Deconstruction

I chose to research my own design rather than following the other designs that were provided to me. I wanted mine to be different. For this I decided to develop more of my skills with the tools on photoshop that I hadn’t really used before, this being the ‘clipping mask tool’. I followed a step by step guide online which showed me how to create the design below. The first image is what my design turned out like and the bottom image is the inspiration image I followed.

The first step required me to open a new document and ensure that it was a square shape so that the design would work better when creating the squares.

Step 2 showed me exactly how to create each square; this was to use the rectangle tool and then drag it out to a reasonable size so that all of the other squares would fit. I didn’t want to set my colours to black because I preferred it to be a grey colour instead. Once doing this exact step for each square I needed to make sure there were 5 squares along and 5 squares down, however in the end I chose to crop mine so that it matched up with the size of my image.I learnt how to create a new group and duplicate my layers to then include them all in the group I made.

I

named the group ‘squares’ because

this is what I was going to be putting in that group. To create this I found an icon at the bottom of the layer panel called ‘create a group’.

My next step was to actually include an image of my own so that it completes my finished piece. I needed to ensure this was layered over the top of the group of squares. Once this was done I had to actually make the image look like it was in the boxes, to do this I needed to use the clipping mask took. I needed to click on the layer of the model and right click the layer, this then gave me the option to select the clipping mask tool. Once I had done this it came up with a small arrow on the left hand side to show that I had selected the clipping mask tool.

This was the arrow that appeared beside the layer.

The original clipping mask design that I used for inspiration could have also been created on Photoshop. The reasoning for this is because the steps were provided to me looked as though they were steps that were created for their design.

This was the design I was following and it shows me exactly how they made it. This was created on Photoshop, exactly like mine was. The price of Photoshop, depending on the prices of the packages, is usually around £100. A Mac computer was also most probably used, the cost of a Mac is from £1000 onwards.

In comparison to my piece I would say that they are very similar, this shows that I am able to follow instructions and complete a design to a high quality. I chose to also have mine in black and white because it went with the colour of the boxes, this being grey. I chose to crop mine because I didn’t want all of the empty space, I wanted it to be more focussed on the model, and therefore I cropped it.

I didn’t create any more designs for this brief, this was the only one I created, and therefore this is my best piece. I like the image that I used because it was

from a previous shoot I had done in photography. It overall suits what I wanted to achieve for this design.

The brief that I was required to follow consisted of me having to learn how to use the clipping mask tool and being able to create something out of using it. The final outcome showed what I had achieved out of creating this, I was able to use tools required of me in the steps I initially followed.

The advantages of this design was that it wasn’t very time consuming like my other designs were, I was able to get it done fairly quickly. Another advantage was that it looks really effective because the image is in each of the boxes.A disadvantage would be that some of the steps that I went through to create this weren’t very straightforward. I struggled to understand at first where the clipping mask tool was, it didn’t explain very clearly how to create the arrow next to the layer and this took up some of my time as I was trying to figure it out.