Album Cover

                 Well Friday's session with Sir Richard turned out to be a bit of laugh as he'd told us the week previously to fetch in some gubbins that we could use as props to knock up our own album covers...so we did. Now it's taken some time for Mr Mbawa to emerge from behind his cloak of shyness but now that he has there'll be no stopping him from posing 'til closing just make sure you ask him nicely and don't all peck his head at once. 
                  Ok, so I had my model sorted and all I need now was my props and knowing that my mum and dad seldom throw anything away, and that if I want something out of their garage, then there's every chance it'll still be in exactly the same place as it was when I last saw it 20 years ago ( I'm dead if they read this), so a quick visit and next thing you know I'm on my way to college with a hefty bit of mirror and a baseball cap acquired from the depths of a teenage sons bedroom...who also never throws anything away. The only other thing I needed to make sure of was that I had the correct fonts and seeing as though they aren't available as standard a quick search of the interweb soon had me downloading Let Me Ride and Futura Light Condensed BT.....so it was all systems go. 
                  I'd started shooting a few shots in the morning but it wasn't until after lunch that I realised I'd forgotten all about the earring but all was not lost as a quick rummage in the back of my car soon revealed a length of twin and earth cable so it was just a question of stripping it back and knocking up a quick bit of bling.
                  The first thing I did was remove the mirror from the frame as I'd originally considered just trying to shoot it all against a couple of different backgrounds and then just  Photoshop as necessary but the problem was the mirror frame wasn't in proportion to the model so it wouldn't have looked quite right so I then made the decision to shoot both separately. 

                                        

                              Armed with my two images all I needed to do now was tax my head in Photoshop to see if I could get anywhere near where I wanted to be, so after arriving home from college on Friday I sat down and had a quick go as the knowledge from Thursday layers lesson with John was still fresh in my mind....but I gave up. Saturday I was working, but when I got home, albeit a bit knackered, I gave it another go...and gave up. So now it's Sunday and a bit nippy outside, so I piled on the carbs with a hefty omelette of the bacon, mushroom and peppers variety between two slices of toast and sat down to see what I could come up with. The following steps weren't all as straight forward as they may sound and it took quite a lot of trial and error to get to where I needed to be but I wont bore you with the ins and outs of all that and just tell you the bits that worked.... 

Step 1: Desaturated K's image a little to make him a little more street than cuddly, cloned out the NY off the cap and adjusted the background lighting .

Step 2: Created a new layer and placed the mirror image on top keeping the white background which I'd selected and brightened .

Step 3: Created a mask and used the quick selection tool to select the inside of the frame so I could bring the back ground through without running the risk of straying onto the mirror.

Step 4: Opened another image of a plain sheet of photo paper and then opened this as a layer and then created a mask to bring the bits of the back ground through making sure the brightness levels of both white backgrounds were a near as I could get.

Step 5: Cropped my image to 300mm square ....album size to those old enough to remember.

Step 6: Another layer with the first font that I'd had to locate and download via the wonders of the internet, then just a few tweaks with an arc.

Step 7: As above for the second.

Step 8: Wasn't too sure how to add a frame but soon discovered it be via the  Edit > Stroke option and bit with the brush tool to fancy up the 2 right hand corners.

Step 9: Download and plonk on a final layer with a parental advisory sticker...not that it's really necessary as I've never heard K swear.

Step 10: Flatten image and size for blog at 72 p/i.

                                                                            

                                After all the serious stuff had taken place we were asked to reproduce a classic album cover as a group so with the aid of one of Anita's many wigs and a slightly dodgy leather waistcoat (probably Richard's) we all took it in turns to pose against our make shift back drop before Rukudzo volunteered his services as the man who would piece it all together in photoshop.....I've still no idea why I never got to wear the waistcoat