Project Page 5
Only a Cup of Tea
This book cover is defiantly a historical romance. The color scheme of this book is purple and white. There is black text but that is so that it is nicely contrasted with the rest of the cover. I like it when my text is popping out because of the color instead of the layer styles that I need to put on. The way do this is by thinking about the color scheme, contrast, and placement. I ask myself how the text flow with the picture and how I can enhance it with out the layer styles (shadows, strokes, among other things). If I use layer styles I ask myself ‘how does it help the overall balance of the project?’. For the text I wanted to frame the title. That is what I did in illustrator. I used the shape tool to make the oval and put a strong, slightly wavy stroke on it. Then I used the same tool to make circles on ether side of it. Once this was done I put the words onto it and placed this in Photoshop. I made sure that the whole thing was nicely framed inside the document.
The ideal of Only a Cup of Tea that I wanted to create was a sassy young lady playing her part in the historical past. But who is to say she has to stay in the line that society had developed? Maybe she had a secret life that no one but herself knew and a romance that she never though she could have. A dark purple as the background sets the stage for a romance book with a dab of mischief. A duplicate of the photo and a blending mode of Multiply also darkens herself and makes her shadows more bold as well as adding a Gradient layer and a black Solid Color set to the blending mode to Soft Light to complete the look.
The trouble that I was having was getting her hair to look less purple and more like it’s natural red. But I used two adjustment layers to fix this: Hue/Saturation and Color Balance. For the Hue/Saturation I made sure that I put the saturation up to 22% and the Hue to 3%. This made sure that the red was bolder then before. The Color Balance adjustment layer all I needed to do was play around with the sliders to make the red noticeable and less purple.
