Print Advert Evaluation

From the photography and graphics lessons that we had, we were required to produce an image montage and a print/magazine advert, respectively. Throughout both lessons, quite a bit of research was required, from simple image research to the sizes of magazine/print adverts themselves, which proved to be a lot harder to find than I thought. This was because there are many different size magazines, so they obviously have different sizes. The image research that I was required to do in photography helped me because I got to see freaky/unique imagery on a whole scale; there were some images that I saw and found that I wouldn’t have fit on the spectrum before.

In the photography lessons, I learnt a lot of new skills. I learned how to set up the camera - as well as how the camera works, the tripod and how to alter the height of it to how I need it, the redhead light and what to do and not to do while using it and then I also learned how to set up the seamless background which proved to be very helpful for when I was shooting images. When it came to using Photoshop in the photography lessons, we were taught how to use the ‘levels’ and ‘curves’ tool which allowed us to change the brightness and contrast of the images we had taken.

In the graphics lessons, a lot more skills were learnt; though I felt this may be because we were doing many different things each week. We learnt how to use many of the different features on Photoshop, from cutting out using the ‘pen tool’ to blurring with the ‘gaussian blur’ tool. A lot of the skills I had learnt in this lesson aided me in being able to create my final piece in both lessons.

I am happy with my final pieces; though I feel as though I was supposed to end up with only one by the end of this assignment. I like that I was able to bring in what I had learnt in my Photoshop lessons into my photography lessons when it came to the editing process for the montage I created. The Photoshop tools that I had learnt in my photography lesson also proved helpful when it came to my Photoshop work, as I used them on the images I was editing for my final magazine advert.

If I did this assignment again, I would first make sure that I knew what was being expected of me by the end. I feel as though I was only supposed to end up with one final piece from both of the sessions, but I was unclear during the project. I would also make more of an attempt to bring in the photographs I had taken in the photography portions of my lessons into my graphics lessons. If I were to do this assignment again, I would also ask for more techniques and tools to be taught to me so that I could try and experiment with them.