Photoshop - Editing the Digipak images

In order to create my album artwork, I used Adobe Photoshop which is a photo editing and manipulation software.

I imported a photograph, which was taken on the day of my video shoot. This became my background layer, allowing me to put over elements on top of it. For example, most images used for album covers feature a parental advisory logo which tends to be pasted into photoshop and then layered over the top of the original image. However, my album doesn’t need this warning as the content is suitable for children.

I used the enhance portion of photoshop to convert the pictures into black and white, however, I remembered from my target audience feedback that they didn’t the loose guide image from the mock up as it was too grey and looked boring, so after some quick experimenting I found that the portrait style of black and white was the right shading for the images to create the desired effect.

Audience Feedback:

I then ran a poll with my target audience to see whether they liked the images in black and white or in colour.

I asked 10 members of my target audience which they preferred. 9 out of 10 voted for black and white for both the cover image and the images inside the digipak. This was a surprise to me as I personally believed that the cover image looked better in colour and planned to use the coloured version, however as the project is about appealing to target audiences I will adjust my plans and use the black and white images so that my product will appeal to its target audience.

My target audience also pointed out that if I went black and white for one of the portrait shots then I’d have to do it for all of them to establish continuity, which is another reason why I decided to go with what my target audience liked and recommended.

On the other hand the images of the candle will remain coloured as there was a unanimous agreement that they work best in colour.

Side by side images:

Set for the shoot:

Camera Settings:

The Aperture was f/6.3, with a Shutter speed of 0"4 and an ISO of 100. The wide aperture setting of a low f stop of f/6.3 allows for a shallow depth of field so my facial expression appear sharper and stand out more. This was an intentional choice as the sharp expression will highlight and emphasise the head movements of the artist. The long exposure involves using a long-duration shutter speed to sharply capture the stationary elements of images while blurring, smearing, or obscuring the moving elements. So these settings were ideal for capturing motion, especially head motion where I changed my expressions. I decided to use a low ISO speed as it meant that there was low image noise on the pictures which is what I wanted as the image noise would have lowered the quality of the images. I used a high shutter speed so that there would be a longer exposure time to capture the motion of my head which in turn created an image showing someone having a mental breakdown.

The front cover image was taken with an aperture of f/16, a shutter speed of 1" and an ISO of 100. These higher settings created a much brighter image that works well as a front cover. I decided to increase the settings to test out how the image would look if it was much brighter. The narrower aperture meant that there was a wider depth of field and the longer exposure of 1 second meant that more motion was captured creating a more aesthetically pleasing image.

Finished Digipak Cover:

I finished making the digipak cover in powerpoint. I took the image and inserted it into a powerpoint document. From there I created two text boxes and typed the title of the album and the artist's name. The font of the title is called Bad Behaviour and is size 60, whereas the the font of the artist's name is Distortion Dos Analogue and the size is 32. I then changed the colour of the title text to white and the artist's name to orange. The connotations of these can be seen on the digipak mock up post. This concludes the construction of the digipak cover.