DH Digipak Production Task

Final Version

Test Album Cover

The idea for this album cover began with a simple photo of a friend sitting on a bench. I wanted a cover that focused on the artist, giving an introspective atmosphere, and replacing the bench with a rooftop seemed an interesting idea. The second step involved removing the background from this image so the more interesting location could be used. To do this I increased the contrast on the top layer to make the colour differences more profound and utilised several selection tools, deciding to remove the background instead of copying the figure so I could be more accurate and make smaller selections.

I then played with filter effects, eventually deciding to posterize the figure as this not only made the image more interesting and colourful, but also reduced lighting discrepancies when I added the background. The background was a simple stock image of a city, by adding the figure as another layer and erasing the lower legs I was able to create the illusion of him sitting over the edge.

The text is a key part of the album cover and I decided to focus on very clear traditional font. While repositioning however I found I liked the inverted colours, and decided to create that effect permanently by selecting a square of background behind the text and inverting the colours through effects. However I was forced to change the colour of the artist name, since while the sky inverted to a dark colour contrasting against the white text, the buildings inverted lighter meaning white text was not very visible.

Pre-filter version

Then to create a more three dimensional effect, I used the eraser again to place the artist name just behind the figure and rooftop. This meant that the foreground building almost appears to leave the image which was a simple but effective technique. I almost finished there but decided that the colouration was too warm, to combat this I changed the colour balance of the whole image to give a blue tint, this helped to link all the aspects of the cover and unify the whole image as well as create a calmer atmosphere.