Exploring the use of digital manipulation for a fashion magazine
Annotating Mainstream Magazines
These magazines here on this left page are mainsteam and in the popular, every day magazine market. Although Elle and Vogue do not use as much creative editing compared to the independant type, they still use heavy manipulation such as airbrushing and other different editing techniques to attract its viewers and express different emotions and feelings.
This double page spread (above) has been edited using cropping and pasting other images in to make one whole picture, for example, the branches of trees make the background. Nick Knight, a fashion photographer edited the spread. It adds a ghostly, intriguing, fantasy atmosphere to the page/photo.
Vogue’s Jessica Fecteau created this Vogue cover with bold lines and angles that highlight and outline the model’s face and hand. Although she created it digitally, the pink and turquoise lines look like face paint with colours that match the title. This is very effective as the colours match. This other Vogue cover was designed by Hattie Stewart. Her work consists of digitally drawing on top of covers to make them more vibrant and funky, which does not match the traditional minimalistic cover. It has made the cover more ‘fun’.
More of Hattie’s work features on the next page
Examples of edited Mainstream
Annotating Independant Magazines This double page features the independant magazines that use more creative techniques to make them more interesting and happier, and so that they don’t look boring. They use more vibrant editing techniques such as colour balance, cropping and greyscale; the use of vibrant colours and how much more fun and informal they look compared to traditional and professional-looking mainstream magazines.
These Polyester magazines have used interesting techniques such as colour balance/ hue and saturation level adjustments, as well as an interesting colour palette that go well together to attract the girly type such as these different shades of pink and yellow. Magazines such as The Gentle Woman and Polyester use borders to frame their cover subjects, which sets the focus on the model, making it quicker for the eye to focus.
Blend magazine uses cropping, which has an incredible effect of hiding the identity of the model, and adds minimalistic space on the cover to the right. Hunger magazine uses the clipping mask cropping technique to highlight and define body sizes and facial features.
Collage of Independant Magazines
Clipping mask edits This photo on the left is the original photo of a model. Below I have used the rectangular lasso tool to create defined images of models faces, what Hunger magazine uses on its covers. It is used to define and contour model’s faces and highlight and shadow certain aspects of the face. Here are my own examples below, edited in photoshop. Method: open your image, duplicate the layer, hide the first background layer, desaturate your image and adjust the levels, create a new layer and using the polygonal lasso tool or freehand lasso tool create a shape to crop, fill this shape with a foreground colour, select your background copy layer and create a clipping mask layer, compress your copy and new layers, add an inner shadow and flatten your image. I experimented with adding a colourful background, using the gradient tool to achieve a vibrant style.
This is my clipping mask example which, as this style with a plain minimalistic background, would be used on magazines.
Here, I experimented again by not desaturating the image, and adding a pale colour for the background.
These are more of my own examples, but using freestyle and free hand clipping mask edits, using the lasso tool. It shows how this clipping mask edit can be used and seen when you are not using sharp angles and rectangular structures. The outlines are a lot more smoother, but using this tool in not very effective if you want to demonstrate the sharp angles. The image below I have experiemented again with a different background colour.
The images on the right is where I have increased the darker and lower light levels to make contrasts. The images have very light aspects which makes them look over exposed.
hue and saturation edits This double page shows my hue and saturation edits. Magazines such as the independant type, do this to add the unusual and unnatural colour schemes to make the pages more aesthetically pleasing, funky and fun.
Here are a few of my examples of model, which changes many colours of the image, including the outfit and skin. This is the original catwalk fashion show image for the edits below, which has similar colours.
These images on the right have only changed the images to one block colour because the original image has similar colours.
It’s not as effective as portraits, where many colours change.
These are more examples of hue and saturation edits but this picture has a more busy background, so the colour changes the whole scene. The first picture is the original image, and the second one is where I have altered the basic hue and saturation levels. Above, I have entwined the clipping mask technique with the saturation edit so you can see that the clipping mask cannot just be applied to back and white images.
This is a more facial example to show close up colour balance, and how the colour of faces changes and you increase and decrease the levels.
Decreasing the saturation makes it greyscale.
This is a bad example of a saturation edit because it’s overexposed and has unaturally affected her hair and her face detail. The colour has badly affected her eyes too.
