CD Case Original Images.

The 3 above images were used throughout my CD Case design. The image to the left was used as the front of my Album booklet after removing the background via cropping using the magic wand and eraser tools. I then used an overlay affect to change it to black and white to gain the final version.

The centre image I used for the 3rd inner page within the booklet. I used minimal editing on this image apart from adding a layer beneath it to add more depth via an Overlay / lower opacity value. Similarly the right image was used on the 1st inner page within the booklet and has minimal editing.

But as you can see from the 3 final products above there are numerous other layers used on top of the original pictures including textures as well as gradients. The most difficult affect I created was the 'Rays of light' using the Pen Tool in photoshop. By using the Pen Tool to create a single beam of light I then went on to duplicate the layer and use the transform tool to rotate it 20 degrees. I then repeated this step until I had 5 rays, merged the layers, duplicated and then rotated 100 degrees. Then by using this 'Ray of light' as an overlay over a gradient I was able to create the affect you see in the left image above.

The beautiful thing about the rays I created above is that I could stretch them to huge lengths to gain different thickness of rays from the same original image. However as previously mentioned I also used numerous images as back layers to add depth via a mix of gradients and changing the opacity setting.