Thanks to all who took the time to participate in our last 'Poison Pen' challenge. There were some great ideas and images.
This week we have something different, thanks to an idea suggested a couple of weeks ago by @Trevor.Dennis . Growing up, I always liked buying record albums and I loved the cover art that contained the record, sometimes as much, and occasionaly more, than the record itself! There were iconic images such as Hipgnosis' graphical prism on Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon', or Richard Corben's fantastic graveyard bike on Meatloaf's 'Bat out of Hell', and who can forget Peter Blake and Jann Haworth's cover for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
So the challenge for this week is to think of an album you liked and come up with your own cover design for it. There is no real starter image but I have attached a simple grey square 2500 x 2500 pixels in sRGB to use as a format.
When you post your response can you add just a few words on what the album is and how you went about it. It may help others see the potential of different approaches, software, and tools to such a challenge.
The “rules”:
- Anything goes, as long as it meets the forum rules on decency, copyright, etc.
- Anyone, and everyone, is welcome to have a go, whether you are a complete beginner or a Photoshop expert. This is not just for our forum “regulars”.
- The challenge is not limited to Photoshop. Any Adobe software can be used.
- There are no prizes apart from the chance to practice, show off your skills, or bring a bit of humor and fun. Don't be shy, join in and have a go!
When posting back your image — please use the blue reply button in this first post and use the 'Insert Photos' icon at the top of the reply box. If posting a comment on someone else’s entry, then please use the grey reply button next to their image post.
Have fun!
Dave
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NIN's classic album. Had to not-too-painstakingly paint in some of the stains and the wires. (I used ArtRage Vitae for this part, as I love its painting tools.) Rest is background textures of my own making. (Which also added some stains not on the original album cover. Might look a bit overkill, but meh. I like dirty.) Had to transform the "N's" on the type and flip them horizontally to match the original album's design. Added the gradient at the bottom for some flare (which also isn't in the original).
I just remembered doing this one for the windmill SFTW. AFAIR the original does not look like this, so this is more inspired by the Gorillaz Feel Good video. I made the island, added Dave's windmill, and the trees look very much like Photoshop > Render > Tree. I don't think there was any water in the original, so that was probably my idea. That was done with Flaming Pear's Flood 2. This is slightly different the one in the Windmill thread, as I noticed that I'd missed the small propeller at the back, so I have just added that.
When I had the idea for this thread, I'd just made the Dark Side cover, just for the love of it, and it was that sort of graphic illustration I had in mind. That's as opposed to some of the more organic uploads we've had, because they are harder to do. This is King Crimson's Larks Tongues in Aspic, and when I looked at the cover I thought of the new star tool and if there was a way to make the rays curve like this. If there is, I couldn't think of it, and this has 27 spikes and the new tool only goes to 20. So it was back to Step & Repeat. The faces are mostly stroked paths because I am not flash at free-hand, and it was mostly done using the original as a template. So not hard, but it did turn out to take a couple of hours and was a lot of fun.
And I couldn't resist making a copy of the album “Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace”...
It's not their best album (in my opinion), but it's one of my favorite covers...
Bomb tail created with Firefly, amplifier lamp from Adobe Stock...
Going off topic here, but after watching Jesus Rameriz latest upload on his Photoshop Traning Channel about the new Generative Fill and Firefly partner models, I decided it was time to use some of those CE credits that were otherwise going to waste. I used Nano Banana to expand my Dave Head. Put him in Sunderland FC strip, and expand the canvas to 1920 x 1080.
I used that as the first frame in Firefly image to video, and bopught the resulting back into Photoshop. Using Export > Save for Web produced a 43mb GIF, and the forum has a 10mb limit. The action is all in the centre so I cropped out the unused area, downsized to 600 pixels high. That was still 12mb so I had to reduce colours to 64 and it was down to 9mb.
This was the first time I tried this, and I hit generate before selecting the model. So it used the defualt when I think I was supposed to use Vio 3. It has stuffed up his mouth, but I really should have tried to do a better job of that smile, and maybe Vio 3 would have worked better. It used 800 credits, and I have 4090/4100 left. I bet most of us are wasting them.
The prompt was 'Have the man perform tricks with a football. He should bounce the ball on his head and feet.'
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