Front Cover Photoshop

The first thing I did for the creation of my front cover was the canvas size and colour, I made the size a A4 International document, with a black background colour (as voted for), I then opened the images i picked strategically to be the best choices for my front cover, after this is roughly erasing for a more accurate preview i picked the image i thought looked the best.

After this I added more definition to the image by using HIGH PASS filter, to increase the sharpness of the image, this crisp look is usually associated with a strong image, commonly used in this way in magazine publications.

I then added my masthead, "Caution" this was my pick as from my research and pitch questionnaire this was deemed a desirable choice, after roughly placing in my masthead, i used my downloaded dafont.com fonts and my masthead font, this really helped me to start seeing my magazine coming together.

I then added in my draft layouts in layers, this was an unusual approach but i believed would help me see more clearly the direction i was trying to go in.

After this in type layers, i began adding each separate cover line idea i had written down, leaving spaces and blanks for names of artists, which i had written down separately, and was a later stage choice.

After drafting in the cover lines i decided which i thought were most appropriate and well fitting with the help of other media students and teacher. After this i added the font and correctly shaped them using free transform.

After the majority of my text was on the document, i began sorting and laying out my text into the low opacity layout experimenting and evolving my ideas off of this.

This helped my curiosity of a better photo opportunity calm down, and set in concrete that the photograph i had chosen was a perfect fit. I then changed the size and font of the main cover line which fitted accordingly.

After all of this cover line work was complete i added my "banner text" more accurately, using all of my "artists" names as a "+ plus" section. using the graphic plus instead of the word plus i believe was a strong idea that worked well making my magazine very visually stimulating. I also added my barcode at this point with its professional, website issue number and date rather then putting these as text layers on the actual magazine as i believed this would make it look more messy.

I then added filler squares using the shape tools for were my posters would go, as i hadn't yet decided on the smaller images i would use for these, but had planned on doing a sort of fan shape using a picture poster for each artist with fancy connoting font for their name.

I then began working on my image adjustments more when everything else was in place, I added saturation adjustment layers to bring out the colours and not wash the model out as much being the main focal point, i used contrast layers for similar reasoning, i also used the spot healing brush, as well as dodge and burn to add "manipulated makeup" look, softening blemishes similar to the way foundation does, and using the dodge and burn for a computerised contour set.

I then added all the colours to my cover, using my drafted colour scheme, black and white and red and yellow. making main text such as cover lines and mast head white and occasionally using yellow and red as highlight colours.

I then made the posters, I decided on three strong images that i couldn't find a use for in the main images for my magazine but would be a shame to waste, I used gradient background tool for one making a grey to black ombre effect and my colour scheme red and yellow i then added the images on top and fancy connoting font. I then removed these draft poster fillers and added the actual posters trying to find the best order.

After this i perceived my magazine as complete, so i sought feedback, using grace (photoshop teacher) and my audience feedback sheet for this,

Grace told me i should add some yellow lines to break up the cover lines and Karina my teacher agreed so added them in, I then from my audience feedback was told to fill an empty space on the top right hand side of the cover i filled this with an appropriate festival graphic.