Photoshop Fun

The following Photoshop creations are homework assignments I did for a class taught by Jean McIntosh at West Valley College. It's a wonderful course and Jean makes amazing instructional videos!

Magazine Cover

The final assignment was to design a magazine cover, using the skills we learned in this course.

For the title I wanted to use something similar to the typeface used for "Inkheart". I searched on the web and found Black Chancery. I felt it expressed the feeling of the title, "Spirit Whispers". I used the same font for the tag line.

For the cover lines I used Trajan Pro, my favorite font. There are some areas of the text that are really thin, and this can interfere with legibility, so I made them bold and "strong". Also, Trajan does not have a lowercase set of characters, which would have been nice to use for the subtitles.

In general, it seems that most magazines use san serif typefaces. I believe they are more legible at a distance. I did not put a bar code on this cover because I think they're ugly!! This type of magazine would probably be offered by subscription, rather than be displayed on an everyday magazine rack.

All parts of the image I photographed, drew, or created in Photoshop. The woman's face and the bird were drawn. Photographs were: mirror, tree, stairs, door, squirrel, eye (barely seen in upper right hand corner), clouds, and an ivy vine. Clouds were used for the night sky; a lens flare was used to create the moon. I added blending options to the vine and tried to make it look like it was beginning to creep out of the mirror.

Note: My images are created on a Mac. I've noticed that when I look at my images on a PC, the colors are usually less saturated and less vibrant, especially with this image.

To add some realism to this project, I purchased the domain name for about $7.00 and forwarded it to an existing website of mine.
http://www.SpiritWhispers.net

Hemal Radia, the author listed for one of the articles is an actual Law of Attraction coach—I was given his permission to use his name on this project. Mr. Radia's website is
http://www.ManifestingandLawofAttraction.com




Pop Dots and Text Mask - HW12

Pop dots - I had a bit of difficulty with the gradient, but finally got it in the right place. Then I added a levels adjustment layer, because I wanted the dots to "pop" more.

Originally I was going to have part of the image show through the text mask, but the image is too plain for that effect. So I added a gradient and then Blending Options and did a lot of experimenting.

The poppy is not real—it is a silk plant. I did a smart sharpen on it and was amazed at the difference! By the way, I did not choose the poppy because of the term "pop dots"; It was just one of those happy coincidences.




Surrealism and Pen Tool - HW10

This was a fun exercise (which means I spent days working on it, trying out different graphics and techniques). But, finally, I had to tell myself to stop or I would never move forward to Homework 11.

Pen tool creations: Coyote, Two mask-like faces

I converted the coyote and the two faces into shapes and then transformed their sizes and experimented with many, many blending options. The mauve/brown face on the right looked very nice in PSD format, but when I saved the file as JPG, the white outer glow appears jagged. I resaved the PSD file as 8x10 JPG, and the jags smoothed out a little.

I photographed my own hand and made it look comic bookish using the cutout filter and also plastic wrap filter. Used blending options and experimented quite a bit with color and gradients.

I photographed the clock at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk several weeks ago; it is part of the haunted ride attraction. I used curves to correct the dullness of the image, tranformed it's size and perspective, and used some blending modes to soften the edges.

The apple is part of a watercolor painting that I did several years ago. For some reason it wanted to be included in this composition. :-)

The purple planet was a photo of flowers that I made into a 3D sphere and then added texture to it. Put a touch of an outer glow on it to help it blend with the sky.

The clouds along the bottom (which kind of also look like an ocean to me) required a lot of adjustments.. stretching and pulling..

The stars were created with the star brush tool.

The background is two parts; a basic color first, then an overlay with an elliptical shape deleted and a gaussian blur put on it.. then on top of that was a quadrone gradient—I think. I've done so much on each individual part that it's difficult to keep track. Most effects can be found in each layer's Blending Options or in the Adjustment Layers, if I go back and look.




Historical Figure:
Charles Dickens
Midterm

This collage is about Charles Dickens and the messages and lessons in the stories he wrote. He wrote about social injustices in an unforgettable way and gave the world stories that were memorable and timeless. While the suffering and living conditions of many of his characters were deplorable, the stories still inspired hope.

Being made aware of the tremendous struggles others endure may have the effect of bringing one out of an apathetic slumber and inspire one to take action. These stories were written over one hundred years ago; yet people are still fighting the same horrors and pain; perhaps it has even gotten worse—or, perhaps we just hear about it more due to better global communication. The opening line of A Tale of Two Cities seems to fit very well in today's circumstances, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

Charles Dickens often wrote about the suffering that humans, especially children, have experienced. The message of this collage is that while this has been the case throughout history and the world continues to be plagued with today — to always remember that there is still hope and love in the world, and each of us can make a difference in someone else's life. Sometimes simply showing that you care, taking the time to teach someone self-sufficiency, and encouraging him or her to reach for a dream can make all the difference in that person's life. In addition, we can all look for ways in which adversity in our own lives may be turned around and used to strengthen ourselves.

The Message

I think each person viewing this collage will bring to it their own memories of how he/she felt when reading (or watching on TV) a Charles Dickens story. For me, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol were very powerful stories in my childhood, and so I chose elements representing those two stories. I see Oliver and feel his loneliness and am proud of his daring to ask for more. I see Tiny Tim and am amazed at the gift of love he gives to the world, even though he is suffering.

