Creating the album cover (The Front of our Digipak) - Draft

Photos I Was Considering
                                                        
This is the photo that we chose for our album cover. I liked this photo but I wasn't too sure about the lighting as I thought it was too soft and the lighting was too powerful. I thought it would be more interesting with shadows on the face. 
I created this image by using a white back drop so that he stood out more and using two soft box lights. Although I wasn't too sure about the photo however we decided that it had more personality and we liked the fact his eye stood out really well.



I preferred this photo due to the amount of shadow on his face. I created the shadows by turning one of the soft boxes off so that it only flashed on one side of his face. I like how his eyes look as he is looking straight into the camera. However there is a lot of shadow on the backdrop and this photo doesn't have as much character as the other one.

Editing my chosen photo

This is the final image I have produced for the front cover of my digipak, however it is just a draft as the photo of the road I have used is off the internet. I will have to go and shoot my own picture of a road and simply edit it into the photo but I wanted to get an idea of how it would look and I think it has turned out quite effectively.

How I Created The Image

 First of all I opened my chosen image in photoshop.
I then cropped the left side of the image as some of his eye was revealed and I wanted the audience's focus to be on only one of his eyes as I think it stands out a lot more. 

To give the picture more character and make it look more interesting I duplicated the layer and made the top layer black and white. I then added the multiply effect the top layer. This made the picture look more in depth and created some shadows on his face. However applying this effect made his eye a lot darker and again, didn't make it stand out as much as I wanted it to, so I created a layer mask and used the brush tool to remove the black and white effect from his eye to make it brighter and more blue, again to attract the audience to his eye.
                                                                                                    
 


After I was happy with the image of Connor I then decided to start working on the background. The name of our album is 'Road To Nowhere'. This is why I wanted to include a road in the background so that it definitely related to the album name. I got the picture of the road off the internet and have just used it so that I can get an idea of what the album cover would look like.  I created a layer mask on the image of the road and used the brush tool to remove the image of the road from his face so that  there are no distractions from his face.
                                                                                                      


To finish the image I then applied a 'Soft Light' effect on the image of the road so that it didn't stand out too much and look too vibrant and bold. I like the fact that the road is only faint in the background and it will not distract from the album title.