Process of Making Magazine front 1

When beginning to create my magazine front cover, I decided that the pictures I had taken, I wanted to darken, so that it appears as if the character of the film is standing in the dark, with some light on them. To do this, I used the same method as for the poster of the film, where as I put the original picture into Microsoft Picture Manager and darkened the picture. I then 'save as' as a different file from the original so I could layer them in Adobe Photoshop.

He are my print screens of me layering the 'light/original' picture with the 'dark/new' picture, and erasing the front darkened layer to show the lighter picture underneath. As well as erasing the top layer, I also used the blur tool to darken the edges that I caught with the eraser. After this I used the darken blur tool to darken the outer edges of the picture further.

As well as darkening some of the picture, I also lightened some of the picture. Instead of using the lighten tool, though, I used the eraser to get rid of the top layer to show the bright torch light in the back layer picture. This gives the effect of the character being in the dark, and also that the torch is giving off some light.

In the print screen below, I did the same thing as for the print screen above. I created a darker version of the picture by using Microsoft Picture Manager, and then inserted them both into Adobe Photoshop to layer them and edit to my liking. In this picture I didn't darken the main focus as much as I did for the picture above, because there wasn't much to focus on, as the character had his head down with his hood up, which meant that the picture, even with being lightened wouldn't have had the same effect.

On both of the above pictures, when using Microsoft Picture Manager to darken the photo, I added in a slight tint of blue, which help create the effect that it is night time and helps towards being able to create the feeling that the character is in the dark.

From editing both of these pictures, and deciding that these two were the best ones to practice with from the picture I had taken, I feel that using the first one, with the young boy, holding the torch, would be the best one to use, simply because it has more focus than the second, as the second one has the character facing down, and after researching other magazine front covers, I have noticed that the character on the front cover is posing for the camera, and in this picture you can't be sure that they are posing, or if it was just a still shot taken from the film.