Evaluation.

Evaluation.

At the start of the term I had never used Photoshop before, ever.  I had used similar programs such as Gimp and the basic Paint though.  I had also seen Photoshop tutorials on YouTube a few times for other reasons.  However, now I feel like I know the basic Photoshop tools and even quite a few of the more complicated ones.  I’ve downloaded Photoshop at home and I’ve really got to grips with the majority of what you can do on it.  Without a doubt, the animal face project helped me with my final piece more than any of the work.  Once I learnt about the opacity rubber tool, and blending things together I could literally do more and more.  At first I kept forgetting to switch layers, but over time, it became a habit to keep switching back and forth and became second nature.

I think the most important tool I’ve learnt to use was just Photoshop in general as I couldn’t use it at all before, now I feel like I can make anything on it.  During my final piece I edited some faces onto different bodies, and I’m really impressed with the quality of my own work, it looks unbelievably real.  The tools I used for this were the pen tool to cut around it, and the rubber tool to blend it into the background smoothly.  I also used layers effectively and for my magazine cover I think I had to use over forty of them.  The dodge tool helped a bit too just to give it that finishing touch, and to blend parts together. I also learnt quite a bit more about file formats.  I knew the basics such as jpeg’s and gif’s but now I know why different formats are used and what they do.  I know which formats save higher than others, what there main purpose is and when the correct time to use them.  I feel comfortable that I’m saving my work in the correct format.  It really does make a difference from looking amateur somewhat to high quality, professional.  I think learning the different uses of each format is the most important thing I’ve learnt.

As for my final pieces, I chose to design an album cover and back, and a magazine cover.  Although I am thoroughly pleased with both, I’d have to say my favourite piece of work is the album cover and back.  I didn’t just create the cover for the sake of it, I thought about the title and made sure it had an underlying meaning, and tied in with the theme too.  My album cover is a light-bulb, with a lit up city inside, the title of my album is ‘’All The Small Things’’. The underlying meaning is that all the small things can combine together to make something huge.  This inflicts on the band, the four men can combine to make huge tracks and inspire the world.  The light-bulb is a reference to lighting up the city, creating a huge atmosphere, when really they’re just lights.  I honestly could see the cover being in a shop on the shelf,  it fits perfectly with the simple album designs I researched and put onto my blog.  It’s simple and stylish, the band name and album title are all on show and it’s not crowded.  I think it looks fantastic. 

I think it jumps out at you, the rest of the cover is so plain, except for the one image, and it’s that image I wanted the attention to be on.  Compared to five covers I’ve seen by the Kings Of Leon, I think my cover is as good, if not, even better.  The back of my cover is slick and stylish too, the track listing is small, but as it’s the only text visible, it’s easily read.  It’s very similar to album backs in the shops today.  The fact it’s bright and colourful, yet quite plain, has a really strong impact and I think would help increase sales.  My audience would be anyone really, I styled my fake band on already existing Kings Of Leon, and everything I created looks similar to their stuff.  I think the audience would be teenagers and adults under forty.  It’s not to say others won’t enjoy the music, it’s just generally who I’m aiming it at with song titles such as ‘’Cocaine and Vegas Aint’ All That.’’

I’m also very impressed with the quality of my magazine cover, but if I could change anything; it’d be that.  I don’t like the fact I changed my main image to black and white, when all other magazines of that genre have full colour.  I don’t like that I’ve slanted the title of ‘’NME’’ when NME never slant their titles.  I should have realised this when doing my research and looking at existing covers that have been created.  I just didn’t notice.  I would also rescale my magazine as when I saved it, I cut half of face off from one of the band members, I tried printing to fit-to-scale but it didn’t work.  I lost the half of his face when I saved it incorrectly. 

The skills I’ve learnt whilst doing this project have been very useful with my website design.  I’ve found myself creating more professional background and banners, I’ve created better text effects to by adding drop shadows and gradient overlays.  These are skills I could take into a web-design based job, or even graphic design related industries.  I’ve really enjoyed designing the magazine and album covers on Photoshop and I’m delighted with my final outcome.

- Jack Dean.

Research.

This is a post to show all of my research.
1. I needed to research album covers, to be able to design a slick and simple one myself.  I took elements of albums I liked and incorperated them into my own. 
 