Brush Tool edits -inspired by Hattie Stewart This image manipulation technique ‘doodle’ is my favourite. You simply use the brush tool on photoshop, add layers to build up your image and choose which colours you like. You can add your own personal touches and designs which are similar to Hattie Stewart’s, who is famous for digitally doodling on top of magazine covers. I have chosen models and celebrities to doodle over instead. This is my first example of the doodle technique. I chose two colours for the background, which adds more colour to the empty space behind. I focused more on the model’s face and body detail rather than the background to demonstate the effect on the person first. I used more brighter colours for the model’s hair, tears and a bright red for her lips. I used small dots joined together to make flower shapes - my own idea.
I have used dark purple swiggly lines to almost ‘contour’ the bone structure.
This is my third edit, using the shape tool for the background and the details on top such as the rectangles, triangles and spirals. My inspiration has come from Hattie Stewart’s i-D magazine illustration with the colours of blue, red and yellow in the background (shown in the second picture at the top of last page). I also added a vast majority of lines and
dots to make up the shape of her the model’s face and top, and I really like the lips and tongue. Below is my second practice of doodling, on top of Beyonce. I used a bright yellow to add more colour and brightness to the image, and used the same colour for the drawing on the other side of the background. I really like Stewart’s design of the eyes and tears so I used this on my own image. I also like her use of lines which I used above the eyebrows.
Evaluation on my edits
The first technique I practised here was the clipping mask tool. I really enjoyed this as I could experiment with the independant magazine style (desaturated and sharp angles) as well as my own style using the free hand lasso tool for smoother edges. Also, I could add a background colour to show different styles and be different from the classic independant magazine style. My favourite edits from this technique are these shown on the top right. The first one here I like because I didn’t stick to the style with the monotone and classic white background and I created my own shape. The second one I like too because I adjusted the black and white levels to an appropiate degree and I’m happy with the shape I made using the polygonal lasso tool. It accurately demonstrates the style ‘Hunger’ magazine uses. I also like the subtle shadows I added.
The next technique I practiced is hue and saturation edits. This was my least favourite technique because it only changed the colour scheme (which can sometimes actually be really fun and effective if more than one colour changes in the picture). It was boring compared the other two techniques. I found this one was quite limited when you wanted a specific colour scheme. However, I do have favourite edits. My experiments shown on the left are examples of when more than one colour in the image changes. I find this really effective because 3 main colour aspects have changed - the head, top and background. I also find that the colours go well together in these examples. I slightly changed the saturation of the second image to make the colours brighter. I like this effect/option. This edit here is my least favourite. I purposely made it like this to demonstrate what a bad saturation edit would look like. The saturation level was increased to make the colours more bolder and brighter, but in my opinion this is too much. It has affected her eyes and hair and doesn’t look ‘natural’ / perfectly edited. What I would do differently next time is choose better images where more than one colour changes and choose suitable levels of saturation to compliment the hue colours.
The last technique, doodling/brush tool, is my favourite because I can be as creative as I like, using styles and colours I want. I can show my creativity and imagination in many ways using the brush tool to doodle on top of people. I can also study an artist’s work (Hattie Stewart) for inspiration and ideas. I love her work, her style; her imagination.
These bottom two edits are my least favourite. The first one because I’ve taken away the background entirely and focused on the face. I used the lasso tool free hand so I don’t like the heart shape as much as the angular edits. The second one is my least favourite too because I’ve taken away part of her cheek which I could’ve defined more rather than take out.
What I would do differently next time is experiment more with different photos (not just people, maybe animals or scenery) and think about how I crop the pictures to make it more effective, not taking out important details.
This is my favourite doodle edit because I love the colours I have used, including the bright contrasting yellow in the background. I like the doodling in the background - how I’ve used yellow on the white side and white on the yellow. I also really like the tear design. This doodle on the left is my least favourite. This was my first practice so I prefer my edits after this one. I don’t particularly like the tears or the background shapes.
What I would do different next time is use a graphics tablet so I can acheive more accurate lines and small intricate details. I would also use whole body images to doodle on the body as well as the face. I could try more ambitious and creative deisgns which need more time to complete.