Magazine Cover: Photoshop Tools

The first tool we used in our magazine cover is the lasso.

We used the lasso tool to cut around the picture of Laura with the balloons. We thought that this tool was quite easy to use and helped us quickly get rid of the background. We used other tools such as the magic wand but this highlighted parts of the picture we did not want to get rid of. With the tool lasso we got to pick what parts of the picture we wanted to get rid of also it allowed us to neatly go around Laura and the balloons.

The second tool we used was an eraser which got rid of the background of a picture.














We also used this tool to get rid of the background on each picture of Laura. This also helped getting rid of the background quickly. The photo on the left shows the outcome of using these two tools (lasso and background eraser). By using these two tools we were able to have 3 pictures of Laura on one background.

We used the 'warp' tool (above) and the 'distort' tool (far left) on Photoshop change the shape of the demon faces that appear in the balloons. We used these two tools to make sure that the demons faces fitted properly in the balloons and took their shape as before we edited the face, it was not the correct shape and looked slightly odd once we had placed it in the balloon. These two tools allowed us to fit the demons face as much as we wanted to make it look as good as possible and so it wasn't apparent to viewers of the magazine cover that we had just copied and pasted the face into the balloon. We wanted the faces to appear as if they were captured souls and trapped inside the balloon and we think we achieved this with the help of these Photoshop tools.

Once we had placed the demon faces inside the balloons, we added the effect 'vivid light' to them. This made the faces appear slightly more faded and also, caused the picture colour to blend in better with the colour of the balloon, making it look as though the faces were actually trapped inside the balloons which is what we wanted to achieve. It also brighten the faces a bit more so you could see the facial features and made it more obvious to the audiences of the magazine that they were scary faces of some sort of demon. We think this effect really fit well with the pictures and the background image to make it look more realistic, well-edited and effective.

The opacity and the fill of a picture were very important on our magazine cover and mainly used on the demons faces. We changed the opacity to 92%, this made the picture appear less and didn't make it stand out so much or look so obviously copied and pasted to the audience of the magazine cover and it also made the picture look more ghostly like once it had been placed in the balloons. Then we changed the fill of the pictures to 19%. This made the image appear more see-through and link in more with the idea of "ghosts" as typically, they are made out to be see-through in different films. It also, again, made the image blend in better with the balloons and made it look more professional and realistic.