PHOTOSHOPPOP MUSIC RESEARCH

BY HAYLEY IP 10F

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:We_Are_Never_Ever_Getting_Back_Together.JPG

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After I put on all my ideas on the moodboard, I had more of an idea about what pop music “looks” like. I think that pop music is more or less an abbreviation for popular music. This genre has a really strong beat and fast, therefore involves a lot of dancing. Unlike country music, it doesn’t have a soft tone and relaxing rhythm, it uses the base drums and the electric guitar, as shown on my moodboard to add energy into the song. From the moodboard, I came up with a basic idea of having quite sharp and bright colours for my album cover and the text should be quite bold.

A c

olle

ctio

n o

f pop a

lbum

co

vers

On the slide before, you

saw the different pop

album covers which I

picked, in the next few

slides I will explain to

you why some elements

of each of the album

covers might influence

how I would design my

album cover.

Collect

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f alb

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vers

– C

olo

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The colours of the album cover of pop music vary a lot. There are some which are black, pink, purple, red, etc, however I think that in almost every one of the pop album covers, there is one colour which stands out. For example, on the Britney Spears album, the background colours and the images are all shades or gold, so the red coloured font stands out. I also think that the colours on most of the albums are not soft, they are either black or like bright neon colours, so this reflects on the features of a pop song which has a strong and hard rhythm.

Collect

ion o

f alb

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covers

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Text

In general, the text on each of the album cover fill around one quarter of a fifth of the cover. Even though the fonts are quite different in each of the album cover, I think that the fonts match the style of the artist or the songs in the album. For example, for One Directions’s album, their band name is written in quite a fun or more casual text and most of their songs are about positive things. While as Taylor Swift’s Red album has quite a bold and hard writing, for me this shows that the songs are more harsh, which is quite true. One thing that I’ve noticed is that if the colours of the text are not as sharp compared to the background, there normally would be a contrasting outline. There are more about typography later on.

Collect

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- im

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As for the images, in every one of the album cover, it features at least one person and most of the time, it is the artist. The image fill most of the page and for pop music, the backgrounds are mostly plain in colour, occasionally the background might be a scenery. The artists are mostly dressed in black or white and for girls, the photo is usually a close up to the upper half of the body while as for guys, the faces don’t really stand out.

Collect

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co

vers

- layout

For the album layout, I think that the images should be the focus point for the audience, therefore put in the middle. In every one of the pop album covers that I had in my collection, the album name would never overlap the face of the artist, normally it would be in the middle of the cover if almost the whole body of the artist is shown, if the image is a closeup, the text will normally be at the bottom of the album cover. The layout is quite simple as normally the cover of pop music doesn't have a lot of images to it and most of the time, the background is plain.

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I quite like the bold text of Flo Rida's “Wild One” cover because it really stood out and it catches the audience's attention straight away. I think that I will use a thick outline for my text with a neon glow because neon colours reflect on the idea of pop music. 

I loved Tinie Tempah's Disc Overy cover because of the spotlight because I thought that it really brought out the idea of pop music in a disco and the idea of dance involved in pop music. So I think I would have a few aspects of a spotlight in my album cover. 

For the background, I liked Katy Perry's Teenage dream background because the neon colours gives me an idea of energy and fast beat music which are basically the features of pop music. Therefore, I think that I would have a few neon colours on my album cover. If I don't use neon colours for the background, I think I can try to add some neon effects to my clothing or my hair on the album cover. 

For the image, I prefer a middle distance shot (from my head to my knees) because I think a close up would take the audience's attention away from the album because that was what happened to me when I looked at the covers which had a close up to the artist's face. I think the colour of my image should be darker but there can be a thin outline of bright colours or a glow surrounding my body.

Tuto

rials

Here is a link to a range of

tutorials for photoshop, I

picked a few in this link to

follow:

Merg

ing p

hoto

s

The ability to merge photos would be quite useful for me because I can show overlap patterns onto an original photo and this helps me design my album cover because as I mentioned, in the collection, I quite liked Tenie Tempah's idea of putting a city into his hands. I think I might use some elements of that in my cover because city and skyscrapers represents life. I believe that pop music is closely related with that because it is quite fast and energetic. This is similar to city life.