 

The fifth album cover above of the lightbulb was the inspiration behind mine, also I noticed how simple all the covers are.  They all have one image, and a plain background, I think it really works.  It draws all the attention the image and has a strong impact.  If they had other images, the viewer wouldn't be drawn to the main one.  This is why I decided to keep my album cover simple.  My album cover is the last one, and in my more-than-biased opinion, I think it looks as good (if not better) than the proper ones.

Below are the NME magazine covers I focused on and copied into my own work.  I liked how simple they were, yet still full of information.  Each one grabbed my attention for the right reasons.  I liked the plain background and the same use of colour.  Despite each being very different, they have a same theme through-out, the main image is very gripping and hopefully so is mine.  I think mine would suit an NME cover.

 

 


If I could make a change to my magazine, it would be the black and white image.  NME don't seem to use desaturated images, so I'd definatly change that.  Also, I'd make the logo the same.  Compared to the original NME logo, ine is too big, rotated and too bright.  I'd fix this using the transform tool and brightness change. 

Below are some examples of the back of example covers I looked at, the last image is my own.  Again, I noticed how simple they were, they usually had one image, and the track listing.  I copied this in my own work.  I think it looks brilliant.

Full Album Cover / Back.

I've how I made my album cover in a previous post, this is just a post showing my final album cover, and album back.  The back contained a pasted image of a light-bulb, and a barcode.  I just used the simple text tool to add the text.   I used a tiny bit of gradient for the background also.  Here's the final product.

Magazine Cover.

The magazine cover used basic photoshop skills, with a few effects that gave it a finishing touch.  The main techniques I used was just cutting around original images and placing them to a suitable position.  I also found myself using the rubber tool on a low opacity quite a lot, removing access outlines and making layers blend together more smoothly.  I used the text effect for the titles and subtitles, making sure I gave the text some inner glow, and outside glow to make it look 3D and just generally more effective.  The magazine took about 2 weeks to complete, not as long as I'd expect but I think this because a lot of work went into the original band image to go on the front which you see in a different post. 

First of all, I opened the template as a A4, the original size for a magazine cover, and I pasted my edited band photo onto the layer.  I made sure not to fix this to the background as I knew I'd later have to move it about, and maybe even resize it.  I left it in a position I thought would be good, I then went to Google images.  I wanted to find a pattern I could use as the background of my magazine cover, it couldn't be nothing too bright, it had to be stylish, yet subtle.  I didn't want really any attention going towards this as it was not important at all, but it needed to be classy in order to maintain a stylish feel.  I went for this black wallpaper type pattern as you can see below.  I then moved this layer behind the band photo and cut around the band using the pen tool.  When I was happy, I fixed the pattern to the background, because I knew I wouldn't later have to move this.

After this was done, I wanted to add the text that would stand out the most.  The text would be my band name ''Working Class Kings''.  I used a big strong font for this as I needed it to almost jump out of the page, I can't remember the name of the font I used but it was from the website http://www.dafont.com/ and was under the theme of ''Fixed Width.''  It needed to be different, but still be easily read.  I tried a few colours such as red and light blue, but it didn't flow with the black and white image below, so I settled on white.  I added some inner glow, and a little emboss to make the text look almost 3D.  I really liked the text I settled with as it stood out, but it wasn't complicated.  I couldn't for example; use calligraphy or text with tails or patterns.

I needed to add some more text to the main part of the cover, it was a subtitle in a way.  I kept the font exactly the same, I just made it a little less noticable.  Instead of being bright in-your-face white, I made it a bit less opaque, thus resulting in it going almost grey.  It's still easy to read as it looks shiny, and bold, but it's just not as noticeable, exactly what I wanted.

I'd rather people look at the magazine, see the band and then see the ''exclusive talks with''.  It's obvious the main selling point of a magazine needs to be the bit that grabs the viewers attention, and although some might argue that the fact the magazine contains ''exclusive talks'' is the main selling point, I'd argue it's the band that is.  If I saw a magazine with a band I really liked, I'd pick it up.  I wouldn't pick up a magazine that just said ''exclusive talks'' as it could be exclusive talks with an artist I really disliked.  But anyway, I kept the font at the same angle and placed it just on top of the first sentence.  As you can see in the screen shot, I used drop shadow, inner shadow, bevel and emboss, color overlay, gradient overlay, and stroke.  I didn't use pattern overlay in the end.

