Practice Advert: Start to finish

This is a short project where we are tasked with selling a person, and in the process improving our photoshop skills.

Requirements

for

advertisment

For this project, we were given a topic: selling a person. At first, i didnt know who to sell, so i just did the idea without choosing anyone. In the end, i ended up selling myself because the photographing process would be much quicker than if i needed to find a model.

When planning, we were told to make the advertisment:

A3 Deliverable

Have a specific target audience in mind

Sell a specific USP(unique selling point)

Make a moodboard

Plan aesthetics and placements (rough sketch)

Use a specific Line of appeal

Use a slogan

Task 1: Creating an advertisement using provided assets

Planning/Pre-production

My initial idea was supposed to appeal to older age groups (18 to 38), psychographics(Aspirer, succeeder, Mainstream and explorer), demographic A-C, with hobbies related to the creative side of things. However, things didn't exactly turn out that way…

Image below is the initial sketch/design i had in mind when i began the project.(note it is flipped because of camera settings)

In retrospect, i should have planned in some other elements such as the text, effects, fonts, etc.(regarding the sketch)

Moodboard

Outcome 1

Quite honestly, This project could have been much easier if i didn't mess up and thought to use some of the techniques learned earlier at the beginning. (Redundant/overly complicated techniques used instead of clipping mask since I forgot to use it)

PS read the list from bottom up since it makes more sense this way.(and I’ll talk about them in this order later) ALSO, I bolded the important layers because some of the others are quite minor

Initial layers(lowest):

these are effectively the source material for this advertisement. The by duplicating the elements and editing the duplicated ones, i would not need to constantly import the images again when i mess up(which happened a LOT)

White background layer:

this is to make the background white and not transparent (this would not be necessary if exporting as a 24-bit PNG but it looks nicer as a block color compared to photoshop’s “transparent” texture)

Future experiments:

Stuff i began experimenting with, hoping to improve it after the deadline(most of it didn't work out but i will probably go over it in a later section)

Layers containing the drawings:

These are the layers containing a large majority of the drawings going over the right half of the image(character’s left). They are basically the unique aspect/key point of the poster.

Additions to drawings in layer(i meant to say group) 1:

just some small parts that i added later. They also overlap with the original drawing so separating them makes future fixes easier

“Free your mind” text layers + 2 experiments:

just the text for “free your mind. It is separate from the others because it is set up different (under the drawing rather than over). It has a drop shadow filter set on it. At first i tried to rasterize the layer and then erase the letters that are “under” the drawn elements. I could not simply place the text below the drawing because the white is basically a background and nothing is under the drawing, meaning dragging it under would not work. Anyway, the shadow effect was still active, so even if I erased the text, there was still a portion hanging over the drawing(shadow). I fixed this by merging the rasterized text layer with a blank layer. This merged the filters as well as the text(effectively rasterizing them as well). This meant I did not have shadows from the text hanging over the drawing underneath.

Basically what happened was that i did not think through the styles older audiences(like the group i selected) would enjoy viewing. I more so designed something that would appeal to a younger (12-25) age group. This is because older age groups usually prefer less cluttered/busy advertisements. This busy composition also made my advert lose the “sophisticated” look i wanted it to have.

However, in the making of this advertisement i(like to think) that i applied the things learned from the earlier practice tasks. (More on next slide)

Original image (Group/Folder 5):

This is basically the background. I needed to erase/remove half of “Me” in the advertisement so i decided to do it by selecting areas i didn't need and then erasing them. This technique is inferior to the Layer mask technique i learned in the earlier waterfall task as a layer mask allows me to effectively un-erase portions by going over in white on the mask, meaning any mistakes could be easily fixed.

This would have been fine if i didnt mess up (which i did multiple times thus why it is a folder and not a single layer (i needed to re-add areas i deleted and didnt realise (erased at start and only realised at the end when i finished manually masking out the rest of it) so i duplicated one of the “initial” layers and redid the area needed.

I duplicated and then flattened the group because i needed it for an experiment(after the initial submission)

Other text layers:

not much interesting things happening in this group. But the effect was quite hard to get(inverted colors)

Image controlling text colors(other text layers):

After i got enough elements drawn down, i added all layers into a folder, duplicated it and then merged the layers. This means i had a copy of everything(except the text). The text was hard to read because some areas were dark while others were really bright.

My solution was to invert colors on this layer, and then convert the layer into a clipping mask for the group containing the text boxes. This means the only parts of this inverted version are the areas over the text. This allows me to edit the text, move it and adjust it freely without messing up the colors(as the clipping mask is actively being affected by the text.

Some portions of this layer are brighter or darker than what a pure inverted version would look like though. This is because i noticed in some areas the text was difficult to read due to insufficient contrast. I selected the general area (on the inverted image) around the text and then used adjustment settings to make the text easier to read.

Final text layer:

just a text layer that was harder to see with the inverted colors than the original so i removed it from the invert group and made it pure white

Outcome 1 Reflection

Throughout the creation of this advertisement I constantly swapped between using the iPad and the computer versions of photoshop. This is because it is much easier to move, place and draw on the iPad, but the pc version can do move complicated things like rasterizing text etc.

Overall I think I messed this advertisement up. This is because despite it being targeted at an older audience, the only thing resembling an advertisement made for adults is the desaturated/monochrome color scheme.

As for my other goals (prestigious look), I also failed as prestigious brands usually have a very non-busy composition, as well as some strong colors (often black white or red blocks).

Improvements

At first, I planned to change the color scheme from white to blue or red. However, it did not give the effect desired. In the end, i decided to use image adjustment settings instead, as this would allow my to inject color without altering the basic image too much

I tried using a color balance layer to change the colors on the background. However the “me” was part of that layer so it didn’t work out. I continued trying to use this technique though, and it is a part of my final.

I found this brush effect I really liked, inspired by Takahiro’s advertisement background technique. Unfortunately no matter how hard I tried, I could not apply a clipping mask to a clipping mask.

This is the experiment where I tried to use a background from one of my other initial/base photos. The background was blue and red(purple). However, the “me” in the photo was much bigger and I could only use a small portion of the background copied and pasted numerous times.

Third development, I used blue and masked out the “me using a layer mask. Unfortunately the hair was incredibly difficult and would not look right so I ended up leaving the hair partiallyblue.

FINAL

Basically everything before but i masked out the red according to where the blue ended (manually masked out red where the blue layer ended