Dis

pla

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step b

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Open a photo in photoshop. I used a Justin Bieber photo which you

can see on the screen before.Create a new layer and fill it with black transparent gradient from

bottom right to top left using the gradient tool. You can create a

new layer by clicking on the bottom right button (with a new page

symbol).This stage is optional, but the final outcome would look better

aesthetically (this stage doesn't have anything to do with

displacement) Add a new adjustment layer (the black and white

circle to the right of the new layer symbol at the bottom right of

the screen), after you clicked on the new adjustment layer, you

can choose different types of adjustment layers, pick the colour

balance and add more red, magenta and a bit of yellow for

warmth and colour in the photo.Open another photo in photoshop which you would like to displace

the original one with (for me, this would be the American flag) and

save it as a photoshop file. Copy and paste the photo onto the

original file (which is the justin bieber file for me)

At the moment, you can only see the new photo. Now, this is the

important bit. Go to Filter> Distort>Displace and set the horizotal

and vertical numbers to 10. Then click enter. There still wouldn't

be a change but now a window should pop up telling you to open a

file.You should open the file which you saved earlier on, the one you

want to displace the original photo with (in photoshop format)

Change the opacity of the layer to around 30% and you should see

the pattern on the original photo.Now, you can change the effects of the layer. There should be a

bar in the layers palette which says “normal”. You can change it to

different effects and see how they look. The next slide shows how

my image looked after I changed the settings of the top layer.

Hardmix

Overlay

Softlight

Addin

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radia

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and s

potl

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behin

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This is useful for my album cover because this would highlight the features of the person and for pop music is quite popular in discos and stage, so using a spotlight effect might create the atmosphere and the cover would look more like a pop music album cover to the audience. Also if I know how to delete a background, it will be easier for me to arrange photos together.

Dele

ting t

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ages

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If you are using a white background photo (like what I did), you

can skip this step. For people using a background photo which

is not white, you can use the magic wand tool. First, you need

to create another layer, to do that, double click on the original

photo layer, make sure the new layer is layer 0 and don't

change anything else. Then, go to the toolbox and choose the

magic wand tool. When you are in the magic wand tool, click

on the background that you want to delete. If it doesn't select

all of the background, hold onto the “shift” key and click on

the other areas in the background as well. Once you have

everything selected, go to your keyboard and press delete.

After you are done with cutting, go to the palette on the right

hand side of the screen. Make changes to the brightness and

contrast of the layer so the figure stands out.You can then add a background by creating a radial gradient.

To do that, go to layer on the top bar on the screen, click on

new fill layer and then click on gradient. A box should pop up

afterwards and you should change the gradient options, for the

style you should use radial, and then click reverse, so that the

lighter bit is on the inside and the darker areas are further

away from the image. You can pick different colours for the

background, but I urge you to pick a darker tone, for me I used

a dark murky purple kind of colour.To get a spotlight from the middle, add a layer mask. You can

do this by clicking onto the half black and white circle at the

bottom right of the screen and you can play around with the

brightness of the layer.Then select a large soft brush with an opacity of 30% - 40%

and use white. Then shade on the sides of the figure, so it

seems like there is a light shining behind the figure.

Clo

uds

Tool

(Fanta

sy A

rt)

There are a couple of things that I learnt in this tutorial which might be useful for me in my cover album project, one is adding a outer glow to a shape. This would help me in my cover album design because I wanted to add a neon ring around my image as most pop album covers I looked at had neon colours on them. The ring would attract people's attention and it adds energy into the piece and this relates to the fast and strong beat of pop music. I also learnt how to rotate or distort shapes or images and this might help me as well because I might want to paste some 2 images together and things might not fit that easily, so rotating the image or changing the size might help.

Ste

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Open a photoshop file and use the gradient tool, from the top, draw a

vertical line to the bottom and set the gradient colour as dark blue.

Open an image with a figure (for me, it is Nina Dobrev's image) on

another photoshop file. Use the magic wand tool and delete the

background so only the figure is left. Then copy and paste the figure onto

the first photoshop file.Then add an outer glow to the person's body by going to layer>layer

styles>outer glow and apply a light blue colour glow with opacity of 40%,

technique = softer, spread = 10%. It will now look like that she has a

glow ring around her body.Then make a new layer and go to filter>render>clouds. At the moment,

you can't see the image of the person you had but try change the opacity

to 30%.

Then press control T for free transform and then right click the mouse

and press scew. Try make the clouds cover half of her body diagonally.

After that, duplicate the clouds layer and go to edit>transform>flip

horizontal.Then, select the girl's layer (with only her figure) and pull it to the top, so

it is above all the other layers. You can do this in the layers bar.Open a image that you want to set a background on another photoshop

file. Copy and paste the photo onto a layer that is behind the image.

Then drag the layers of the clouds on top of the image. You should still be

able to see the image because the opacity is 30% for the clouds.Use the Elliptical Marquee tool to draw an oval on top of the girl. Right

click in the circles, go to prospective>distort. You should try make the

circles flow around the figure. Then Right click the mouse and select

stroke. Set the width to 5px and the colour to blue.Do this for several times so you have a few ovals overlapping each other.

