WEEK 4: PRACTISE COLLEGE MAGAZINE COVER

Using the photos we took we had to chose one and create a college magazine cover as a practise for our preliminary task of creating our own college magazine, This is the photo i chose to use:

This is the finished magazine cover: 

I applied the title of 'college' across the top and then also added some coverlines, with the photo itself I upped the brightness slightly and also the contrast so the picture was clearer and warmer looking. I photoshopped in a barcode just underneath the title also.

This gave me the chance to practise once again before carrying out the preliminary task and also gave me the opportunity to practise editing a photo I had taken.

WEEK 2: TEXT TOOLS AND LAYERS

We worked on creating a practise front cover and were shown how to use the text tools in Photoshop.

 

 

 

TEXT TOOLS:

The text tool in Photoshop looks like this (above). Once clicking it a cursor appeals allowing you to click anywhere on you image to place where you want your writing to be, you then type whatever you want. To adjust your text you highlight what you have written, this enables you to change the font, text size, colour etc. This is all in a bar across the top, you can also adjust the smaller details such as the height of the letters, the spacing between the letters and the width of the letters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LAYERS:

The text becomes a separate layer to the photo and you can cut out the person, making the person and the background two separate layers so you can put the masthead behind the persons head if desired. Using the layers you can also add layer effects such as drop shadow and bevel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These skills are useful for making our magazine as we can not only add text but also alter it to however we want and easily move and change it as desired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

WEEK 1: Photoshop Skills

We were shown how to use some basic tools on Photoshop to tidy up an image and then had to give it a go ourselves.

Spot Healing Brush Tool:

 

 

 

 

 

This tool can be used to cover spots, it’s automatic and you have no control over how your chosen area is being covered up. When you click on the spot healing brush a small circle comes up, you click, hold and drag the circle over the blemish or damaged area of the photo and the tool blends it into the background assuming that is how you want it to look, thus eliminating the ‘blemish’ you didn’t want. You can adjust the brush size on this tool for more accuracy making it bigger or smaller.

 Healing Brush Tool:

 

 

 

 

 

This tool allows you to have control over how your ‘blemish’ is covered. By holding the ‘alt’ button on the keyboard you can click in the area you would like use to cover the ‘blemish’ and then once you’ve let go you can go ahead and click over the ‘blemished’ area to cover it with your chosen cover area. This tool lets you decide how your covered area looks and instead of blending into the background you have the opportunity to include shades.

 Patch Tool:

 

 

 

 

 

The Patch tool is good for when you are working with large areas. You can draw around the area you do not want and drag it into an area you want it to look like, covering the unwanted area with another section of the picture. It’s a lot quicker than the Healing brush tool and works well when dealing with bigger unwanted areas.

Clone stamp:

 

 

 

The Clone Stamp tool copies another area of the photo straight onto the unwanted area. By holding ‘alt’ and clicking an area then letting go and clicking in another area, a small + will appear underneath your circle, you can then drag across the areas you would like to cover up and it will copy the area where the + is onto the area you are covering with your circle. You can adjust the brush sizes and also the opacity.

We used these tools on a scratched image in an attempt to almost recover them and make them look a lot better:

BEFORE 

 

            

 

 

AFTER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By using the Clone Stamp tool you can make wrinkles appear less noticeable, through reducing the opacity you can go over the wrinkles on someone’s face making them ever so slightly disappear however making sure they are still there so it looks realistic. We gave this a go:

BEFORE  

                                                          

 

 

 

 

 

AFTER

 

 

 

 

 

 

This exercise has given us the ability to use these basic tools on Photoshop and these tools will be helpful when creating our magazine covers as we will be able to cover any unwanted ‘blemishes’ on the photos we have taken for our front covers.