Working on my Ancillary Sturff

So I began work on my digipack almost immediately after mapping out the general look (mostly out of excitement but partly because leaving things in media is a BAD idea). I began work on the finished project in Photoshop as follows:

The Settings...

I start by choosing the settings for the project. I choose a basic shape (A3 Sheet of paper) because I know an actual digipack would fit onto the size of an A3 sheet. I name the project something suitable. I change the colour mode to CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and K for Black) because it is the colour mode you use for printed documents, and a digipack is printed. I make the project 16bit to increase the quality and i stop photoshop from colour managing so that they don't mess around with my chosen colours (photoshop likes to do that).

The Guidelines

I continued to create guidelines for where the digipack would go. I made the dimensions 13cm by 13cm to give the digipack a little room with a 6mm spine for the slip cover. The slip cover has two panels and the inside digipack has 3 panels because it flips outwards.

The Photos

As we all know, famous pop stars and movie stars get 'photoshopped', especially for posters and album covers. Romy, being the superstar she is, receives the exact same treatment. Using a tool called 'liquify' I slim down some of Romy's proportions and smooth over some of her blemishes (simply for the digipack - Romy is beautiful the way she is). I then went to her hair and thickened the ends out a little more using the clone stamp tool. I also highlighted some of her roots and made them more blonde-like using the brush tool (set to the overlay feature).

 More Details…

One of my favourite colouring tools in Photoshop is 'Adjust Curves'. It brings up a colouring map where you can drag the colour curve to achieve darker or lighter images. It does much more than the brightness and contrast slider and does it naturally so that the image looks like it was actually taken at that lighting. Using such a life saving tool I lightened Romy's image for CD cover quality.

Once I began creating the actual digipack nothing could stop me. I was a graphic designer on wheels! (I was also listening to a very inspirational album that helped me along quite a bit). I went on to create the rest of the slip cover using a triangle pattern I made myself after being inspired by Romy's top. I also added a barcode, copyright information and company logo's to give the Digipack an official look.

Other Images:

After beginning work I am feeling very confident in the overall design idea I had to start with. I feel my digipack looks professional and very appropriate for the genre it is meant to represent. I look forward to creating the rest of my ancillary work with the same enthusiastic attitude!