PREPARING THE FRONT COVER IMAGE

Contact sheet of photos taken for my front cover image

The original version of my cover photo

I used a medium close up shot for my cover photo. Using this shot size was appropriate because magazine covers often use this size in order to fit well on an A4 sized page and leave enough space for the magazine title and articles to fit around the model. The model I used was a regular student to reinforce the target audience of students. The composition of the photo uses a natural background and a shallow depth of focus in order to help the model stand out and the background to fade in.

The final version of my cover photo

Using Photoshop, I first cropped the photo in order to fit it to an A4 sized page and I left space for the magazine title at the top. I then used the polygonal lasso tool to separate the model from the background, and adjusted the colouring of the background so that the reds and oranges stood out more. This helped the background colours to correlate with the model because the colours went well with her hair. I also used the blur tool to distort the background further to help the model stand out. I adjusted the brightness and contrast of the model separately, and made this part of the image sharper.