evaluation

For my final piece in this half of the assignment we had to reproduce a piece of art as closely as possible. The piece i decided to reproduce was the album cover for umbrella assassins compilation album rancid milk. To be able to replicate this i had to use various tools within Photoshop and call upon all the knowledge we have been taught so far. Some of the tools i used included the magnetic lasso tool, The blur tool and the move tool. I also used a canon digital camera to take the image of a hand. Throughout the making of this piece i have found it very hard to completely match the shade of the album cover. The original looks old and not like one big colour block. This is something i still haven't managed to achieve. Due to this i am not entirely happy with the final outcome. If i were to do this again i may try printing the image i created off and then scanning it back to the computer to see if this helps with the look. I also think the image would benefit from cutting the letters out of paper and scanning them rather then copying them from the original image. I encountered a slight problem with the hand when i went to move it across. The persons hand i used had much longer fingers and a thinner hand then on the original. I had to re size this to try and get it to look more like the one on the original. This involved squashing and stretching parts of the hand as i needed it to loose its original look. I think this image was a good test of my skills as it looks quite simple to replicate but it in fact was much harder. Overall i think i could have done better with my final image. If i was to do this again i would definitely involve more experimentation to achieve the desired look of the original image.

final piece

final image - how created

To create my final image i moved the original image onto the page so i could see how it should look at all times. I then created a box to use for my image.

I then used the eyedropper tool to select the background colour from the original image.

Using the paint bucket tool i then filled the square i had created in the matching background colour.

I then opened the image of a hand i had took on a new page. To take this image i got the model to press there hand against glass to try and create the same effect as in the original image.

To start the transformation of the hand i changed it to black and white by selecting Image > Adjustments > Desaturated

I then opened the levels box to slightly alter the tonal balance as the image was too light.

Now i needed to crop the hand from the image. So i selected the magnetic lasso tool and roughly went around the outline of the hand.

I then selected the quick mask tool. This allows you to see the edges clearly to perfectly crop the image.

Now using the rubber tool you can perfectly go around the edge of the item you wish to select. Only the area not covered by the red mask will be selected so if you need to add any red then invert the rubber and this will add rather then take away. When finished it should look like this.

Now you are ready to remove the quick mask tool by selecting the same button that applied it.

Then i selected the move tool and moved the hand across to the page i was working on.

I then opened the original image in a new page and repeated the steps above to select and copy the text.

I had to move each letter across one by one due to the change in scale from the original image to mine.

I kept referring to the original image at all times to try and match the images as close as possible.

When i was happy with the position of everything i selected the blur tool and went around the edges of everything i had copied to take away the harshness of copying and pasting parts.

radial blur - zoom

Original image

Open the image in photoshop and select the circular marquee tool and draw a circle in the middle of your image. Hold down shift key at the same time to create a perfect circle.

Then go to select > modify > feather. This will soften the edge of the circle so it doesn't look like it was copy and paste. For this image i set it to 200.

Then go to select > inverse. This will make any effect happen on the outside of the circle rather then the inside.

Then select Filter > Blur > Radial Blur. This will open a new window.

The new window that opens allows you to change the effect of the blur. For the zoom effect select zoom under blur method and i change the amount to 48.

Upon pressing ok your image is transformed.

Final image

umbrella assassins - rancid milk

For my final piece I am going to try and reproduce this album cover.

Other ideas i had were: