front cover production processes

Front Cover Production Processes on Photoshop

This is the original photo that I chose for the front cover. From this I increased the saturation via image and adjustments. This, however, made the green in the background too prominent so I used the Polygonal Lasso Tool to loop around the back ground and reduced the saturation.

After zooming in closer, I noticed Louise had slightly chapped lips so I used the Smudge tool to smooth out the rough skin to make the photo look more professional.

Another small mistake in Louise’s preparation was making sure her eye liner was correctly applied. As you can see in this photo the eyeliner and mascara don’t quite meet which gives a break up in the black when you pull out of the image. Firstly I tried to fix this by using the Clone Stamp Tool which simply copies part of an image and places it somewhere else. This was unsuccessful so I had to try something else

Next I tried drawing over it. Using the Eyedropper Tool, I copied the colour of the eyeliner and painted over it using the Brush Tool. This looked realistic especially when the image was just of the face (slightly zoomed in).

Too add some more definition on her eyes I added eye shadow by selecting the area around her eye and using a skin to dark brown colour on a 50% opacity. This added shadows making her eyes appear more prominent in the whole photo.

In my research I felt like the most interesting and empowering photos of females where those with big hair. Luckily Louise’s hair is naturally big and curly with lots of volume –however to make a real impact I used the Clone Stamp Tool, again, to exaggerate the curls and make her hair as big as it could be. I wasn’t too picky about how neet it was going to be bcause a lot of the image would be covered up by text, puffs and titles.

In the planning I’d wanted to make the colour cohesion blacks, whites, blue and red. With the background photo with so many bright colours I thought it necessary to put the photo into greyscale (using the Image menu to Mode to Greyscale).

To increase the focus on the model I used the Blur Tool on the background and the Sharpen tool on the face and hair.

The plan was to the photo to be of the models face so I used the Crop Tool to cut it down into the A4 paper size (21cm x 29.7cm)

The overall look of the photo was quite boring so I increased the contrast to make it more intense. I think this made it look incredibly more professional and powerful.

This is the finished background photo for the front cover.

To get this masthead font that I chose to work on the front cover I had to remove the white box surrounding it using the Background Eraser Tool.

After removing the whole background I needed to add the white back to behind the letters using the Brush tool in a separate layer. I made the background green temporarily so that I could see where the black and white was clearer.

To make the contrast higher, without changing the mid-tones, I adjusted the levels (via Image Menu to Adjustments to Levels).

When assembling the page I used the blue and pink colours from the stereotypical neon lights to match the title of the magazine ‘neoteric’. I used the Eyedropper Tool to select part of the photo of a neon sign for the colours of the outside of the puffs.

I tried to make the puffs look more like the neon lights but this looked a bit tacky so I changed them back to block colours.

On each puff I added text and, depending on the words, made the font size larger or smaller and if they words were highlighted or not. I also changed is the words were emphasized with italics or not.

The page so far…

I added more puffs using the shape tool and changed the opacity of them to give the magazine more dimension.I also added the album cover that I made.The page was very crowded so I zoomed out and had more of the models hair in it, making her face smaller.

I added more puffs using the shape tool and changed the opacity of them to give the magazine more dimension.I also added the album cover that I made.The page was very crowded so I zoomed out and had more of the models hair in it, making her face smaller.