Its going to be hard to
place objects for the DVD on pure white space, so a background is
needed to make it easier to frame how the label will look. As the
DVD is circular, importing an image by itself wont be enough.
Illustrator has a technique called clipping masks that allow an object
to be controlled to another object. This can be use used to crop a
background image to the outer circle, making the background image the
same circular shape of the outer ring.
When creating a
clipping mask, layers are fundamental to the process. If the layer
order isn't correctly set up , the clipping mask cannot be applied.
Guides can be used as a clipping mask but it will become a new
object. So if I clip a background image to the outer guide and then
try to move the image, the guide will also move rending the guide
ineffective. To counter this, I created a new circle that extends to
the outer ring and created a clipping mask to that.
The image selected was
another cloud background, different from the one used in my DVD
cover. I wanted a cloud image as it keeps the theme concurrent with
the cover. The image is shot directly overhead, giving it an
interesting effect that works really well in a circular format.
Layers in Illustrator
work similarly to Photoshop but lack the amount of options, this
could be because illustrator has the art-board feature. The art board
feature allows the use of multiple canvases at once, so the reliance
on layers might not be needed. Vector tools often create objects as
well, so even if two objects overlap they can easily be separately
selected. I mainly just used the layers as a method of keeping tabs
on where certain objects in my document are.
To clip the background
image to the circle object I made earlier, the image needs to be
above the circle in the layer panel. If the image is below the
circle, the clipping mask wont work. By selected the two objects and
selecting clipping mask on the menu, the background image is cropped
to the size of the circle.
After creating this clipping mask, I realized the pixelation on the clouds looks quite horrible. I needed to find a method of turning that bitmap image into a vector to remove the pixelation and have it look slightly better. After digging around I found that Illustrator has a feature that 'allows you to convert any bitmap image to become vector based by using automatic tracing for the image based on various types of trace presets and settings.'
I utilized this Image Trace feature, selecting the preset for high fidelity photo. It came out quite good although it does change the representation of the clouds from a photo into something that looks painted or drawn. This actually goes well with the katana as they both feel like they were made in a similar method.
Elmansy, Rafiq 2012, Illustrator Foundations : The Art of Vector Graphics, Design and Illustration in Illustrator, e-book, accessed 10 April 2014, <http://anglia.eblib.com/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1101441>. Chapter 11: Working with Images and Image TraceI utilized this Image Trace feature, selecting the preset for high fidelity photo. It came out quite good although it does change the representation of the clouds from a photo into something that looks painted or drawn. This actually goes well with the katana as they both feel like they were made in a similar method.
PS: I cannot currently find the source of the cloud photo. Sincerely apologize.
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