For this I didn't use 'Picasa' which I had used for my previous idea, but I used 'PhotoImpact 10' which I am familiar with. I added my desired picture and cut around the image and placed it in the centre and decided to place everything around this picture. Unlike the other picture I did not have to add in a banner to fill space because the size of the page I had chosen was A4. This program was much easier to use than 'Picasa' or 'Photoshop' and I am quietly confident that my Magazine cover looks near-professional. The only problem I encountered was the size of the main picture compared to other already-existing covers' pictures. I was unable to make it big enough to fill the height of the page because by doing so, my picture would prove too wide to fit on the A4 page with a margin for advertisements.
I used tools to rotate simple images and add shadows to text and pictures to add to the authenticity of my magazine. The part of my cover that took the longest was defiantly my main picture because I had to cut around the edges of the characters without cutting off parts of hair that would be noticeable and make my picture look odd. Also the bubbles around the additional pictures took a long time because I had to use precise measurements and disable the merge tools so I could do the precise measurements accurately. The part of the cover I dislike is the top right with the 'Dancing on Ice' image. I would have prefered a long banner-like image to be placed there but I could not find one that would fit precisely and not look odd or squashed. I also used 'Microsoft Publisher' to help get my pugs/puffs on to the cover.After showing my final piece to the people/audience around me, I found that everyone who looked at it thought that I had actually brought in a real soap magazine. This boosted my confidence that the research I had used to complete this task had helped me in all the right ways and that my magazine cover was a success.
09/03/2010
After finding out some of the pictures on my previous magazine would be breaching copyright laws, I was forced to make a new one. I took this as an opportunity to change my main picture to the murdered character in my soap. I used the same programme as before (PhotoImpact) and used the same effects (shadows) but i changed the contents of the page. Instead of using already existing soap and drama pictures, I looked through my own files and found pictures of family and friends and added them to a random storyline. I'm not as happy with this final piece as I was for the previous piece, but I am unable to make the cover look more professional without breaching some copyright laws.