Digipak Ideas #4 - Album Cover Trials!

EDIT #1

I went with the theme of black and white for this edit as it reflects the theme of the music video. I also chose the most popular font from votes held on Facebook and Twitter and I think it works very well. I chose this front facing close up shot as most album covers, especially of females, feature a close up of their face. I really loved the lighting in this shot too. It looks very mimimal and effortless, but trust me, it wasn't so effortless!

EDIT #2

Edit 2 I tried out a little colour. I do like this edit and I like the placing of the title on the side to fill the space, it balances nicely. Although I think the black and white image is a bit more relevant to my theme and has a more stylish feel to it.

EDIT #3

Finally, edit 3 is my favourite. I chose this one to be the album cover as I adore the black and white and the flawless skin editing works so well with monochrome. I love the lighting it hits the side of my face perfectly and leaves just enough room to fit in the title of the album and the artist name. I chose to keep the same font and the reposition but I added a pop of colour to the word 'light'. The colour is gold in reference to the lyrics in my song choice 'Northern Lights', "everything we touch turns, turns to gold". I think this has worked really well and I'm very proud of it.

Below is some screen grabs of my process through photoshop on how I achieved these final images.

 In the above image the skin is heavily airbrushed this is one of the steps before toning it down and changing the opacity I had to take to achieve a more natural look.

I used a lot of layers and groups to soften the skin and 'perfect it' without taking away to much realist imperfections. I change the brightness and contracts, colour selection, levels and curves in order to get this effect. I used blur filters, noise and sharpen and high pass.

Here are some before and after shots: