Import Tuner Magazine

For my project on making a magazine cover, I chose my subject or theme to be about cars. The reason why I chose this is because ever since I can remember, I have always loved everything about cars. All of my inspiration has come from this love of cars, and even though at many times I had encountered a lot of problems and the easiest thing to do was to switch my subject, I kept on persevering. I chose to base my magazine on another car magazine called Sport Compact Car. This magazine cover sample is a perfect template because it does a great job giving emphasis to the main article, but it also includes the subheadings in a fashion that doesn't distract you from the main article.

I incorporated many different principles of design in making my magazine cover. I had a somewhat radial balance, with my subject in the middle and the subheadings circling around it. My rhythm was created by the repetition of a blue color that is similar to the dark metallic blue paint on the car. This repetition was seen in the main heading, as well as the sub headings and reflected in the background I chose for the clipping mask and outer glow on the main title. This rhythm gave my magazine cover a sense of unity in the fact that I took something that was very apparent on the main subject, which was the color, and repeated it through out the design. The blurring of the wheels gave it the effect that the car is moving, giving my magazine cover movement. The main emphasis of this magazine cover is obviously the car. I wanted to give the car dominance over everything else because of the fact that it is the subject and that I thought it would be something the viewer would enjoy since it is beautiful.

                I gave this magazine cover an overall light value. I used black to contrast the blue in the subheadings, which allowed the magazine cover to refrain from becoming monotonous. The shape of the car is both organic and geometrical. Most of the body has curved lines, while in the front bumper there are triangular shaped objects.

                The first thing I did to the original photo was crop out the picture using the quick selection tool, and then went in further by adding a mask on it and brushing away the pixels of the original background. Then, after finally finding the perfect background, I placed the car in and added a drop shadow that was appropriate. After that, I made a new-copied layer and blurred the rims to give it the feel that the car was in movement. To make it easier to move the car around, I merged the two layers together into one. I used a background with a sunset and used it as a clipping mask for the title of the magazine cover. Then, I added an outer glow on it with the colors reflecting the blue of the car and the color of the title. Lastly, I created a color that I liked and that matched the color of the car and added it to my swatches, and then used that color on the subheadings to give the art piece unity.

Family and Joy Collage

   For my Final Collage project, I chose to have a theme of family and joy. The background in this photo has no significance to my main theme, but it was chosen because the landscape is captured from a beautiful ocean. It was included also because the texture of the jagged rocks was a great contrast to go with the other textures including the smooth organic edges of the pictures and the colors of the sky, and ocean water kept the collage from looking monotonous. The overall value was edging towards light and didn't have to many fluctuations between the light and dark values.

   There were a variety of different tools that I utilized in my collage. The most used tool/technique to create my collage was cropping pictures out of their background, adding a layer mask, and brushing away extra bits using the black and white brush. I used the hue and saturation adjustment for the graduation picture and used the default "increase saturation" because it made the hues of all the colors "pop" to my liking. Then I used the vibrance adjustment to increase the saturation to +6 and the vibrance to +10.The reason for using this tool was because the picture to begin with had a dark value and was taken around not that much light. When I played around with this tool, I found that it suited my liking with the value that it came out with. The rest of the tools I used were just from Transform, such as altering the size and rotation of the picture. For final touches, I used the Spot Healing Brush tool to fix up little blemishes.

   When it came to analyzing my collage, I thought of some things I could have included or fixed to enhance it. To make all of the pictures even blend in more, I should have fixed all of the shadows of the pictures, like how we did on the exercise with the lady on the books. Next, I had trouble with deciding whether I should have cropped the graduation picture and now looking back, I regret not doing so because all if I did, it would have given a better unity since all of the other pictures were cropped. After everything, I was still pleased with how it came out and I am very grateful for learning the skill of creating collages. Now, I can of great use to my mom with her scrap booking collage projects.