On the same layer, you should go to layer>layer style>outer glow and

apply 85% for opacity, technique = softer, size = 7px.Put on some finishing touches by erasing the sides of the figure using a

30% opacity soft brush, so it would seem like the figure is emerging from

the background.

Lighti

ng e

ffect

s 1

(Spark

les,

Glo

w li

nes

– fa

nta

sy a

rt)

I think that after I went through this tutorial and made my owl final product, I am more confident on how to design my album cover. Before, I had the idea of adding glow lines in bright colours and sparkles around the text or my body to make the objects stand out more but I wasn't sure how to do that. But after finishing this tutorial/course, I not only learnt how to add sparkles, I also learnt how to add a transparent rainbow gradient and I learnt how to use the lens flare tool.

Ste

p b

y Ste

p (

1)

This part is optional, but if you want the glow and lighting effect to

stand out more, then you should do this. So first, import the image into

photoshop. Then duplicate the background layer (ctrl J) and set the

blending mode to difference with 35% opacity. Duplicate the layer again

but use multiply with 45% of opacity. Finally, duplicate the layer one

last time but set opacity to 100% and the blending mode to overlay.

This would make the image darker so there would be a bigger contrast

with the lighting effects.To make the image look more mysterious and fantasy like, duplicate the

layer again and put the layer on top of all the other layers. Go to

filter>render>clouds and click ok. Afterwards, go to

filter>render>difference clouds. Set the opacity of that layer to 20%.

Add an adjustment layer with gradient, and make the gradient fill the

spectrum. Make the angle 140 degrees. At this moment, you should

only be able to see the spectrum but change the opacity of the

adjustment layer to 10% and now you should be able to see all the

layers.Switch to the pen tool and draw a line on the image which will be the

glow path. Then use the eraser tool and erase some bits you think will

be behind the image.Use the brush tool (colour: white) and set the brush to the settings

below, so the brush would make sparkles and not a line:

Ste

p b

y st

ep (

2)

Then set the blending options for this layer with the numbers below:

Using the soft brush, draw on areas near the line that is supposed to glow and it should seem like there are sparkles flying off the line.Create a new layer and using a soft brush with yellow and red, paint some near the lines (don't over do this). Change the blending mode of this layer to soft light and go to Filter > Blur > Gausian Blur with Radius about 20 pixels. This should make people think that the line is giving out glows.Finally, go to filter>render>lens flare and drag the glowing circle where you want it to be on the image. For me, I dragged it to the top, so it looked like a sun shining down.

Lighti

ng e

ffect

s 2(

Obje

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)

I think that after this tutorial, I learnt how to add some glows to a particular figure and not the whole of the canvas (this is what I did in lighting effects 1). This might be useful for me because if I wanted an object to stand out with neon colours in my album cover, I can do it by using what I learnt in this tutorial.

Ste

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Open a file in photoshop and using the radial gradient tool

with black and grey, make it seem like there's a white bulb

glowing at the bottom (height) middle (width) of the

canvas.Using the magic wand tool, crop an image of a figure or an

object out and paste it onto the canvas.

This stage is optional: you can add some patterns behind

the object and in front of the background if you want to by

once again using the magic wand tool and cropping the

patterns out of an image and pasting it onto the canvas.

Add a new layer behind the figure or object. Draw an oval

using the Elliptical Marquee tool behind the figure or where

you want the glow to be. Go to Select > Modify > Feather

with 30px. Set the foreground colour to #D200FF or

something glowy, press “Ctrl” and “Del” at the same time,

this should fill the oval. Change the blending mode of this

layer to screen and set the opacity to 40%.

Repeat step 4 twice with different colours but on the same

layer, what I used was #F6FF00 and #F6FF00. This time,

set the blending mode to overlay and the opacity to 60%.

The ovals should overlap each other so there would be a

wider range of colours.Create a new layer and draw a white rectangle using the

rectangle tool. Then go to filter>liquify and just make the

rectangle wavy.Use the smudge tool (click on the water drop and select

the smudge tool) and smudge off the white shape so it

would have a glowing effect.

Inve

stig

ati

ons

on

typogra

phy On the next few slides,

you will see different

album covers with very

unique or eye catching

fonts, I will explain to

you why I think they

might be a good idea for

my album cover.

I quite liked this album cover’s font which is a sparkly energetic font. I think that I would be able to use the sparkly idea onto my album cover because in a lot of pop album covers, they have the idea of a disco or dance and I think sparkly text can represent that. Another thing that I would like to point out is that the “s” in KISS is written in a lightning kind of way. I think that is really creative and there might be a chance that I would do some kind of lightning font in my album cover because it gives more energy and pop music is quite fast so I think it blends quite well with the genre that I am choosing.

