Finished magazine front cover processes and analysis

Magazine cover process

My magazine front cover began with a transparent 'Background' layer, of which served as the canvas for the cover. This checked base allowed for me to experiment with colours and get a good idea of how certain designs would look on a plain canvas; if I chose to make the background blue it would be harder to experiment.

I then began with importing my chosen image from the selection of woodland shoots I took of my model (Hannah). After the image had been imported, I used the selection tool and enabled the ability to see the transforming tools of the selection tool via the toolbars at the top, and with this I was able to resize the image to fit the canvas. Once happy, I pressed enter to confirm and refocus the image in place. I chose this image as it was very sharp, the lighting was clear and 'warm', highlighting and bringing clarity to her face and clothing, as well as showing one of her eyes clearly. The pose she struck for this image was perfect, in my opinion, as I was able to make more room for text due to her facing sideways; If she had been looking directly at the camera I would not have been able to crop out a lot of the image, but with a sideways pose there is less room being taken width-wise. It also looked incredibly pleasing to have her looking to the text with a warm smile and comfortable feel.

After aligning and resizing my model, I began to delete the background by holding the left mouse button over the lasso tool and selecting the magnet tool. It allowed me to draw around her, snapping into place where heavily contrasting colours met to separate her hair, skin and clothing from the environment. After this was complete and I was satisfied, I managed to clear up any little errors and imperfections with the eraser tool, though I set the softness to quite a high number so as to make any corrections smoother and blend in more with the background opposed to just leaving the image with a rough, 'sharp' outline. I also cut out her eye and placed it onto a new layer labelled 'right eye' (naming it led to less confusion and helped me keep it organised). I did this because it allowed me to later apply a filter to the eye with the filter menu just above the layers, of which I used to alter the hue of the eye and change the shade of blue to a more vibrant and outstanding blue. I also quickly used the brush tool's colour blur tool to spread some of the tooth whiteness over a small black spot that the camera seemed to have captured, possibly a digital error, something in the breeze, or just a spec on the lens.

I proceeded to place in a background I had created at home using a program called 'hexels', whereby I was able to create cube-like shapes and formations that I could add glow to in order to create a digital styled background of which I varied in colour against a black base to add vibrancy to the shapes created; The black base contrasted highly to the colours used, and the glow helped add complexity and generally made it look nicer, adding more 'movement' to the 'still image'. I also decided that on this layer (named background #2) I would also equip my brush tool again, alter it's softness, and create a blurry wave shape at the top of the page to add a little more to the somewhat bland image, and to also give an area for the title and any text to be 'contained' in order to retain some form of org

After I felt that I was done with the background, I searched "DaFont" for an appropriate text, and entered my desired name, 'Trixel'. I chose this name because it had a nice look and sound, as well as linking to the technological genre, the word meaning a pixel with 3 sides. After screenshotting the text and pasting it onto a new layer named "Title" for organisational reasons, of which I placed at the top so that the text would be shown above all layers below it on the list, I used the 'background eraser' tool to remove the white space around the text, and selected half of the text by holding the CTRL key and clicking each piece. I applied a filter to alter the brightness of the text so that it could be seen on the black background, but left the last 2 letter black so that they could spill onto the white section of the background and remain visible, and aligned the text so that the 'i' of Trixel was ontop of a random blob of glowing white I placed for a unique feature to the title.

Lastly, I added white text in a clear and readable font over the cube pillars I created as some form of containment or guidline for the text, which worked nicely, though I needed to use the brush tool, after lowering the opacity, to paint over the cubes (using a dark colour) to lower the glow and general brightness of the colour to let the white headings be seen and not blend in too much with the background. To finish off, I added a barcode I found online to a new layer, as well as the pricing I decided on for the low disposable income of the students, fifty pence, and a 'buzz' piece of text in the bottom left where it would be seen on a shelf, and other various necessities for a magazine, such as the date and contents of magazine.

Finished college magazine front cover

anisation as well as style. The filter I added earlier to the right eye affected the background I added as well, as I had not applied it to the eye layer exclusively, but also to every layer below the 'hue' filter, however, it gave the image a nice, pleasing, smart look that I enjoyed, and so I decided against correcting this. I feel that the general look was pleasing and fitted the genre of technology, music, and digital creativity I was aiming for.