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Beginner's first PS image, looking for criticism


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Y3k-Bug

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Heya everyone...

Just bought Photoshop CS yesterday, and was tooling around with it randomly, it being my first forray into photo editing. First thing I wanted to do was come up with an ad for the Hitman: Agent 47 series, as I always had a concept of a page ad in my head.

Anyway, I'm just looking for you guys to let me know all the mistakes you see in it, or any improvements that could be made to improve the design I have going. I know there are definately some alignment issues, especially with the borders, and with the barcode. Speaking of borders, whats the easiest way to go about drawing them? I just used the rectangle tool, is that the best way?

Also, I was looking at his suit jacket, any tips on how to clear up those stray white pixels over the black barcode?

Finally, is there a trick I could use to make the image more 3 dimensional, so that the barcode looks like its slightly off into the distance? I was thinking maybe a very slight blur?

Thanks for any help guys!
 
That's a neat image Y3k-Bug.

I can tell by your handle that you are a forward thinking person... you can't be too prepared, I always say. :bustagut:

Mistakes? No mistakes there. Nice selection of the thug (or is it a good guy I'm not up on which is which ;) ) I like your idea of blurring the bar code to make it recede into the distance. You might wish to play with the new blur filter, Filter > Blur > Lens Blur...

To make a nice, simple border just use Control (Command) A to Select All. Make a new layer in the layers palette on top of everything else (so the result is easily editable) and use Edit > Stroke... Pick your color and width and there you go.

Cheers!
 
Here's a couple things you can try:
For the white pixels between the jacket and the bar code, very careful erasing will certainly work. You can also take a shot (assuming the person is on its own layer), of control clikcing on the layer icon in the layers palette to make a selection of the person. Then go to Select>Modify>Contract, enter 1 pixel and hit OK. Then inverse your selection (ctrl-shift-I), and hit delete. This should clear up the halo effect you have going (you can also selectively erase instead of pressing delete to concentrate on the jacket area). A little touch up with the blur tool if necessary and you should be good.
For some added perspective you could try to add a perspective shadow. I find it best to to do this manually. Control click on the person layer just like you did above. Then create a new layer, move it beneath the person and (making sure your new layer is selected) fill the selection with black. Deselect everything and run a Gaussian blur (play with the settings to suit your taste). Then press control-T (or go to Edit-Free Transform). Now you have a handle box around the shadow shape. Dragging the side handles allows you to stretch the shape. To distort the shape to give it perspective, press the control key (then keep holding it), THEN click on a corner handle--being careful not to let go of the control key-- and drag (if all that does is scale the box you're letting go of the control key too early-it's tricky!!).
Play with that until it looks like the shadow is stretching off in the distance. You can then adjust the opacity in the layer palette to your preference.
The only weird part about doing that is that the bar code is presumably on a vertical wall, so you don't want to skew the shadow too much. On the other hand, you could have it look like the shadow is going through the bar code (i.e., the only thing standing in front of him are the actual bars)-or you could get really bold and use the same technique to make the bar code itself stretch off into the distance (as if it were the floor).
One last thing-if the bar code text is too clunky for you (and you may want that effect-in which case never mind), you could erase and reset the type so it's cleaner.
Hope that wasn't too much to throw at you!
Have fun :D :D :D
 
Hi very clever design. Only suggestion to add to the comments made by our members: try to put a slight glow around bar man to separate him from the bar code and also give you more dimension (also allow us to see his left ear). I'm would be interested to see if blurring the barcode gets you there 'cause I sorta like the barcode strong.

Thoughts aside from comments above: I think putting his back to the viewer is an imaginative approach :} however, I'm not into games maybe it's a common practice.
 
Thanks for the great comments guys! Really makes learning this program more fun and worthwhile :righton: .

Joy: I was thinking about blurring the barcode, and came to the same conclusion as well; blurring the code takes away from the power of the image, and doesn't really convey the theme of the game very well for someone who doesn't know what it's about, so I'm going to do 2 revisions, one with your suggestions, and one with tfoster's to get some needed perspective in there.
 
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