The next thing I did to create my magazine cover was the seperate the page into different parts.  I added some blue/white gradient at the top.  I did this by cutting away the original background pattern using the pen tool.  I then pasted the originial NME logo onto the top and put it into place.  I usually use the transform (ctrl + t) to move and resize and it's quick and simple.  I also deleted the pattern at the bottom of the page.  I don't know why I decided to get rid of the original pattern, but I think it was mainly to seperate the sections of the magazine and make it obvious different parts had different content. 

 Next, I completed the bottom of the page.  I looked at other magazines, particularly NME and focused on what type of content they had at the bottom of the page.  It was usually a free giveaway or something  which would entice the reader to buy / read more of the magazine.  I decided to go with ''EMINEM'S NEW UK TOUR?'' as I felt this would entice many readers of music magazines.  I found an image of Eminem and resized him to fit the small section at the bottom right of the page.  I made sure I didn't cut round him perfectly, instead, giving a ragged edge effect, I don't know why I did this, but I think it looks good, and fits with the flow of the magazine.  It also acts as a type of a border.  I used the same text as before, duplicating the layer, I just removed all shadows and overlays.  I didn't want this text to be as big and bold as the text above as it was somewhat less important.  I kept it simple and plain and easy to read though. 

After this, I wanted to add a free giveaway aswell, just for extra insentive to purchase the magazine.  Again, I wanted to put this at the bottom.  I wanted another background for this little section to make it clear it was different content.  I used a red ball.  I made this by selecting the Elliptical Marquee Tool and making a sphere shape.  I then cut away the shape, filled it with red overlay, and added some inner shadow.  This made it looks 3D, infact, more 3D than the rest of it.  I then added some different stlye text using the text tool, and added a small image of some tickets.  I got this image from Google again, and it involved the easy process of cutting, and merging.  At this point, I changed my main text I did earlier to red, to flow with the red of the NME title, and the red ball at the bottom, I think it looked really good.

The final piece didn't take much more.  I used the same technique I've already used just to fill the gaps.  For example cutting around original images, removing the access and merging layers together.  Adding text, rotating, replacing and adding shadows and overlays.  Changing backgrounds via lower layers and fixing them down.  I did use a the paint tool a bit to create a blood effect on the page, this was to tye in with the red and black theme, but really, it was just to fill space.  Below is the final image of my magazine cover.

Magazine Image Edits.

For my magazine cover I used an image of my 'fake band'.  This was initially a body shot image of the Kings Of Leon, I took this image and edited the heads of the people I wanted in my band.
This was basically the same technique as the animal faces.  Below is the first image I took of Kings Of Leon, along with the other people I wanted to use for the faces.

 


1. I took the first image of the Kings Of Leon and opened it in high quality in Photoshop.  I made the size of the Photoshop template original A4, the most common magazine cover size.  I then proceeded to cut around the inside of the faces, sometimes leaving the hair.  After I was happy with the cut-outs, using the pen tool to select, I deleted the faces from the original image and pasted the new face on a new layer.  Using the transform tool I fitted the face into place, over the top of the original image.  I then used the rubber tool at a low opacity to remove the unwanted access image.  I often had to try new faces and new positions to make the heads fit, as you can see below, I used three or four different people until I settled on the one I felt best suited the body.  (Look at the guy on the right, in the waistcoat).

(Image #1 was the final image I went with, they all have their original hair just with new faces except for the guy in the waistcoat, I felt keeping the old hair didn't really fit anybody else, so I had to remove it.  I used the third guys hair and face.  This was the same technique, it just meant not removing the hair with the rubber tool.)

(Image #2 was a first attempt, as you can see the face looked mishaped and just ugly.  I tried to keep the original hair and it really didn't work.  The first two guys suited the body perfectly, but the third guy was tricky to find a suitable replacement.  I had to experiment with many faces, but the one below did not work.)

(Image #3 is the original guy in the waistcoat, as you can see, obviously it fits perfectly.  Due to the strange parting in his hair it was hard to find a face I could replace it with, I original tried looking for bald people with large forheads so it would be easier to paste the hair ontop.  This didn't work, and as said above, I ended up removing his face and hair, and just using the replacements hair, it fitted better, although everyone else has the same original hair, just different faces.)

