This Baseball Season, I was commissioned to create banners for the Dobie Baseball players.

I was given the original photos & my first step was to tweak those images. I reduced the highlights, added contrast, and adjusting the color temperature to get rid of that green tint on the players.

With the photos of the players edited, I brought one of those images into Photoshop. Because I wanted consistency across all the banners, I knew I was going to have to replace the background to remove the variation between the locations in each photo. I wanted to go with a night game look for the banner so, I separated the player & put him on a black background.

Now, it was time to build the background design. I brought in an image of a well-kept baseball field & center it so it look like the player was standing directly behind home plate. I added in the lights, which I got from one of my photos of Minute Maid Park, behind the wall in the outfield.  To create some more interest in the design, I added a grunge texture to the sky & place their team logo on top of it. I made sure to lower the opacity of logo because I wanted it blend in and not distract.

With that, the design of the banner was mostly complete. All that was left was to add in the text. I put Dobie Baseball and the year across the top & each player's name and number across the bottom. 

Once I completed one banner, the process became a simpler because I didn't have to recreate the background each time. I used the design I already had, added in the cut-out of each player, and just changed their name & number to match accordingly.

- Michael Macedo

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