I wanted to experiment with the photographs I took in the studio and turn them into illustration looking pieces. I did this through a google tutorial, once I learnt the technique I then felt confident enough to use it again. I am now able to use this

technique on my other images I have recently taken.

Stage one is opening the image into Photoshop CS6 then layering from the background so it is editable.

Stage two is making a duplicate layer and going to image, adjustments, black and white and transforming the image to a negative one on the new layer.

Stage three is to edit the levels on the black and white to make sure it isn’t harshly toned neither too soft.

Stage four is cropping the image so that it is the size of a front cover on a digipak.You can do this by using the cropping tool and pulling the corners outwards to your specific size.

Once that is done a fill is needed in this case I chose black as I feel that that would be most appropriate due to my lighting choice. Duplicate this layer again.

Stage seven is making a second copy of the black and white layer, and then setting this layer to blending mode “Color Dodge.”

The next stage is to invert the colour dodge layer. This can be done by clicking image, adjustments and invert.

The next section of the editing is to Gaussian Blur the inverted layer. This then blurs the image before it is inverted back again.

By blurring the Color Dodge layer, we can create grayscale shadow tones and control them with the slider as shown. This one is done with the Gaussian Blur, which you can find by navigating to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

Create another copy of the original black and white Background copy layer then move it to the top of the layers panel in Photoshop CS6.

Stage eleven is the filters stage. The effect is captured by going to filter, stylize and Glowing Edges.

This creates a linegraph ontop of the image but to get extra line you move onto the final stage of the process. Inverting the image to get the final result.

The final editing layer is to tidy up the image with the pen tool and the eraser to get rid of the fraying edges. This is an easy looking but complex process to get correct for the right effect. I

believe that it has made my image look believable as a piece of art digitally created as well as it looking professional enough if put in the right context for a music album cover.