After looking at this album cover, I realize that the font must really go with the album name and what the songs are all about. This is because this font gives me a quite lively happy big feeling and the type of songs in this album is quite positive. I also think that I might emphasize on some letters that I want the audience to see first by making them really big because when I looked at this album cover, I saw straight away the “C” and the “J”, so this proves that it is quite effective to vary the font size of different letters.

I particularly liked this album cover because of it’s creativity. I think it was a great idea to put the font as an object in the album cover and the contrast between the 3D shapes and the 2D shapes really makes the album name stand out more. I think that this font expresses an idea of roads and city because everything is joined together. This might be useful for my album cover because I think I am going to add elements of city life into the cover as I think city directly relates to pop music as they share a lot of similarities, e.g. fast and loud.

This album cover’s font makes people think about grafitti and more of the bad side of a city. The colours under the words illustrates the idea of disco lights shining from below and I think that I might use some elements of that in my album cover because pop music is quite popular in discos. I also think that pop music has this hard and wild side and I think this type of font expresses the same idea as well. Also from this album cover, I can see that there must be contrast between the colours of the font and the background to make the words stand out.

I think that this album cover is the best that I’ve seen and it really expresses the idea of energy and life in it. This is because the font is like a bully’s handwriting so it fits in with the idea of riot. The energy comes from the idea of lots of exclamation marks and messiness of the handwriting. I might use some elements of the font in my album cover because I think that pop music expresses someone’s feeling straight to the point and the font is quite hard and edgy, so I think this relates to the genre quite well.

Text

eff

ect

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In the next few slides,

there are links to a range of tutorials for

texts effects in photoshop, I will explain

why I chose those particularly tutorials and

how I think I can use

these effects in my album cover.

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-2I think I will be able to use this effect on my album cover because I think it gives people the idea of disco lights shining from the words and the various colours gives me a sense of liveliness. I think this relates to pop music because pop music has a fast and strong beat so I think the disco theme and the energy fits into the idea quite well. I also had a glance through the tutorial and I don’t it will be too challenging to make this kind of text effect.

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/I think this type of font reflects on the idea of pop music because the firework bits on each of the letter once again gives the idea of energy and happiness to the words. I think pop music has elements of that in it because it is usually dance music and dance involves a lot of energy. However, if I can I would like to change the font of this text to a more wild and lively font because I think this font is too relaxing and soft, which doesn’t fit with the idea of pop music.

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/I think I had already mentioned this before but I would like to say again that I think I would add neon colours to my album cover. This is because this is quite popular within pop music album covers and therefore I think this kind of text effect might be useful for me. I think the neon glow around the font gives me a sense of dynamism and illumination. I think this relates to pop music because pop music is filled with adrenaline and beat.

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I think this font gives me a sense of freedom and another world. The lines are just going wild and it is not neat and I think this shows some elements of pop music because pop music can make someone go crazy, alive and let someone go to a place that they’ve never been before. This font gives people a sense of another dimension and I think that this is what pop music is all about.

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/I really like this font effect because a heartbeat sign gives people an idea of alive and I think the strong fast beat of pop music is similar to this heart rate that is going really fast. Also when I listen to pop music, I think my heart rate goes a bit faster because of the quick pace of it so I think this text effect would work quite well with the energetic and lively idea of pop music.

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I think that the idea of merging texts with images or patterns is quite good because it expresses two things at once. I think that I might use this text effect because I think city and pop music is have a lot in common. They both represent an idea of liveliness and a fast pace life. So I think merging words into buildings or making them part of a city on a album cover is quite unique and it really illustrates what genre the album is.

Fonts

In the next few slides,

there are links to a range of fonts that I might use or consider to

use in my album cover. I

will explain why I think I

can use some of these

fonts in my album cover.

GraffitiI quite like this font because I think that it is quite bold which stands out and the sprays at the back reflects on the casual style of writing in the pop music album.

DistortedI think this is my favourite font from what I’ve looked at so far because it really reflects on the idea of a beat and energy. The words are quite bold and sharp so it seems quite punchy which fits the idea of pop music.

CasualI think this style of handwriting reflects on the quick and energetic pace of pop music because it is writen quite messily with scribbles everywhere. Also this font demonstrates the idea of hardness because of all the straight lines used in the text.

Sci FiI think this font is quite simple and easier to read but it still reflects on the punchy and quick beat of pop music because of the sharp bits of the letters. I think I would want the spacing between each words a bit smaller, so it would give a fast pace, energetic feeling.

Fire

I think this font really illustrates the idea of energy because of the fire shape at the bottom. However, it might be quite hard to see this font because the words seemed to have disappeared in the white background, so if I use this font, I would have to put a contrasting colour as the background.