Art Design Project - Photoshop CS2 or Other? - Mac-Forums.com

02-25-2006, 04:13 PM

Hello. Im starting my 6th Form/Senior Art Project and needsome guidance. My theme is 'Gothic' and I have chosen to re-design a DVD cover, possibly for 'The House of Wax' - or something in that genre. I have a few designs on paper, but now I am lost on how to recreate these on my Mac for that 'digital' look. I have used Photoshop CS2 for quite a while to manipulate images from the web, or from my Camera - but I don't know how to start from scratch to 'build' an image, on Photoshop... or if its even Photoshop I should be using? I would appreciate anyones help on the above ASAP as I have about a week to get the design from paper and complete a 'digital' version that I can print out.

Basically I need to know:

1.What Application I need to create an image/graphic from scratch

2. If its Photoshop I can use (Already installed); what steps do I take to create the 'Photoshopped' / 'Studio' look - like on the movie posters - glossy, relativley high graphics.

Thanks very much (In advance!)

surfwax95 · 02-25-2006, 04:37 PM

1. Photoshop
2. Get the image you want to manipulate. Then follow these tutorials:

How to make ghastly skin appearance.
How to get that "hand-drawn" look.
Making creepy '40's style images.
Creating Realistic Fog.
High Contrast Images.

These are just a few that I thought applied to your theme, but there are tons more. Here are the sights that I pulled these links from:

Spoono Tutorials
Good Tutorials
Photoshop Planet
Phong

If you're at least at an Intermediate level of skill in Photoshop, you'll be able to pull all of these off with no problem. :mac:

02-25-2006, 04:47 PM

SurfWax - thanks for your reply. Great ideas - however, I need to build an image first (background, 2 or 3 shapes within the image, some lighting effects, and then foreground and background text). How do I go about doing this? I am not simply manipulating an existing image. Thanks very much for your reply, and I look forward to hearing from you.

:teen:

D3v1L80Y · 02-25-2006, 05:09 PM

If you are looking to create an image from scratch, you may find that Illustrator is a tad bit easier to use for this. If you have the CS2 suite, just use Illustrator. If you are not sure how to do this, there is a plethora of tutorials on the web for Illustrator and Photoshop.

02-25-2006, 05:12 PM

I have CS2... but I can only find Photoshop and ImageReady?

D3v1L80Y · 02-25-2006, 05:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by josh.thomas

I have CS2... but I can only find Photoshop and ImageReady?

Then you don't have the CS2 suite. The suite has pretty much all of the Adobe apps... Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, Acrobat and InDesign.
It sounds like you only have Photoshop, so you can still render things from scratch, it just isn't as convenient as it is in Illustrator.
Check out some of those tute sites and you will find something for sure.

PunkRockTuba · 02-25-2006, 06:42 PM

If you want to do something from scratch you need to take your ideas that are on paper and start putting them into photoshop. Find some fonts you want to use and just start making something. There worst thing you can do is experiment on the computer, sketch a bunch of things on paper and when you are finally happy, put that on the computer. There is no trick to designing, you just have to start simple and go from there.

D3v1L80Y · 02-25-2006, 07:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PunkRockTuba

.... sketch a bunch of things on paper and when you are finally happy, put that on the computer.

I could not have said it better. Too many people forget about the whole conceptual creation end of designing something. You don't just start out on the computer, you have to actually put the time into your rough sketches first. And for that, all you need is a good old pencil and paper.