Photoshop

Below are samples of work I have done in Photoshop. I've uploaded these to show the different skills I can use to edit photos to my liking.

Photo retouching

The first thing I did for this picture was use the cloning tool to remove any folds in the photo, I then enlarged the picture (for printing purposes). Finally I used auto colour correct to make the picture look more fresh.

 

For the wedding photo above, I pretty much did the same as the black and white photo, the only difference with this photo was, I used the black and white balance to punch them the up getting rid of that horrible yellow tinge in the dress and the table cloths and making the suit stands out more. This also stopped the photo looking faded.

The painting above was me playing around with colour and style. I painted a pair of lips on a plain canvas but wanted add paint splatter to fill up the background but by doing this I wasn't sure I would spoil the picture. So I scanned the picture in Photoshop and using some customised brushes I added the splash marks. I like both versions so I decided to get a print of the new version as well as the original.

Album cover for Mischief (back and front)

A student from Worcester University got my number from a friend asking me to do an album cover for her Final Major Project. Her description was, 'a speaker with colour coming out of it.'
I went off in my local area with my guitar amp taking many photos the amp with my 550D. I then sent her all the photos asking what she liked best. After her decision I took the photos into Photoshop duplicating this layer then cutting around the amp. This allowed me to play with the colour as if it was behind the amp.
For the text I asked her what font she would prefer, so to make the text stand out more I create another layer (faded) then added the title. The reason I wanted the title to one side was because I thought it would suit the angle of the photo better and also making it a bit more interesting.


For the back cover, I got an image from the same environment. The padlock was originally orange but due the colours I had used from the front cover, I thought it would look better pink. To do this all I had to do was select the orange on the padlock with the Magic Wand and replace the colour. Finally, just to make the track titles stand out I added a Brushstroke from a customised brush on a separated layer then top the text ontop.
The reason I used the colour I did was because her music was a mix of trance and electro and when I listen to that genre it reminds me of Sun and summer. In the summer there is many colours and the sky is full of pollen (hence the yellow dots in the front cover, although it is a bit exaggerated) so I wanted the cover to look loud to emphasise the music was creating these colours from the amp.

I had a client ask me to do flyers for her photography using her own images that she had sent me. We decided that two different designs, one with prices and one without. I decided to use this image she has sent me as I thought it was more appropriate as it is her in the image, with her camera. as There was many high tones in the image, so I got rid of the the busy background (with the lasso tool) leaving the background blank, the blank background went well with the bright tones in the image. This also gave me room to play with text. I then asked her what font she wanted to use for her text, she sent me her own font she liked and I used that.












Having it landscape allowed me to add the prices she wanted without it looking crammed in.

The Mean Fiddler

When working as an intern at The Mean Fiddler, I designed a number of different posters and gif animations for upcoming artist to be placed around venues like The Garage and The Camden Barfly. During my time at the Mean Fiddler, I felt I gained more skills in Photoshop from coming up with new ideas to learning something as simple as a new shortcuts. Although some of the posters I did I had to use certain fonts and layouts I wasn't too fond of due to what the promoters wanted.

I would times have to use a photo the promoters had given me, which in some cases were either too small or low quality so I had to find way around this. 

This poster required a lot of the cloning tool for the splashes of water and the colour gradient in the background. For the text I was able to copy and past it from Drums Of Death's Myspace and enlarged the photo. I then simply added a slight drop shadow to give it a little more depth of field. Then I used white for the text of the headline acts just to make it clear that these were other artists playing.

The original photo the promoters gave me was too small to fit an A3 poster, so I had to come up with a way to fill that gap. I able to use Photoshop's 'content aware' (a wonderful tool). That filled the gap to roughly the way I wanted it, I then used the cloning tool to make it perfect for me. After adding the font, I used a slight blur to give it that "old fashioned" look I thought would match the photo.

