Skills I have Learnt while Designing my Front Cover of my Magazine

I have learnt new and various techniques by experimenting with Photoshop while designing my front cover.

I started off with my image which I proportioned and moved to a suitable and eye catching place, which I learnt to do when I had a tutorial of Photoshop. I then adjusted settings like the sharpness, brightness, contrast, hue and saturation to achieve a professional quality image. 

This is my original image, there has been no editing to it or cropping.

This is my edited image. I have brightened the picture to make the picture to make it stand out more, I have increased the saturation so the colours are more definite and are more striking. I also increased the sharpness so my model would look more definite and separate from the white backdrop. I also adjusted the contrast and the brightness so then my picture would look more defined.

I then added my coverlines, mastheads and slugs, these were edited on by using cooltext.com and then copying and pasting into Microsoft Word, cropping off the pieces I didn't want and then copying them into Photoshop then arranging them according to my flat plan and what looks appealing to the eye.

I have added the cover lines in the house font style which is reversed out, I  tilted the mast head to give the magazine a more relaxed tone. There is only one cover line as I feel that if I used too many cover lines then the whole magazine would be cluttered and look untidy. I also added a bar code by making the white transparent but I placed this out in the corner so it was on its own and not very noticeable.

I found that due to the lack of cover lines there was a huge white space to the right of the cover. Although this is the side of the magazine that wouldn't be seen when presented in a shop it still made the cover look empty. I resolved this by moving the image to the right.
 

I have moved the picture to the right, this has given me my completed magazine cover. I decided not to use  a  lot of grabbing techniques or cover lines as this clutters the cover page and I think that less is more and would appeal to the audience more. When I do my contents page I will include more information of what's in the magazine but I will obtain the 'less is more' tone.