Research & Planning: Photoshop CD Tutorial

My CD Cover

To create this CD cover, I followed a tutorial which allowed me to get a feel for Photoshop (although I have used it a lot before, I wanted to refresh my skills). Below is a step-by-step guide of what I did to produce it.

Step 1

I used the ellipse marquee cut out tool to cut out the CD cover (original) from the background. Then I used the move tool to put it onto another Photoshop document with a notes background.

Step 2

I went to 'Image' > 'Adjustments' > 'Gradient map'. Using this tool, I changed the colour of the CD cover from a brown to a light blue. After this, I used the transform tool to rotate the CD image and resized it to an appropriate size.

Step 3

Now I transferred the brass instrument from another Photoshop file and inserted it into my CD cover file. I then changed the layer blending format to 'Multiply' to remove the image from it's white background. I then, like I did with the CD image, used the Gradient Map tool to change the colour of the instrument from green to a brass colour.

Step 4

After I had changed the colour, I resized the image and placed it in the bottom left-hand corner and rotated it to face the CD image.

Step 5

At this stage, there was a layer entitled 'Notes' that was hidden. I enabled this layer and positioned the notes near the brass instrument. I also resized them and changed the colour of the notes using the Gradient Map feature.

Step 6

Once I was happy with the notes, I went on to add text to my CD Cover. I used the Text tool to write the name of the CD and the artists name (me). I used Helvetica Neue Italic for the first line, and Helvetica Neue Regular & Bold for the second line. I also added a drop shadow in the layer styles palette. For this I had to change various inputs to suit the 'feel' of the CD cover.

Step 7

Now I decided to apply a 'wave' filter to the background of my CD cover. For this I went to 'Menu' > 'Filters' > 'Distort' >  'Wave'. I changed some of the settings and saved my settings.

Step 8

Finally, I exported the CD Cover to the desktop in a .JPG format.