The quotes I included in the composition are intended to intrigue the viewers and entice them to read the works of Charles Dickens; to discover their own personal messages that await them inside the stories.

Five Elements of the Midterm Collage and their Sources

1. I set up an open book (A Tale of Two Cities, The Heritage Press, 1938) sitting on closed book (The Pickwick Papers, The Heritage Press, 1938) , resting on blue and gold fabric, and photographed it. This became my background layer. I corrected the image using exposure, levels, and hue/sat.

2. I placed a decorative pocket watch against three books, photographed it, and later selected the watch, pasted it within the blue/gold portion of the background and partially behind the open book. I lowered the opacity to make it somewhat transparent, and increase the saturation a little.

3. I selected a photograph of my son, desaturated it, and changed it's hue. I pasted it into the middle foreground of the composition, and reduced the opacity to give it a ghostly appearance.

4a. I photographed an illustration from the story, A Christmas Carol on page 61 (of Five Christmas Novels , The Heritage Press, 1939) titled, Bob Cratchit Comes Home. I lowered the opacity and ..... I pasted it into the background, lowered the opacity, changed the hue, refined the edges and modified the upper right edge so that it flowed along the same direction as the page of the book it is next to. (I used the line tool to make a line to follow along with and then turned off its visibility afterwards.)

4b. Using the same image, I decided to try out creating a 3D object. (I recently joined NAPP, and received a Photoshop User magazine which gave basic instructions on how to create 3D objects.) I wrapped the images around a spherical shape and then rotated the image so that Tiny Tim and his father would be visible. I added some light to the illustrated sphere, and then pasted it into the background. I played around with hues and levels, increased the saturation, and the object began to become very shiny and reminded me of a Christmas ball. I thought this fit perfectly with the theme of A Christmas Carol, and it is now one of my favorite parts of the composition.

5. Text is used in three different areas.

a. For the quote "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." on the clock, I first created a circle with the ellipse tool and made it a work path. Using the type tool I pasted my text onto the circular path - and then copied and pasted this over the clock. Since the clock is not shaped in a perfect circled, I then changed the skew and played around with it until matched the clock's skew as well as possible.

b. For the two other quotes, I gave both a lighter color for the top layer, and a darker one for the shadow, to compensate for the mix of lighter and dark shades in the composition they were being placed on.

I placed the quote, "Please sir, may I have some more?" below the ghostly image of the boy, to make it clear that he is representing Oliver Twist.

c. I placed the quote:

"No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into the companionship: compared these every day associates with those of my happier childhood; and felt my early hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man, crushed in my breast."

~ Charles Dickens as a boy in the blacking factory

over the larger image of Tiny Tim and his family as it seemed to be a place where such a large amount of text would fit gracefully, without distracting from the other elements. The Tiny Tim illustration is also used in the Christmas Ball, and he and his father can clearly be viewed there, so I felt the larger image could serve as more of a background to the quoted text. I experimented with justifying the text, but found that I liked have the control over where the lines would break in relation to their meaning, and decided to align the text to the left (ragged right).

I really enjoyed this project and experimenting with the skills that I have recently learned. Compositing is enjoyable for me and I worked with the graphic element in various ways before deciding upon the final "look". In designing, I tend to move elements around, change hues, opacity, and levels until they feel correct.

I need to learn more about placement of typography. Sometimes what looks attractive to me is not necessarily the most legible. Also, I had difficulty choosing the colors for two of the text areas (though I'm happy with the blue text around the clock). I felt the lighter blue of Oliver's quote was more visible, but that the yellowish-beige color of the longer quote fit the color scheme of the composite more. I would appreciate any suggestions regarding the colors of the text.

Typography Graphic
HW6

I used various effects on the type, i.e., using Inner Shadow and Stroke settings, creating a pattern out of a dog collage and using it on the type. I also played around and used the same pattern to make a border... I am not completely satisfied with the total design that I did on this assignment, but practicing using different effects on the type was very useful to me.





Color Theme
HW4

The source of three of the images were from a series of photos that I took at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk this month. The beach scene was taken in Santa Cruz two years ago.

The color theme was "fun, bright, and vibrant"! The serenity of the beach background with the seagull carrying the banner is a melding of the excitement of the boardwalk with the stunning beauty of nature.

Each image required quite a bit of adjustment, as the photographs were shot on overcast days. The beach/ocean scene was taken during the day, but I modified it so that it appeared to be taken at sunset. I felt that the darker, more saturated, colors of the evening made the colors of the forefront items pop out more. I enlarged and moved the bird that was in the sky, and distorted the shape of the banner it is carrying.




Duotone Composite
HW3

This homework exercise was VERY helpful to me. I scaled down the size of "Shakira The Kitten" and was able to make her look like she's crawling out from underneath some giant mushrooms.









Unless otherwise noted, all images:
Copyright © 2009 Dora E. H. Crow ~ All Rights Reserved
Noted: Original illustration from the story, A Christmas Carol on page 61 (of Five Christmas Novels , The Heritage Press, 1939) titled, Bob Cratchit Comes Home.