11. My finished cover, some details.

For making this cover I have used a variety of the softwares' tools and techniques. I wanted to, in this post, pin point some of the areas and what tools where used in that particular part.

This is what the project looks like in Photoshop, I have set up guides for the trim and bleed. The trim lines are what are shown in blue, marking the sections of the case: for the bleed I added 3 millimeters round each side, this is the part outside of the blue guide lines. 

As I have used so many different components it is important that I have used verbose labels for each section, this way a particular section can be selected with ease. 

This is a shot of one part of the layers area. From the labels and the thumbnail images it is clear and simple what part is what, it is imperative for ease of access and quick editing that anything made with a build up of layers is labelled like this. 

For the middle image I have lowered the opacity to 75%. I really didn't like the rigid look that had been created by all of these images being placed together and I wanted to break that up slightly. I had initially planned to border each of the images, but better judgement deemed that it would look far too noisy and unprofessional. These are all stills that relate to the content within the trailer that this accompanies, which is something that correlates with existing DVD covers within this genre. 

I have referred to my initial research at every point and have continued this as the project has moved along. Comparatively speaking, I can pick similarities in my cover and existing ones that I have tried to use the same methods as. 

As previously stated, I added the white text as an aesthetic more than anything else, but I made sure to add the commonplace logos found on a DVD cover. I noticed that the age rating is seen on all sides and made sure to incorporate this. The Tolkien logo was added as a point of consistency, as this is a theoretical piece, theoretically it has an audience that needs to be drawn in and showing a known 'franchise' logo is part of that method. 

On the cover I have added an image of flaking, painted wood. The opacity of this layer has been set to 44% and set with the Soft Light layer effect. I've used this filter as it really leaves a lasting effect on the sky, but not the architecture in the image which was the result I wanted. This is to aid the depiction of a bleak or apocalyptic world.  

I have mainly used tools such as the magnetic lasso tool, crop, move and text (vertical and horizontal) within this, the need to use any spot/patch healing has not arisen since my practice pieces.