Digital technology essay (Hammond)

'comment on the digital technology you used for your ancillary products and how your skills have developed since AS'

The Digital technology i used for my ancillary products were mostly photoshop and a camera as this was what i needed to make my products work. Also as i was brand new to everything i was only introduced to one program so i did not get confused with what i was doing. My skills have massively developed since AS and i shall explain this throughout my essay.

The use of photoshop for me was quite confusing as i had never used anything like that before and to get used to how to use all the different tools and apply it to my work was hard. As i started getting the hang of it i found it very useful and it helped to make my photos and the layout of my ancillary look more professional. I also used my own camera which was easy to use as i used to it and knew what lighting and angles worked best with it.

There are both pros and cons of the software and hardware in terms of my skill development. For my software the pros would be the image manipulation on photoshop for my ancillary tasks as this helped me to fit the layout and my images to make them look good and fit in with how i wanted my music magazine to look. Another pro of the photoshop tool would be the use of the colour variations. With this it allowed me to change my pictures around to let them fit in well with my colour scheme and make the people in my photo look good so that i have a professional look to my AS work. As for the fonts on my music magazine i used google and went on to a site called 1001 fonts and this was a good site as evertime i went on to it everything was saved so i made sure i had the right font each time and that i didnt mix fonts us and so this saved me a lot of time. The cons of the software i used for my music magazine would be parts of photoshop as it would freeze if i wanted to to something big and so this became frustrating. Certain tools were hard to find and so wasted time and also because i was new to the program i thought that i could be a little more clear to help with things. As for the hardware to pro were that i was able to use my own camera and so i knew the best way to use it. The only cons of the hardware i used would be the use of a memeory stick as it was a bit time consuming to keep loading the photos on to my laptop to then put on to the school computers and it became very back and forth a lot but was the best was to do things safely.

The software that i used for A2 was both photoshop for my ancillary tasks and final cut pro for my music video. However this time with photoshop i found it much easier to use as my skills had developed on it. I was able to uderstand the tools on it a lot better and also i could apply them better to give off a more professional look. As for final cut pro, because of how used to these programs i became, i was able to get the hang of it very quickly and so i didnt waste time in finding out what different things did. The pros of the software would be that i didnt waste my time getting used to them because i was much more confident of how to use things and had more of a idea of how i wanted it to do. The software on the comuters had been improved and also the school had bought some macs and so these were very fast and made everything much better. The sons of the software would still be that i had a couple of freezing problems on the computers on photoshop but i knew more how to handle it this time. The pros of the hardware would be that because we had new macs it meant that i didnt have to mess around with a memory stick and that i could just upload the photos and videos straight away. However the cons would have to be my camera. This is because the cold really got to it and because most of our shots were outside it meant that my camera got over cold and so the battery life would just suddenly die. Therefore being on a time limit this became frustrating and we needed to get out videoing done.

The pros of developing my Skills in AS to A2 was good as i meant i could be more confident with things that i changed and also to use to software and hardware became easy to me. When i started i didnt have much experience of that kind of software and so for me to be doing most of the music video and to get on with things on my own showed how much my skills had improved. I personally dont think that there are any cons for me to have improved on my skills as it meant i was able to get on with things much better.