Photoshop Positive and Negative Aspects

Impacts of Photoshop

Photoshop is a very useful tool used in the media world to create or edit pictures or a design of some kind to be used. 

Positive:

There are a lot of good reasons to use Photoshop when creating a msuic magazine as it can do various things using the various tolls built into the software that can help make the cover look better and more appealing, this can be done through making the main person the cover look "better" by getting rid of any blemish's like a bruise or a cut which can make a person look better on the cover. This is done in magazines all the time however and doesn't have a bad side doing this, here are some extra positives 

• It can be used to get rid of a blemish on someone such as a mole.
• Magazines can have a more attractive cover that can appeal more to the eye. Which means the magazine will sell more.
• Make people look more attractive who are on the cover. Meaning the magazine will sell more.

Negatives:

Due to being able to make someone look better beyond covering up some cuts and bruises, its this that makes it such a negative as just by using Photoshop you can change the way someone looks by altering how big their forehead is, how fat or skinny they are, make a skinny person even skinnier, using this software you can make someone look unnaturally perfect by altering how they look, this is why it has a negative side that makes people have a twisted idea of how these people look. Here are some extra negative points

• People are given a false idea of what someone actually looks like before Photoshop is done. 
• Can lead to problems like anorexia, girls trying to look like a model as that's what deemed as being attractive.
• Can lead to a negative perception of someone, the general public will have a expectation of what someone looks like when in reality they are completely different.

At the bottom of this post is a gif of Jennifer Lawrence before and after Photoshop on the cover of a magazine, who is made to look almost unnaturally skinny and has parts of her body altered to make her look more appealing on the cover of this magazine. You can see the differences and what has been edited. such as fuller looking hair, thighs have been made smaller and the creases in the skirt have been edited out, forehead has been made slightly smaller, 

Rock and Pop music magazine comparison

If you compare these two magazines from different genres of music you can see differences looking at the cover of magazines that appeal to people who like those genres./

Based on the house colours used by these two magazines we see the pop magazine (left) being a lot more vibrant and colourful using pink and white in the headline and the background, whereas in the Kerrang magazine we see darker colours those being  red, black and the black background make's it look more gritty and will appeal more to people who like rock, metal style of music. The colours can represent the genre of the music. The Kerrang magazine seems to appeal to an older age group with the darker colours and the Pop magazine seems to appeal to a younger generation with the bright colours used on the cover.

Another comparison is the amount of buzzwords used on the Pop magazine is higher showing what looks like most of the stories in the magazine itself and the Kerrang magazine contains fewer buzzwords which seem to focus on the artists featured in the magazine. This could be due to people who would buy Kerrang would want more focus on their favourite band/artist and want more information about them.

Rock Music Magazine Front Cover Analysis

Pop Magazine Front Cover Analysis

Analysing a college magazine

This is the school magazine I will be analysing and i'm going to analyse the magazine and critique it and then say what i would do to improve the magazine.

The first thing, that i see when i look at the magazine is the name of the magazine 'The Cardinal bulletin', there is snow on the title showing that this is a Christmas issue and it mentions about a  'Christmas Concert' at the bottom which has the ideology that this is a Catholic school. The less obvious elements that show this is a Christmas issue is the colour scheme which is red and white which are colours associated with Christmas (candy canes etc).

The one thing that does attract my attention is the title 'Soul Food' which takes up a lot of space and is bold to be eye catching and its the main point of the magazine/.

By looking at the multiple pictures of students you can see that the school focuses heavily on students enjoyment at the school and extra curricular activities they provide for the students.

However this magazine is not visually appealing due to the heavy text and over powers the rest of the page, the audience the magazine is aimed at is 11-16 year olds and they would be unlikely to sit down and read this for 10 minutes. It should be short, quick paragraphs to appeal more to them and appeal to them more, this could be improved by including more colourful features to liven the page up a little and make it more appealing to eye.

Magazine Terminology

This is a post just about a couple of magazine terminology terms and their meanings.

Masthead: Name of the magazine

Headline: Title of the main story featured within the magazine

House style: The main colour scheme used in the magazine

Main Image: Image of an artist or band who are the main feature within the magazine.

Pug: A promotional free item

Buzzwords: Words like "exclusive" and "wow" used  to catch the readers eye. 

Banner: Colourful banner across the page with text that promotes a feature.

Barcode: Code and convention that is on every front page and tells us the price of the magazine.

Puff: Graphic feature on the front cover of a magazine to make something stand out.

Caption: Text describing the image

Cover line: Advertising the other topics inside the magazine.

Applying the Male Gaze

Applying the Male Gaze to a scene from a TV show: 

In this short clip it highlights a scene with Mercedes (Jennifer Metcalfe) where a drink gets spilled on her top and she has to take her top off, she does this in a seductive way showing she is enjoying the male attention and this attracts more attention to her body then the scene itself./

The Male Gaze theory is supported in this clip by Hollyoaks using a attractive female to attract the male audience.  There is a medium shot throughout so the audience can see her chest despite there being another person in the scene. Edits used are High Key Lighting to connote that she is the main person to look at in the clip.