Getting the "Vs" Right - Hue & Saturation Layers

One thing I was not too sure how I was going to accomplish was a highly stylised Vs symbol to put between the main Doom and Duke Logo's on the front cover and the spine. I wanted it to be yellow ideally to match the Doom and Duke Nukem logo's and for it to look like it had been spray painted or painted on in a kind of graffiti style.

I thought I would just do a quick search for internet images and put in Vs in an image search in Google. Surprisingly on the top row of images there was one that looked to have been created in Adobe (given the transparent background) and looked perfect, albeit very black!

The image can be found here:

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11111/111115653/3259336-9554170141-Vs.pn.png

The next job for me was to cut around it and put it onto the template. Unsurprisingly I suppose by now I utilised the magnetic lasso tool to trace round the shape. Given the massive disparity between the black of the lettering and the background the tool was especially adept at picking up all the edges very nicely. I didn't even feel the need to refine the edge again this time as it did so good a job.

Next I had to try to figure out how to make something that is currently black yellow. Google search came through again.

A helpful article here gave me the basics as to how to use a Hue / Saturation layer to change the colours.

http://objectmix.com/adobe-photoshop/232676-change-black-yellow.html [accessed 13:10 09/03/14]

It involved selecting the Vs layer and then adding a Hue Saturation layer above it. Once I had done this I needed to check the colorize option and then drag the slider for Hue to yellow. Once I had done this I needed to increase the saturation and lightness to taste. In this case I had Hue at 55, Saturation at 88 and Lightness at +55 .

This then left me with this.

 

I was pretty happy with this and went to move it into the dvd template. At which point it left behind my saturation layer and just transferred it as a black image. 

At least I knew the theory now so I figured that it would be easy to change this again in the main image so I went ahead and resized the Vs sign on it's own layer and added a Hue Saturation layer above it. 

As soon as I started to change things I immediately noticed that all the colours on the DVD inlay were being changed which was rather worrying. Everybody now looked very pink and purple! I undid those changes and then set out via Google to figure out how I just made the hue / saturation layer affect only the very layer beneath it. 

Luckily the answer was pretty simple and I found a helpful forum post which explained it.

http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/2677/how-to-make-an-adjustment-layer-to-affect-only-one-layer-or-one-group-of-layers [accessed 13:15 09/03/14]

There is an icon you can use to clip the adjustment layer and whilst the one in the article was using an older version of Photoshop the icon at the bottom left of the hue/ saturation table still looked the same. Clicking this twice allowed me to then start adjusting the colours for just the Vs. 

It was when I had the yellow up that I noticed that the Vs really didn't stand out at all. So I started playing around with different options and red was one of the first I tried and it looked so much better to me. I settled on it pretty quickly and then it was just a case of duplicating it for the smaller Vs needed on the spine. 

I'm really happy with the way it turned out in the end. 

 

I think it looks much better than I originally thought it would and it really stands out on the spine. 

I'm thinking at this point I might just put the PC DVD Rom above the BBFC cert on the spine and have it in white. That shouldn't be too intrusive but I will see how it looks. 

I also plan on using a vivid red for the writing on the back cover which I think will still be legible over the vivid image of the demon in fire. Hopefully it will look as good as I hope it will!