Tag Archives: layer masks

Understanding Integrated Marketing Communication by creating my own web ad

Posted on by vgrunewald

Disclaimer: This blog and its author are not affiliated with Epicurious in any way. Designs featuring their likeness are for educational use only. 

This week, we discussed integrated marketing communication (IMC), a brand’s development and execution of a cohesive multi-channel identity campaign that immerses the target consumer in a consistent experience every time they encounter the brand. In this week’s assignment, I am highlighting the new visual IMC campaign launched this week by Epicurious, a recipe website owned by Condé Nast.

I really like using Epicurious to help find new recipes and I always enjoy the expert cooking tips they provide for those trickier dishes. Their previous website was pretty cluttered, a little bit too much for the user to focus on at one time. This week, Epicurious relaunched their entire brand, including a new, better website, promoting it across multiple platforms including social media and magazine advertising. Instead of just being a recipe website, Epicurious wants to be known as a “food utility” — an invaluable tool for home cooks to not only find new recipes, but to be inspired to push themselves to try even more.

Logos

Epicurious’s visual IMC campaign features this message and refreshed new logo. For consistency purposes, the brand chose to keep with their same color palette of red and white. Not only did they post a detailed article on their rebranding on their website, Epicurious also posted the announcement and new logo to their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages. 

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Screen Shot 2015-02-06 at 10.03.00 AMScreen Shot 2015-02-06 at 10.03.31 AM

The inspiration for my own Epicurious web advertisement came from a print ad they placed in Glamour magazine and a promotional video they created for the rebrand posted to their social media.

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Full-page ad in February 2015 Glamour magazine

 

Post by Epicurious.

 

In my own web advertisement, I wanted to play off the branded message that Epicurious is more than just a recipe website, they are a valuable all-in-one resource – a “food utility.” When I thought of the word ‘utility,’ I thought of another all-in-one tool, a swiss army knife. This image became the basis of my design.

I started with a red background, sampled with the eye dropper from the Epicurious logo. To make my version of a swiss army knife, I created the custom shape in Illustrator for the handle. I then copied this shape into Photoshop. For its tools, I used a free cooking themed set of wingdings called Cocinitas (from dafont.com). I placed each cooking icon on its own layer and rotated and resized accordingly. I also converted each letter layer into a shape layer so they could be resized without having to adjust font size. Because I could not find a good high-resolution image of the Epicurious “epi” logo, I traced it in Illustrator before placing it into Photoshop. I then added two circles to form the handle screws. I selected all of the layers involved in the swiss army knife and linked the layers so I can resize them all at the same time. Finally, I added drop shadows to the handle and tools to add depth. I kept the shapes white, to keep consistent with the print ad.

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Free wingdings from Dafont.com

I then began to place the text. For the top message (“Introducing the first ever FOOD UTILITY”) I used Helvetica, the same font used in the original ad, in order to keep visual consistency. I took the bottom slogan (“Get Inspired. #NewEpi”) from their video. I was also able to use the same typography here, Helvetica and a free font, Southpaw, from dafont.com.

For the footer text, the full Epicurious logo, I found a larger image that I placed into Photoshop, however I had to select the background of this logo with the magic wand tool and discard it since the color did not exactly match my existing background. I then tried to clean up the white lettering of the logo by using the Sharpen Filter, and by using the paint bucket tool to fill in the lettering with more white. For all of the actual text in my advertisement, I added a slight Outer Glow effect so it appeared brighter against the red background.

Finally, I wanted to add some texture to the background. I started with a high resolution wood background image from Flickr and placed this behind my red background. I then added a layer mask to the red background layer and shaded in grey so to appear opaque, revealing the texture of the wood below.

Backgrounds

Background images used

To make the footer appear more interesting, I added another layer between the red and wood backgrounds with an image of berries (from Flickr) and added a mask with a black/white gradient so the berries would appear to fade into the wood. To improve the blending of the wood and the berries, I applied a Desaturate style to the berry layer and adjusted the opacity of the mask on the red background where the berries show through.

By keeping the messaging, color scheme, typography and general design consistent, I believe my advertisement would fit in well with the current Epicurious integrated marketing campaign. In my opinion, it may even better illustrate the message that their website is meant to be an invaluable tool to all home cooks, not just another recipe website.

Grunewald_DesignShowcase5

Using Photoshop adjustment layers to manipulate color & tone

Posted on by vgrunewald

This week, we learned about various Photoshop tools as well as how to use adjustment layers and layer masks to edit parts or all of an image without making permanent changes to the original.

