The student created a magazine cover for their college by finding a suitable image and removing its background using Photoshop tools. They then resized the image and found a library background image to place it on. Text was added for the title, strapline, and insert. Various effects like bevel and emboss, textures, gradients, and film grain were applied to elements to make them stand out against the background. The contrast of the main image was decreased to better blend it into the background. The final product included all necessary features for a successful magazine cover.

1. Development Diary
This is the development diary that I am keeping whilst making my College
magazine front cover. My magazine is aimed at the Westvic Sixth form Female
college students.
The first thing I done was find a suitable image on google that I could use for
the front cover. After doing this I opened the photo in Photoshop so that I could
remove the image from its background. I did this by using the magnetic lasso
tool as shown in the image below. After I had finished roughly going around the
image it comes up with ‘marching ants’ around
the area I have selected. This allowed me to see if
I needed to use the Quick mask tool to remove or
add any bits to the areas I had selected. The
image below
shows this
quick mask tool.
After finishing
using the quick
mask tool, I copied the image and pasted it
into another plain page and then re-sized it
using the free transform tool so that I could
begin to make my magazine front cover.
After re-sizing my image and making sure that it
is a mid close up shot, I went to google again to
find a suitable background for the magazine
cover. I decided on using an image of a library
because it is
relevant to
who the
magazine is
aimed at.
I inserted the
background into the front cover and then
placed the main image infront of it so it
looks as if she if standing in the library.
I then created the magazines title and
added certain effects; Bevel and emboss,
texture and gradient overlay. This will
help to make the title stand out more
against the background and bring more
emphasis to the title of the magazine.

2. I then added the strap line and insert to my
magazine cover; I made these a similar colour
to the girl’s top in the photo so that it brings the
colours on the magazine cover together.
As the background of my
college magazine is mainly bold
colours, I added effects to the
coverlines text to make it stand
out from the background more
than before.
I changed the font of part of the title to match the font of the coverlines; I
believe that this will make the finished product look more professional.
I added the ‘Film Grain’
effect to the background
to decrease the
brightness of the image, I
also changed the opacity
to allow the coverlines to
be more noticeable to the
audience.

3. Before After
I decreased the contrast of the main image so that it blends into the
background better and doesn’t stand out as much.
Insert Strapline
I added drop shadow and bevel and emboss to the insert and I added drop
shadow to the strapline of the magazine
cover, these add effects to the magazine
cover that would be found on professional
magazine covers.
This is the final product for my college
magazine front cover, I included all the
features needed to make a successful
magazine front cover. I like how the
background has been made to blend in with
the image and not stand out too much against
the coverline text.