I honestly racked my brain for days trying to come up with something for this assignment. I struggled and flipped through pictures. I've been at my new job for two weeks and so much brain power has gone into training there that I think I fried my brain. Upon sitting down to really make an attempt at doing this assignment, I was texted by a friend about starting to make summer plans for the beach when it finally warms up. That triggered a small glimmer of an idea. Then I noticed that my dog was staring at me eagerly wanting attention, and that moment it occurred to me I've never taken her to the beach in her 11 years and it made me a little sad. So thought that would be a melodramatic tear jerker parody movie about a dog that gets left behind when her owner goes to the beach for the day. Thrilling stuff I know, but with an aging puppy I can't bear to think of anything sadder than that minor puppy problem.

So, I dug through my images and found a couple pictures of her that I like and opened them up. Then I opened a picture I found of a friend of mine and myself walking away from the camera and lastly a shot of Carolina beach I took a few years back on a morning where the storms were rolling in. 

First I had to tweak some of the aspects of the back ground to really get it looing dramatic, so I increased the contrast and highlights, dropped the exposure slightly and really made the clarity come through along with saturation.

Next I opened up a new document with dimensions 970x250, I then filled it in black and dragged the beach image onto it and resized it to get the best fill. I then selected the two girls, refined the edges and created a new layer. after that I dragged it over to the new document and resized it to fit. I then duplicated the layer, opened the hue/color dialog and changed the hue, saturation and lightness. then I changed the mode and opacity. Next I created a gradient to fade from the beach to black. I selected layla’s (my dog) head from a picture, then refined the edges and saved it as a new layer. I dragged that layer over to the document and resized and positioned it how I wanted. I then created a mask and cleaned up around her from edge refining I had do to compensate for her fur in the orginal image and then duplicated the layer. On the duplicate layer I adjusted the hue, saturation and lightness, and then changed the mode and opacity. Next I added the Title and tag line, choosed a font, tweaking the size and spacing for both and changing the colors so they would read better.

For the second ad I chose dimensions 300x1050. I dragged the same beach image over and resized and moved it until I liked the layout. Next I dragged the two layers containing the girls from the first add (since I already had them the way I liked them) and then resized them accordingly. I cropped it so it was just one girl to better fit the format of the document. Next I created a gradient to fade from beach to black. I chose a different image of Layla for this one. I selected her, refined the edges and saved as a new layer, then moving that layer over to the document; I resized and shifted it, also rotating it slightly to fit the format better. At this point the exhaustion and cooked brain took over for a moment as I laughed for about five minutes over how ridiculous my dog can be and how that image really captures her personality. Pitiful, I know.

I used a mask to clean up the transferred selection, then duplicated the layer, followed by adjusting the hue, saturation, and lightness. Then I changed the mode and opacity before I added a radial gradient towards the back of her to blend her into the gradient I had already added. Then I copied and pasted the title and tagline and adjusted them accordingly to fit this format.