Photoshop Practice — Nature Magazine

Today was spent practising Photoshop skills. I took photos in order to make the cover of a nature magazine, and practised using Photoshop to manipulate these images.

The first image which was chosen. I liked it because of the use of space and perspective.

The second image which was chosen. In this image, there is one lone white duck, which I thought would catch someone's eye if they were to look at the image.

The third image which was chosen. This shot has an autumnal theme, with the blanket of leaves on the ground.

I chose these images in order to evoke an autumnal feel, with the red, gold and orange of the leaves and the brown of the ducks.

The editing process

During the editing process, I used:

• Shapes to create borders and boxes for the text
• Curves, adjustment layers and clipping masks to change the brightness of the lights and shadows in each image
• Hue and saturation adjustment layers to make the background image seem more autumnal than it was in real life (on the day on which the photos were taken, it was overcast)

The final cover

If I were to redesign the cover, I would add some kind of effect to the header text to make it not as two-dimensional—perhaps a glow, drop shadow or bevel.