RESEARCH & PLANNING: Photoshop and InDesign Techniques I Used

Fixing a Blurry Photo

I found that the main image I wanted to use for my double page spread was blurry, I then wanted to find a way to make the picture a lot sharper and clearer using Photoshop. I researched into this and found a video which showed me a very simple way to do this. It was very helpful and I managed to fix the blurry photo and use it for my double page spread. Below is a link to the video which showed me how to do this:
How To Fix a Blurry Photo

Adding a Drop Cap

Adding a drop cap to the beginning of a paragraph is usually used in magazine articles, I didn't know how to do this using InDesign so I did some research to find out how to do it. I found another helpful video which showed me exactly what to do. Here is a link to the video:
How To Add a Drop Cap

Using a Drop Shadow

I needed to find a way to make my masthead stand out more on my front cover, as I researched into what I can do in Photoshop to achieve this and I found out about using drop shadows. A video on YouTube showed me exactly how to do this:
How To Add a Drop Shadow

Creating a Semi-Transparent Background Behind Text
On my double page spread I found that some of the text was disappearing into the main image so it couldn't be read easily, I decided that i would put a colour behind the text to make it stand out more but I didn't want to completely lose parts of the main image behind. After researching into how to avoid this problem I found a video showing me how to make the block colour behind the text semi-transparent so I could then read the text easily whilst still being able to see the picture behind, Here is how I did it:
How to Make a Semi-Transparent Background