Front Page Construction

Introducing, (drum roll) my original picture! Okay, so maybe it's not great, although the clarity of the image is more than adequate for my front page. Referring back to my second flat plan, you can see the similarities with the pose of the model, along with his clothing and the introduction of headphones which showed up when undertaking my clothing/model research. The following screen grabs show the stages I underwent in the creation of my front cover. You will see the difference between this image and the one which appears on the front cover.

In this image I have adjusted the brightness and contrast levels of the image, this is to increase the clarity and to ensure the subject of the magazine's front cover is shown as being the centre of attention. I changed the brightness and contrast levels by opening the image section on the top left hand side of Photoshop and then selecting adjustments, I then proceeded to change the brightness and contrast levels to produce the picture you see here. It differentiates my model with the background, showing a clearer, more tonal balanced picture.

I came across this tool in my spare time whilst attempting to correct earlier black and white pictures. It is the vibrance tool and it has done wonders for my picture, allowing the skin tone of the model to brought out from the more saturated shades from before. I changed the vibrancy by once again going into image, then adjustments, then vibrance. The process seen beside the picture allowed me to change vibrancy levels to bring out colours such as the skin tone & the metallic clip on the clipboard.

This was the stage when I decided to incorporate my colour scheme into the picture by using cyan and blue midtones. I did this by going into images (I can see a repeated trend occuring here...) then into adjustments, and colour balance in which i adjusted the cyan and blue midtones of the picture to create the blue haze seen in the stage.

God Bless Photoshop and it's spot healing brush! Making average looking people look presentable since CS2. Maybe thats overexaggerating a bit, it does however make my picture look far more professional. This is found on the left hand side and holding down over the healing brush is where it is found. It just makes it look a lot smoother and is a welcome addition to the picture.

The difference between this and the previous stage is slightly on the obvious side. Notice the big banner on top of the page. This is my magazine title. It was created by first using the rectangle tool to create a black rectangle. I then duplicated the layer and put a colour overlay onto the shape to change it to white. Once this had been achieved, I used the text tool to type out the DUBLE TAKE title using Turnpike font. With the two separate layers for each of the words,  I put an outer glow over the words. This was to match the colour scheme.

The next major change you can see beside is that the background colour has changed from being a light colour mainly white based with a blue shadow to being a dark green based background. I did this by first using the polygonal selection tool to cut around my model from the background, then I proceeded into duplicating the layer, followed by inverting the selection from surrounding the model to the background. I then opened variations and selected the "more cyan" and "more green". I then went into filters and selected the Accented Edges filter whilst sharpening the images and increasing the contrast. This allowed me to get the darker background. You may also notice I have put the magazines price on the page, issue number and the website I have created for the website. I think this increases the realism of the magazine

This shows my main cover line, the one associated with the picture on the front cover, of my persona, Mote Kontrol. I used the text tool to create it and inserted a black outer glow to bring out the text from the background image. The following images show the process in which I changed the Dubstep font appearance to look slightly more science related..

I did this by creating a new layer, selecting the brush tool and creating circles around the text to look like bubbles. I then proceeded the change the brush size to ensure the bubbles looked realistic ie: not all bubbles are the same size. I then added a drop shadow, a green inner glow to match the title and a bevel to create the impression of the bubbles being over the text.

This shows me attempting to show the Gemini artist box to go behind the picture of my model. I did this by inserting a layer mask over the box, then using the eraser tool, I erased the left hand side of the box, giving the impression of the box going behind the artist. Although I spent time on doing this, at a later stage I decided against it, thinking that 4 artists looked too cramped on the front cover.

Using the rectangle shape tool, I created a box on the top right hand corner of the page. I then duplicated the layer to create 4 boxes. They started as being all black, I then used a colour overlay to change two of them to white. I then used the text tool to write my artists names into the boxes, ensuring the necessary proportions were used.

This was followed by inserting a white outer glow onto both of the black boxes. I decided against using 4 names as I felt that it took too much of the space of the front cover up, space I could use for another cover line. With the one white box I used a black outer glow to define the box from the background.  

UPDATE

After coming dangerously close to my set deadline for my front page I decided that I would infact change around some of the elements of the magazine and contradict my previous plans to ensure that the magazine firstly fit into the common conventions of magazines whilst also allowing my layout to look more aesthetically pleasing and in doing this, ensuring that the subject appearing on the front cover of the magazine is clearly known and labelled. To show the changes I have made, I decided to create a short presentation using screen grabs to show the steps I undertook.
Front Page Construction