Photoshop Practice

Level 1

 

The idea behind this practice was to recreate the album covers for the band 'The Kabeedies' using techniques in Photoshop. I changed some of the smaller details in the versions that I created to show variation, creativity and to ensure that it was obvious that I had edited these from scratch

To begin with, I created a background layer and used the pipette/sampling tool to select the colour to fill the layer with. This ensured that I had the correct colour. Then I imported and resized the image of the band members to create a new layer, making sure that the layer with the band members was on top of the background layer. After this, I used the magnetic lasso tool to select the band members from the white background and then inverted the selection. By inversing the selection I was able to use the eraser tool to erase the white background without erasing any of the band members themselves. The next step was to add the text, I did this by using the text tool and the pipette tool in order to get the correct colours, fonts and font sizes. To frame the text, I used the line tool to draw two lines, one above and one below the text. Following this, I had to get the spiral design on to the overall image. To do this, I opened the file in Photoshop and cropped one half of the image, before importing it as a new layer onto the album cover file. The image had a white background, so I used the magic wand to select the design itself before removing the white background. To position the design correctly, I used the free transform tool to rotate the design and move it in to place, before changing the opacity so the design appeared to be brown instead of black. Finally, I adjusted layers by bringing them to front/back.

Level 2

To create this album cover, I opened the crumpled paper image into Photoshop and used it as a background layer, resizing it with the free transform tool. Following this, I opened the polaroid frame 1 as a new layer and resized it with the free transform tool. This meant that I was able to use the resized frame as many times as I required by simply dragging it onto the background layer to create a new layer. I did this four times, placing and rotating all of the layers individually using the free transform tool. Once I had the frames in place, I opened the image of the four band members in Photoshop and individually cropped each member before dragging them on to the original template file to place them inside the polaroid frames. Occasionally I would have to send the layers containing the band members to the back so they would appear behind the frames rather than in front. Then I added the text using the text tool; to get the correct colour I also used the swatch/pipette tool to select the red from the completed image before applying to my own text. I used the text tool to write 'the' before using the free transform tool to rotate it in order to get vertical text. To frame the text, I used the line drawing tool to draw two lines; one above the text and one below. I also used the text tool to write the word 'truth' across the middle of the cover, bringing it to the front and changing the opacity whilst doing so. Finally, I used the curves adjustment layer, the levels adjustment layer and the contrast/brightness adjustment layer to increase the contrast and to grade the overall image. The finishing touch was to add a vignette using the elliptical selection tool, inversing the selection, adding a curves layer and then using Gaussian blur.