School Prospectus (Preliminary Task)- Adobe Photoshop Workshop

In class, we are currently producing a school prospectus' front page on Adobe Photoshop. This is a task that we have to complete before we start planning for our main task. Initially, we learnt about the basics of Adobe Photoshop when we experienced a workshop, where an IT technician from St. Mark's demonstrated how to carry out the main tasks on this programme. The workshop took place on Monday 16th January, lasting for an hour, and we were able to acquire some skills from watching the technician demonstrate many of the tasks.

He taught us many basic things, and some of us took notes in our books as he went along, in order to help us later on in the course, when we would begin to use Adobe Photoshop in order to complete our coursework. I took down some of the main points in my exercise book, in order to come back to these if I needed them when  trying to work on Photoshop. We were then given the chance to try and experiment with Adobe Photoshop for the remainder of the lesson, after we had watched the demonstration, and were able to ask the technician any questions if we needed to.

Once we had learnt these skills, we then went on to begin to think about our preliminary task of creating a front page for a school prospectus. The next day, Tuesday 17th January, we were able to look at an existing prospectus (a sixth form one), and began to learn about what we would need to consider when we were producing our front page. I learnt that we would need to consider the layout of our front page, what the content of the photos would be, how many photos I would need and also what text would be needed on the front page. By identifying and examining each of these elements from an existing prospectus, it helped me when thinking about my plan for a school prospectus, which we started after this.

In order to plan our front page of a school prospectus, we had to produce a plan for the layout of this, including the positioning of the text and images. Alongside this, a plan for each individual image had to be produced, including what the camera angle would be for each image and the content of it (location, objects, people and activities), and once we had drawn each image and stated this information about it, we could take the photos. I went to Stewards School in order to take the photographs that I had planned, on Monday 23rd January, and when I returned I uploaded them onto the computer and saved them into my documents. When taking the photos, I had to alter my plan of some of them, as it seemed the better option when physically capturing the images.

For example, I realised that one of my images could no longer include the arm of the person whose point of view the photograph was showing, as this was not practical and didn't seem as though it would work at the time. The angle of another of my photographs had to be altered at the time and I realised that when I was there, I changed the angles of many of my shots. This is because at the time it seemed better to change them, in order to have an image that I wanted, and the best result could be achieved for the front cover of my prospectus.

Since Monday, I have been working on my front page of a school prospectus, and when using Adobe Photoshop, I have learnt how to do many things, such as re-sizing an image, followed by selecting the image and copying and pasting it into the front page, as well as altering the colour of the background of the front page. Although I learnt some skills during the Adobe Photoshop tutorial, it's proving difficult to work with the programme at times, mainly because it seems so complex, as there are so many ways of editing available. However, by using Adobe Photoshop, it is becoming clearer as to how to use it, as I experiment and learn whilst editing my front page.