Radial Photoshop Designs
Sample Design
You are going to be creating a sophisticated, somewhat complex radial design based on copyright free illustrations or prints. You will be adjusting colors and organizing layers to complete this design and ensure a unified, fantastic looking end product. Here are the steps:
Step 1
You will have to select a visual theme and images that go with it. In the sample provided above I focused on famous images by Ernst Haeckel- specifically underwater creatures and plants. Check out these sites to browse for inspiration and save any images you might want to use. Make sure they are large and high quality. Your images need unity so that means don't mix delicate hand-drawn images with bold graphic designs. Photos will not work for this. Look for painting, illustration, graphic design, etc.
The Met Collection
Smithsonian Open Access
Picture Box Blue
Old Book Illustrations
Biodiversity Library
Raw Pixel- Public Domain
Free Vintage Illustrations
New York Public Library Digital Collection
The British Museum Collection
My example above used 12 different images. You should have at least 8. Make sure that each image is a decent size and cut it out perfectly so the illustration is by itself with no background (should have the grey and white checks behind it). You need to site your image sources. I want to make sure they are legal and of good quality :)
For the rest of my examples I'm using a fish theme. I liked the look of these guys so I saved them to my drive and then cut out one of the fish in photoshop and saved it. I then found 8 other fish, sea creatures and plants, cut them out and saved them.
Color
You must select your color scheme before arranging your design. It is very challenging to change the colors afterwards because you will have so many layers.
You will have to select an overall color scheme to give your design some cohesiveness. This doesn't mean that these are the absolute only colors you can use, but they should be the most dominant base colors that used throughout your design. To help you select some colors check out the Adobe Color Website here:
https://color.adobe.com/create
I used a triadic color scheme for my fish example, plus some neutrals. I had to select each area of the fish and alter the hue so that it worked. You have to do this prior to duplicating your layers. Otherwise it would take a million years to individually change all the colors.
https://color.adobe.com/create
I used a triadic color scheme for my fish example, plus some neutrals. I had to select each area of the fish and alter the hue so that it worked. You have to do this prior to duplicating your layers. Otherwise it would take a million years to individually change all the colors.
Triadic Color Scheme
Here is me selecting the various parts of the fish and adjusting the hue to match my color scheme. Just use your eye for this. You don't need the exact codes.
*GET APPROVAL FOR YOUR 8 COLORED AND EDITED IMAGES BEFORE STARTING THE NEXT STEP.
Layers
Download this file first. Open it in Photoshop. Change your resolution to 300ppi. It will be your background layer that you will delete once the entire design is complete.
| 78c96b41be08c0b90b03b8c2c12201f2.png |
Part of your mark is going to come from the organization and labelling of your layers. The grid provided has numbers at it so you can label your layers with a descriptive term and that number. See how I labelled 'pink fish 90', 'pink fish 45' etc.? That helps me easily locate that image so I can move and adjust it as necessary.
You must also use folders to organize all of the like rows. I put all my pink fish in one folder and all my green fish in another folder.
It's going to take some time to organize your images and adjust the sizes so that they fit. You may want to add some extra little shapes and details at the end and adjust the color here or there so that the design is balanced and fabulous.
Assessment
At least 8 high quality legal images (no photos) that visually work together have been selected
Images have been meticulously cut out
High Level of complexity with many concentric circles of images (see example at top of this page for exemplar)
Color scheme is evident and well balanced
All images have been arranged perfectly around the radial design
Folders have been created for each group of images
All layers are labelled and ordered in the layers panel (nothing has been flattened)
Files of completed design submitted to the google classroom as both a psd. and jpeg. file type by due date
Images have been meticulously cut out
High Level of complexity with many concentric circles of images (see example at top of this page for exemplar)
Color scheme is evident and well balanced
All images have been arranged perfectly around the radial design
Folders have been created for each group of images
All layers are labelled and ordered in the layers panel (nothing has been flattened)
Files of completed design submitted to the google classroom as both a psd. and jpeg. file type by due date
Student Examples