From the photos provided by my instructor, I chose an image of a woman’s arm and hand holding a wedding bouquet. I decided to think of this project as preparing an image for a high-end wedding magazine editorial piece, similar to those in the annual Vogue wedding issue. I searched online for photo inspiration and found that many of these glossy wedding photos have a cooler tone, with the models skin taking on a “porcelain doll” effect:

Inspirational Vogue wedding photos

In my original photo (see below), the woman’s skin appears very warm in color, and the bouquet, the focal point of the photo, is too dull to compete with the bright white of the wedding dress behind it.Before I tried to replicate the lighting and color tone of the inspirational photos I found, I watched this Photoshop tutorial on adjustment layers in order to refresh myself on how each of them work.

Original instructor-provided image

Original instructor-provided image

To begin editing my photo, I used the clone stamp tool and duplicated some of the flowers in a separate transparent layer above the original image in order to double the size of the bouquet. I cleaned up the edges of the cloned portion with the eraser tool, creating one cohesive bouquet. I then merged those two layers into one titled “Base Image”, however I kept an original version of the image and original clone layer, grouped in my layers panel, turned off, just in case.

I essentially split my image into three different layer masks using adjustment layers:

Mask #1: Bouquet Adjustments: 

  • Vibrance layer:  I masked off everything except the bouquet itself. I turned the vibrance up a little bit to get the flowers to “pop” without appearing too fake.
  • Selective Color layer: I created this layer as a clipping mask to the Vibrance layer/masked image below it. Adjusted the Greens in the image, turned down the Yellow in the image so the leaves appeared a deep green in color.
  • Brightness/Contrast layer: Bumped the brightness up just a few points to improve the overall vibrancy. Created as clipping mask to the layer below.
  • Hue/Saturation layer: Increased saturation +30 points to finish off the bouquet. Created as clipping mask to the layer below.
  • I used the dodge tool to lighten the shadows on the far left pink roses and the sharpen tool to bring out more of the details in the inner rose petals.

Mask #2: Outside Bouquet Adjustments: 

  • Vibrance layer: I used Cmd+I (on a Mac) to invert my layer mask so that I could make adjustments to everything outside of the bouquet without having to create a new mask from scratch. I turned the vibrancy all the way down to zero. This drained the colors so the bouquet’s vibrancy became starker in comparison.
  • Selective Color layer: In order to cool off the overall tone of the background and woman, I adjusted the Whites, Neutrals, and Blacks in this layer, experimenting a lot, but typically increasing Cyan and Black. With the Neutrals, I decreased black in order to allow some of the peachy skin tone to remain. This adjustment layer added just a hint of a blue tint to the photo. I created this layer as a clipping mask to the Vibrance layer/masked image below.
  • Curves layer: I used Curves for further tone adjustments, bowing the graph’s curve down just slightly to further deepen the blue tine of the shadows in the photo. This effect created an even starker difference between the bright bouquet and the rest of the photo. Created as a clipping mask to the layer below.
  • I used the sharpen tool to bring out more detail in the pearl bracelet.

Mask #3: Skin Adjustments:

  • Selective Color layer: On top of the changes made to everything outside of the bouquet, I created a layer mask for just the woman’s arm in order to further adjust her skin tone to complete the “porcelain doll ” effect — skin that appears cool to the touch and whiter in tone. I adjusted the Whites, turning the Black down to -100, decreasing Magenta a few points to remove more of the pinker skin hues, and bumping up the Cyan to cool the tone until it was the appearance I desired. I also toned the Neutrals very slightly, turning Black down about 15 points.

With all of these adjustment layers turned on, the resulting effect is one I believe makes a solid attempt to mimic the look and feel of a wedding magazine editorial photo, perhaps accompanying an article about wedding bouquet trends.

My final edited image

My final edited image

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the original photograph (left) and my edited version (right):

Side by side comparison of original photo and my edited version

As part of my assignment, I also added a Black/White adjustment layer on top of all of my layers, turning down the opacity to 50%. When this layer is turned on, the effect on the image is almost that of a vintage color photograph, with a slight antique coloration to the flowers in the bouquet.

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Black/White adjustment layer engaged at 50% opacity

Previous to this project, I did not often use adjustment layers in my personal Photoshop projects, however now that I know how to use them, I believe implementing them (instead of the Image –> Adjustments menu options) promotes much more creativity and experimentation, without the fear of having to start over with the original image file. In my experience, it’s the vast number of opportunities for experimentation in Photoshop that makes image editing so much fun!