Production Monitoring

Front Cover Inspiration 










Progress 


14th March 2011

this is an initial draft of my double page spread, we had been asked to look at existing double page spreads in magazines that attract a similar target audience to our own and investigate how they use the layout to maintain interest from reader, the above photo graph demonstrates a rough idea of how my design for my double page could look like. 






21st March 2011

Progress:

Since last week’s photo shoot on Friday I have begun to edit my images via the post production stage, I am editing my photos using Photoshop CS4 at home and at college to allow me to achieve professional standard images, to ensure I am achieving a professional standard I am ensuring that I am following tutorials and guidance from online sources and I have multiple copies of my work to ensure I have the chance to make changes at any stage of my editing process.

At the actual photoshoot on Friday 18^th March I spend around 45 minutes trying to get the shot I wanted for my front cover, after several different poses and rearrangements of lighting setups along with over 50 photographs I felt I had the one image I needed, once I had shot the front cover image I then decided to photograph the prop individually to use at some point further within my magazine on the double page spread, after this I then transferred the images from the SD card onto my memory stick and student account on the college network to ensure I had two safe legitimate copies of my work.

Overall I had no real problems or issues at the photoshoot with neither the model or any props involved, everything seemed to run seamlessly with exception to the time restrictions, the only real issue we had was the time and this was against us from the start as we had only a 45 minute slot to successfully shot my front cover, this meant that we were unable to change the outfit that the model was wearing as frequently as we would have liked, I feel with more time on location (in studio) i could have achieved a more successful image as I would have more variation in the images i have because if more time was available to me I feel I would have introduced other props and clothing so in the editing stage I was more confident that I have multiple images that i could select from rather than 1 or 2 that I thought would be to the standard I required.

1^st April 2011

Progress:


As of today my project is starting to take shape, since my initial editing on the 21^st March 2011 I have almost completed my front cover design and only have simple additions to make for example to add some strap lines, the front cover is coming along nicely and by the end of today will be completed therefore allowing me time to develop my article/double page spread.

I have edited my props and model for my front cover in separate documents and once completed I will copy the layers I have effectively created into one file to lay on top of the background I have made following an online tutorial.

Although I am pleased with the current product I have had some issues along the way to development, the biggest problem I have had and possibly could have had was to lose all my data, my memory stick contained all my media project work and as of Wednesday I have lost all content due to the files becoming corrupted as the pen drive snapped within the computer, I have decided to send my broken pen drive away to be fixed however this occurrence has hindered my project development as all initial ideas, layout designs, and images from the day of shooting have been lost,  the lack of organisation or the issue for no contingency for this has meant that I will have to wait a week before my actual front cover shoot will be processed onto the Photoshop file I am currently working on, in the mean time I am booking myself in for another shoot as I understand that the data may not be retrieved.

Below is  a screenshot of the front cover as it currently stands at 11:30 this morning, I am planning on further developing the design as I understand that the lack of headings  and no focal image make the product incomplete.

For this screenshot I have included the layers panel so that you are able to see the use of independent layers used to generate this front cover, in addition I have also rasterized the layers so that it is clearer for you to see what layers have particular fonts or fill boxes on and be able to associate these with what is included on the cover.

20th April 2011 


since the last progress entry i have further developed my front cover and double page spread, below are the two finished examples of work.

what  has been done on my front cover here for my model  is that i have effectively used the raw file editor within Photoshop and have made the “blacks” in the photo almost to fill the image, the original image I started working on was well lit and so the black adjustments were necessary to create this image to this and the allow me to produce this image I firstly opened a separate Photoshop document, after this I then changed the levels of blacks so that the background turned a dark grey whilst the model turned fully black, after confirming these changes I then put the image into the invert mode so that I could determine the dark colours from the slightly lighter greys, after this I added a new blank layer with checkerboard affect and unlocked the background layer, then I began to erase the model form the scene using the erase tool and once the image was of the model only I dragged the layer onto the backdrop of the original file and positioned her around the sub titles and headings, the final adjustment I made to this layer was to rotate the image horizontally so that the model was facing the opposite direction 

see more information in unit 3 evaluation !