AS Media Studies Foundation Portfolio: Looking back at your Preliminary Task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the Full Product?

I've learnt everything I know. From my preliminary task to my final products I did terrific improvements, not only in a practical and most obvious way, but also in a graphic and personal one.

This is the comparison between my Preliminary Task and my final product.

How my products changed through time

This was the first time in my life I used Photoshop, and you can tell.

As a first draft I substituted the main image of my mock up front cover with my own picture, to have an idea of what it could look like.

I tried to keep myself on pale colours, mainly on the shades of pink, sky blue, grey and yellow, as through my researches I noticed that pop magazines tend to use pale colours (or even white), and then go creative in matter of colours and pictures through the different parts present on a front cover.

During my other researches, I noticed other ways to have a succesful background.

Billboard magazine, fo example, tends to use bright yet quite conventional colours.

Personally, I found interesting the technique where the artist in the front cover is surrounded by a slightly brighter shade of the same colour, as it makes it stand out even more, completly dominating the scene.

In some others front covers, you can barely see the background.

Then, I changed the colour of the background, and I tried to put an actual background instead than just a monochromatic one, but it seemed to me as it wasn't the right choice.

I tried all this techniques but I still didn't like it, so I just abandoned the idea and went for a soft plae blue background.

I just started a totally different cover, with a totally different colour scheme and style.
The feature stories are all written in the same font, and they can be clearly understood.
There is no doubt that the audience will identify which one is the main feture story, as "Sara" is occupying quite a big portion of space on the front cover, and it's the second thing we notice after the masthead.
I decided to use the "Layer Style: Stroke", on the masthead and on the two squared pictures, to have a common detail.

Front Cover 2

Among the shots I took, there is one that I really like, as I found it original and potentially successful.

The quality of the image wasn't of the best ones, so I tried to find a solution, because I didn't want to put aside the shot.

I tried to improve things somewhat with a basic enlargement.

I Navigated to Image > Image Size.

Where it says “Resample Image” I was able to change the type of anti-aliasing used to enlarge and smooth the image.

I changed it to “Bicubic Smoother (best for enlargement).”

By default, Photoshop uses “Bicubic.”

Changing the type of anti-aliasing can make a huge difference the edges in your image, helping to keep them smoother, less jaggy. This can make a big difference.

Improving Detail in Enlarged Images

Most Photoshop users don’t go beyond RGB or CMYK.

I used a different color mode called Lab Color.

Switched any enlarged image and changed it to Lab color by navigating to Image > Mode > Lab Color.

I had a channels panel open by going to Window > Channels. Then I selected the “Lightness” channel.

With “Lightness” selected, we’ll perform a Smart Sharpen filter by going to Filter > Smart Sharpen.

The settings above worked for our example quite well, but feel free to fiddle around and find my own. You’ll probably want to keep your “Remove” setting to “Gaussian Blur”.