Magazine Cover

My magazine cover is finished, and I'm very happy with how it turned out. I based my design off of Architectural Digest, a magazine focusing on architecture and interior design.

My biggest difficulty was matching the lighting and coloring of the background photo and myself. I went through several steps to correct and match the two layers so they blended together nicely. First, I had to take myself out of the original image. I used Photoshop (of course) and the lasso tool to create a nice, detailed selection of myself to place in the house background.

My original photo was 8 megapixels (8 million pixels) total, so it was plenty for an 8.5 x 11 inch magazine cover spread. Although I originally planned on using my entire body in the picture, I ended up only using part of my legs so I could fill up more space on the cover.

I placed myself in the photo and went to Bridge to edit colors. My first edit was not good enough, as I was too bright compared to the image behind me.

I went back to Photoshop and re-edited the coloration, adding some of the green from the grass onto myself.

Going back to Bridge yet again, I brightened the colors to my liking, however, I realized that I had put too much green into my layer. It's very apparent if you compare the color of my pants to my final edit.

Back in Photoshop, I took some of the green out, being careful to still leave enough to blend into the background image.

I adjusted the colors back in Bridge for my final edit, and added a slight red tint to blend myself into the background even further. 

Although I was at first unsatisfied with the color correction in both Bridge and Photoshop, I kept making minor adjustments in lighting and tinting to blend myself into the image. I am very satisfied with my final edit and my final cover design.