This poster was fairly quick and simple to do. The promoters sent me a picture of the band and their logo so I thought it would be a good idea to look for mug shots online I could then use to place the text on top to go with the band's photo. I also used an adjustment layer so I can play around with the colour for the picture  I got online to match up with the logo.

As this was another image that was too small for an A3 poster I had to come up with a way to fill the space and making it easy to read the lineup acts. So I got an image of an old brick wall and added a new layer on top then using the colour palette, I was able to match the colour of the photograph for that new layer. This made it easier to read the line up and also added to the grotty feel of the image.

I was rather impressed when I found out I was doing a poster for Alex Clare ...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOaE4MV5IcM

As you can tell this was a rather simple poster, I just cropped the image to fit an A3 sheet of paper and punched up the the blacks with the colour balance.
I found a lot of the time posters like this one, the longest bit was choosing where to put the headlines and support acts as I may prefer it one way while one of the other promoter may like it another way.

As this the original image did not fit on to A3, I removed the background so it didn't look like I just plotted the picture one a blank background. I cut around the band members removing the sky and then used a neutral colour I made a new layer for the background and filled it with a greyish blue so it looked more relevant to the image. I then used the band's logo and tried to find a similar font for the other support acts. I decided to use a different colour as well just to make clear that the headline act and the support acts were different.

This poster was extremely tricky to work around. To make it fit onto A3 I had to use a lot of the cloning tool just to add some height to the image. I then did the same to the bottom but the promoters kept adding more information so I had to change the bottom completely. I removed any graphics under the logo and used a dark brown for the background and copied the colour from the logo for the text colour. The promoter kept sending the design back because he wasn't happy with the layout until I come up with this one.
For the text at the top I had to use drop shadow to make it stand out from the original design.

I was please to see this design used in The Fly magazine (link below)

www.the-fly.co.uk/flywebmag/10830/october-2011/        

Fly Magazine page 16

This poster was pretty simple, it was just a case of using content aware to extend the image to the top. I got Slow Club's logo from their Myspace which I just copied to the image. I then use a drop shadow to make it stand out more and just look a little more interesting.

This was another tricky poster to figure out. I used content aware to extend everything above the window but it didn't come out the way I intended it to, leaving the top of the window looking distorted. I had to cut and flip the bottom of the window to match so it was though the original photo had a full window in the image then play around with it with the cloning tool to fit the window together. I then had to extend the lamp post too (rather simple task).
For the logo, I got a rough image on their site then played around with the saturation to give it that colourful look.

This poster was very time consuming as I had to use the lasso tool to go around the band members to help create a new layer so I could make the background black and white. The reason I did this was because if I added text, it would become lost in the background, so by making the background black and white I could get the main details to stand out more. For all the minor details I just added to a new layer with and low opacity strip (to make it clear to read) then added text on top.

I felt this image was a bit plain to use on its own so I decided to edit the bands logo from another image and add that onto the poster. I then found the red cross (seen on their arms) from another image which I then was able to take out of the original image then paste it on the poster. I added a banner below just to make the text more clear to read.

The image to the right was pretty simple to fix. Because the image was mostly black, all I had to do was added text that I thought would suit Peter Grant and use the same colour.

I added this photo just to show more about the layout and the text I used. Due to the plain and modern look to the poster, I didn't want to use any fancy fonts. I went with something a little more simplistic then added a drop shadow just to give it a bit more depth.

       

Sydenham Competition Part 1:

 To right is a site plan for a building site competition. The project was to use influences from the local area and incorporate them into a picture. I took pictures of all the iconic buildings around my area then took them into Photoshop to simplify them, making it look modern and fresh. I want to use the plans to my advantage such as having kids sit on the door frame as if they were sitting on a climbing frame.

This was another design (as we could do up to three designs) using the images above but in a different way for much simpler view. I thought of using the images of different people, from different generations to make some sort of timeline of life: Young couple meet then have a baby which grow to teenagers that eventually get old.