(Image #4, this is the final image I saved as a .png for my magazine cover, as you can see the first guy has the same hair, as does the second and forth.  I had to use a shadow effect on the side of the first guys face to make it flow with the neck.  I also decided to make the whole image black and white, that way I only had to adjust the brightness and contrast rather than colour correction.  I think the first and last guys face is a bit out of contract, but it's not too noticeable and it's the best I could get it.  Some work you can't see if the forth guy.  Unfortunately I cut him out a bit in the print screens below, but the guy who's face I used had a neck tattoo, I thought this tattoo was so prominent I decided to keep it.  I kept the original guys neck, but just pasted the new neck on top, using the rubber tool again, I removed the new neck, leaving just the area of the tattoo.  I then changed the contrast in order for it to look natural, then once in place, and the right contrast and brightness, I merged the layers together.

Album Cover.

I didn't just want to create an album cover for the sake of it,  I wanted mine to have meaning and to relate with the title I was giving it.  The title of the album is ''All the little things''.  I wanted to have the underlying meaning of ''All the little things piece together to make big things happen.''  Hence my album cover you can see below.  It's a light-bulb which on it's own, doesn't look very effective, but inside the light-bulb is a city lit up at night.  Which ties in with the mean, all the little things making something big happen.  Basically, I wanted the motto to reflect the band, and that the four men that make the single band, can make big music, and inspire big things.

1. I won't go into much detail about how I made the above album cover, because I'll explain that in the steps below.  But to sum it up, It was relatively easy.  I kept it simple because I didn't want to overdo it.  I looked at other album covers as you can see in my ''Band Research'' post.  I made sure I saved the cover as a .png file, this way I won't lose any quality during the final process and it'd be easy to edit again if I needed too.  Which I didn't.

2. Anyway, first of all I opened a new template on Photoshop™, I made sure the size was 12 centre metres by 12 centre metres as this is the size an album cover generally is, this just meant changing the properties after going to file > FILE > NEW. 

3. After opening my template, I went to Google images and typed in ''Light-bulb art'' for inspiration and ideas.  I found the picture below of a forest inside a light-bulb, it stood out from the rest because it was so unusual and just generally pretty.  I copied and pasted it into Photoshop™ and used the Pen Tool to cut out the forest image from inside the bulb.  I needed to do this in order to paste my own image in. 

4. After this I wanted to find a decent picture of a city lit up at night-time to tie in with the theme and the feel of the cover.  It had to be at night-time so you could see the effect ''all the small things'' / bulbs could have.  It really worked with the title of the album and I think the image I chose was so high quality, it stood out much more than a normal quality photograph.

I resized and rescaled the image to fit without the boundaries of the bulb and then merged the layers together by alt-clicking the two layers I wanted, right clicking and selecting 'Merge Layers'.

5. The next step may seem a bit tedious, but I really wanted to add a finishing touch to the image.  I cut around the inside of the bulb, selecting the outside of the city image and selected it using the pen tool once again.  I then went into the menu bar and selected LAYER > NEW > LAYER VIA COPY.  This then sent the outside of the city image to a new layer.  I then selected the later, and went into the FILTER tab before selecting BLUR > BOX BLUR.  This then made a subtle, but improved change to my image.  It blurred the edges and made the city look more natural inside of the bulb rather than just an image pasted into another image. 

6. Once this was complete, I moved the image a bit further down to allow room to add the text.  I didn't want to add anything else to the cover as I wanted the city-bulb to be the focus point, and I felt anything else would maybe distract the viewer away from the main part of the cover.  I decided to use some plain, yet quite strong, text.  It stood out and didn't draw too much attention, it wasn't all fancy and hard to read, it just felt right and wasn't too boring either.  The font I used I took from a website called dafont.com and the font is called BEBAS NEUE.  

7. After I put the text into place, I added the name of the album ''All The Small Things''.  I decided to rotate the album title 90 degree's clockwise and put it in the top left.  I also put this writing in a small text and all lower case despite being a title.  I thought this would give a good effect, and again, suit the title ''All The Small Things'' as the writing was small, and in lower case.  The title name should usually jump out and grab the attention of the viewer, but in this instance, I wanted it to be a bit more obscure, just like the reference to the light bulb making big things happen.  In conclusion, the album cover looks really pretty and colourful anyway so even if the underlying message wasn't received by everyone or anybody, it still looked great, and for those that did understand the message, it would have even more impact.