Project 4: Montage

Description:
A spiritual poster montage using images and type.

Process:

1. I cropped the mountain image to 8.5×11.
2. I placed the mountain climber image  on top of mountain image, then I added a mask.
3. With black paint and a 100% opacity, soft-edged brush, I painted away the hard image edges.
4. With a larger black brush at different opacity levels, I blended the image into the background, so it produced a subtle contrast.
5. I then changed images to Black and White 1 and added Photo Filter 2 (a warming filter) to give a sepia tone. I also  played around with levels, vibrance, channel mixer, and selective color until I was pleased with the results.
6. I also layered background images found at www.cgtextures.com/. I chose Metal Scratches0036 as well as MarbleBeige0052 to create more of a rugged feel. I put an overlay filter on both of these images and also a mask so that I could erase the background off of important features of the images beneath.
7. I ultimately flipped the mountain image horizontally, after Bro. Pingel’s suggestion, so that I could have better flow from text to the mountain climber image. I’m glad I did it! I have found that the critique sessions from classmates, teacher, family, and friends are very valuable and I appreciate the opportunity it gives to perfect my designs.
8. I added some type with two contrasting fonts and put them on top of a rectangle with overlay filter so as to allow more legibility with the words. I wanted to emphasize each line of my text so I chose different effects, colors, and sizes to showcase that. The words “we conquer” were the most important to me so I used a drop shadow and high value in color to bring it out.
9. Programs/Tools Used: Adobe Photoshop
   

Message: I wanted to send a message that we all have the capacity in ourselves to conquer anything we set our minds to.  I wanted to visualize to my audience how empowering it is to overcome any “mountain” that comes our way (metaphorically speaking).
Audience: Anyone inspired by nature.
Colorized/Filter applied and where: I decided to add a Gaussian Blur filter on the mountain climber image.
Color scheme : Monochromatic Color Name: Black and White with Warming Filter (81)
Top thing learned: How to gradually blend two images by applying masks to images.
Font #1 Name & Category: PT Serif Caption Regular & PT Serif Regular– Serif
Font #2 Name & Category: PT Sans Caption Bold – Sans Serif

Thumbnails of Images used:

Sources (Links to images on original websites):

http://tetonclimbing.blogspot.com/2013_06_01_archive.html

http://www.conversionidigitali.it/analytics/seo-con-analytics-e-webmaster-tools.html

http://www.cgtextures.com/