Digipak Front Cover Development

To edit my photos I used a website called 'Pixlr Express'. I chose this website because it has a vast range of editing tools, and I'm familiar with it because I have used it in the past. Firstly, I cropped the picture so the size was that of a CD case.

After cropping, I changed the brightness and the contrast of the picture. This allows for her to be seen easier, with the ambient lighting in a better shade. With the contrast, it highlights the darker sections of the image - such as her eyeliner.

I then changed the saturation to the lowest setting - this means no colour, only monochrome. This is because I have a monochrome theme running through all the advertisements for this album, and so the album cover synergises with the rest of the digipak and the magazine advert. 

I then used the brightening effect to whiten her teeth and make her eyes stand out on the cover. This will have a positive effect because then something stands out on the page, and without the use of colour this is quite difficult to achieve and still look professional. Lastly, I enhanced the brightness again, because it still seemed dark overall.

I then saved my edited image and started making it look like the cover of a digipak.

I used this image of a sketched tiara, and removed the background using Microsoft Office Power Point to do so. This meant that I could place it onto an image without having the square, white background on it as well. 

I also twisted the tiara on her head so it looked slanted, giving the image an imperfect look. The crown suggests royalty - in the music industry perhaps? With the crown being tilted and her body posture it suggests that her efforts to make her music royalty were easy, and she did it effortlessly. I have also incorporated a white border, to make room on the CD cover for the wings. 

These are the wings that I used for my album cover. I liked how one wing was more folded in than the other - that they weren't symmetrical - and I felt that this would help it to stand out, and although it is obviously not real it may look more natural in the way that it's placed. But when I placed them on the image, it took attention away from the artist herself, so I had to change the effect on the wings.

The effect that I chose was labelled 'Tan' and I think that this works better on the album cover because: 

- It doesn't steal attention from the artist anymore

- It doesn't stand out as the first thing that the audience sees on the cover

- It looks more angelic, with the wings being closer to white than black

And because of these reasons I decided to keep this effect on the wings. 

I sized the wings according to the size of a regular CD case. This meant the the wings had to be slightly smaller than that of the original image, but in hindsight I believe that it works. The wings are large enough to be significantly noticed, but not large or bold enough to take attention from the artist. The tiara then stands out on her head more, and doesn't blend into the lightness of her hair or the size of the wings. 

The last thing I had to incorporate was the artist's name and the album title - Fringe; Conversion. 

This is the finished digipak cover. I chose the font 'Chapparal Pro' because it looked sleak and professional, and the font allowed the writing to be seen without being in bold or in black. As a finished product, I believe the outcome is stylish and current, and will catch the eyes of my target audience members as they browse the shops. The artist's name 'Fringe' is unusual, and different, and 'Conversion' implies power. These decisions that I made are all to promote authority and effortlessness in the digipak cover, and I believe that that has come across well.