Jasmine

Contents Page Second Draft

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The first draft had a very cheap and amateurish  appeal to me. I was not happy with it while I was working. The text was bunched together and it looked very dull and boring. The pages did not have much information.

For the second draft (above) I gave my contents page a complete re-design and makeover. I sat down with a few pieces of paper and my laptop, and I went researching into contents page design. After 3 hours of hunting and drafting, I came up with a design similar to the one above. Once I was happy with the design, I went onto Photoshop and created the page all over again, from scratch. I moved the images to one place to make it look well organised. I made the text surround the images so that potential readers would not be distracted by text or image while looking at the opposite. I also put in a snapshot of the front cover which is a convention that I've seen in music magazine content pages. I gave the whole page a new, well structured design.

Contents Page First Draft

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This is my first shot at the contents page.

Front Cover Third Draft

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I decided to go for the model who was posed as above. But I could still find flaws in my work. For one, the main cover line had no relevance to the background. The background was a space aurora background and had no relation to someone's success story. Another flaw was that some of the text was not readable as it blended into the model's clothes as both text and clothes were of similar colours. In addition the Soundwave logo was too dark to read.

In the third draft (above) I changed the cover line from "her success story" to "a star in the making" which made much more sense. I also put black boxes around the sell lines so that it was more readable. I also changed the Soundwave logo so that you could read it properly without having to strain your eyes. I applied some text effects to make it look more appealing. Another improvement I made was changing the positioning of one of the sell lines. 

Front Cover Second Draft (v2.1 and v2.2)

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These front covers are improved from the first draft. The flaws in the first draft were that the model still had 'green hair'. The size of the model was also too small which did not make her look like she was part of the magazine. The photo pose was questionable as to whether it was suitable for front cover of a music magazine.

These improved versions above show two different versions of the second draft. The only thing different between the the two above is the model image. I thought that it would be better to see the difference after I made the improvements. I also made the size of the models bigger in these versions. After playing around with the settings and surfing the web for tips, I managed to remove the 'green hair' effect. I also made a background from scratch. There is a video on this blog showing how I made the background.

Front Cover 1st Draft

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This is the first go I had in making my front cover.

The Photo Shoots

Photo Shoot 1
These are the images from the first photo shoot I held. These were the initial photos that I was going to use but I was not happy with the variety and the models' skin colour came out as yellow rather than their natural skin colour for most of the photos. This was an unexpected hurdle that I came across because I had been provided with all the professional equipment to use: an SLR camera, a green screen, camera lights, a tripod and an extra detachable camera lens. So I had to set up another photo shoot... (** Please note that there are more photos than displayed on the thumbnail panel. Use the arrow navigation buttons which are found at the top of the image display **)




Photo Shoot 2
For the second shoot, I used the same camera. After the first shoot, I thought that if I had a variety of costume and props, it would give me a wider choice of options for photos to use. The first shoot taught me that the lighting was not working. I thought that the green screen may be having some sort of effect on my models' skin colour. I tried taking photos with and without the green screen. It seems that the green screen does have a small effect on skin colour. Without the green screen, photos are generally coming out crisper and very few of the green-screen-less shots leave the models with a yellow ting. After having changed the costumes of the models, I thought that I should take a third photo shoot with another change in costume to see how different my magazine would look if I used different clothes...




Photo Shoot 3
For the third photo shoot I decided that I should switch off two of the yellow lights that I used. I hoped that this might reduced the 'yellow skin' effect. I also decided to use a different camera. For the first two photo shoots, I used a Fujifilm FinePix S7000. For the third and final photo shoot (found below) I used a Canon EOS 1000D. The results? The images were much crisper and clearer. It had more definition and detail on them and there was no 'yellow skin' effect present in any of the photos. I was very impressed of the final products that were produced by the camera. I knew instantly that most of the pictures that I would use would come from this final photo shoot.