Digipak progress 4

I'm trying different ideas that I had initially sketched out but they don't really live up to my expectations and so I've abandoned them and have moved on to other ideas. Some got further than others before I realised that I wanted to do something different, and as I spend more time on the digipak I find it harder to pin down an idea that I want to use as my final front cover. The whole process is also made more difficult by the fact that I'm still a relative beginner to photoshop as I had only used it briefly at GCSE and even then only used basic functions on it. A lot of time is being spent on looking up tutorials and getting familiar with the tools, but I've found some good step-by-step guides that will hopefully help me later on.

This was my first idea, and an idea that I sketched as part of my digipak plan. I used the quick selection tool to remove the background and replace it with several layers of different images of the sky. I then used the opacity tool to fade the sun into the image behind it and brightened the image using the hue/saturation tool. I also added a lens flare to make the brightness of the sun more realistic. I was going to have text on the tree in a 'carved' style to make it look like they had been chipped into the wood, but I abandoned this idea before I reached that stage.

A lot of the time I would create different layers and edit the colours of one without changing the other. This would give a surreal effect and incorporate the colourful theme that I wanted to have throughout all 3 of my products

Before I knew how to do the double exposure effect, I created another layer and reduced the opacity so that a background layer (a skyline) could be seen. Editing the colours of the image also allowed the background layer to come through. While I wasn't completely happy with this version, I knew the direction I wanted to go and what image I would use.