Star Effect Process for Digipak

 I have experimented using a sparkle effect in the corner of the back page for my digipak, if it proves successful I might introduce this feature continuously throughout my album. This unique element ensures the audience can understand the pop and contemporary aspect of the genre, not just country. I did not have any idea on how to create this effect so researched the process on Google and found the following website: 

 http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/sparkle/ 

 

I have taken print screen shots from the process of experimenting this technique. When following through with the process I was unsure as to the outcome therefore couldn't predict the most suitable size or opacity of the brush stroke for my image. If I use this technique it will have a much improved quality finish from my practice run.

First of all I had click several areas on a plain white page where I wanted to position the stars using the different advised brush strokes to use by the website. This involved the stroke numbers 70, 17 and 50 however there was many other star featured options to choose from. 

The second stage involved saving the star brush I had created as "sparkle" allowing me to recover the created format when opening image. 

Then I had to change all of the formats of the brush stroke that the website advised me, this included shape dynamics, scattering, size jitter and spacing. This was the challenging part of the task as it was difficult to locate the different options I needed to change. 

Finally I was able to actually use the brush tool and place the stars on my image where i felt they was most suitable. At this point I felt the stars appeared quite bland and more emphasis needed to be placed on them to make them appear sparkly. 

The website then instructed me to use the Gaussian blur tool, which I am already familiar with from softening the appearance of models during my AS foundation course. I changed the radius to 7.0 pixels instead of 5.0 as it made the stars stand out more. 

Finally I used layer style, outer glow to give the sparkles a glowing effect to further emphasise their appearance on the page. I chose the position of these stars to follow over the models boots so the white stands out against the brown boots. 

THE OVERALL IMAGE AFTER INCORPORATING THE STARS ONTO THE PAGE