Previously, we'v talked about images and fonts, the legality behind choosing images and what software we're going to use to create our cover.
In the first post, I talked about the size you need to make your cover. Please refer back to that on how to open those dialog boxes. The size we're using is 1563 x 2500 pixels. This is taken directly from Amazon's guidelines, so you can't go wrong with this size! Sometime in the future, I will do a separate tutorial on formatting your cover for Createspace and how to make a FULL wrap. I'll get into how to write a great summary for the back of the cover, but for now, we're sticking to basics.
We're going to emulate a cover for this tutorial. I did a quick google search and picked a cover that popped out, caught my eye.
What I look for in a great cover: Eye catching and it conveys what the book is about/gives a good feel for the theme. A popular genre these days in the indie world is paranormal romance. Vampires, werewolves and other things having sexy times. In a market that is flooded, you really need to stand out. I liked this cover and I'm going to explain why it works. And what I think could be improved.
First, the color. There are two main colors here, black and red. It pops. The use of red is great here. The font is easy to read, but distinctive. The rose in the background lends romance without being heavy handed. It's intriguing, lovely and doesn't rely heavily on gimmick. The seal at the top that denotes it's a series is something I'm particularly fond of.
You can ABSOLUTELY do a quality, beautiful cover like this for yourself. As stated above, I'm going to use this cover as a guide and emulate it. You don't want to do this for your cover, but this is used to teach you the software. I can't do a tutorial for every genre of book, though I'm going to, at the end of this tutorial, provide a list of amazing covers for most genres, all from indie authors. If you can master these techniques (and I think anyone can), then you won't need to pay upwards of 300.00 for a cover designer. However, if you don't feel comfortable in your ability, by all means, hire someone! I personally charge 35-50 for covers. Why so cheap? Because I want to help. I just require a little money for my time and for the stock images I may have to purchase.
Moving on!
I like to start from the very back and move to the front when designing. So, we're going to start at the back of this image. There is a rose, a black one. We can do that! Let's find some free stock for this.
NOW for the purposes of this tut, I'm not going to worry about whether or not these images are available for commercial purposes, because I'm not making money from this. With that in mind, I'm going to head over to deviant art and conduct a search.
Okay, so we're looking for a rose. We want stock images, so that's what perimeters we're going to search in!
A quick search gave me just what I wanted! Hurray! Notice the link to her free stock policy. Go ahead and read that. We're in luck! This lady lets us use stock for WHATEVER we want. Commercial stuff too. SO you can use these images for book covers. Book mark this and save it. She has some great stuff.
http://darkrose42-stock.deviantart.com/
So, download the image. There should be a button to do so on the upper left hand side.
When choosing a destination for the file, I recommend moving it to pictures. Or create a new folder and name it something like "Photomanip material" "Book Cover Pictures" etc. You get it. Now, once downloaded, go into the folder you sent the picture and move it to your GIMP canvas. On Windows 8 you can do it with your mouse, just click and drag. I'm not sure how other programs work so please google if you have a question on that.
Tada! Now we have the rose on our background. But...it's not big enough. I'm going to now show you how to make the rose bigger and make it black. We're going to fiddle with it until we get the look we want.
In your tool dialog box, there is a tool called 'scale image'. Click on that. It's the one highlighted in blue in the picture. Now, you will click on the edge of the rose and drag and drag until you have enlarged the rose. Be sure to click and drag on all sides so it doesn't warp the image. You want to get something like this:
There. The rose takes up the entire area of the book cover, just like in the example cover. Let's go ahead and make it black. Do do that, go to the top of your GIMP and you'll see "Colors". Click on that and it brings down a dialog box. Click on 'desaturate'. It has now made your rose black and white. But it looks gray! So to make it look black, we're going to go back to 'colors' and pick curves.
So manipulate the curves by dragging points on the curved line until you get something like this. Just play with it until you're comfortable. I find the curves tool to be the most intuitive way to change the contrast on a picture.
That's it! The background is done. Let's move up. Let's work on another layer. We need to find a pretty lady model to use. It'd be nice if she's in a red dress too. But if she's not, I have a way to change that! Moving on. I'm going to use the deviant art search again the same way I did for the rose. Just search woman in dress. Let's see what we find.
I found this lovely girl.
This will work! Now, this lady lets you use her stock if you credit her. For a small fee, she'll let you use it for commercial purposes. Sounds good to me!
Here's this lady's stock: http://cathleentarawhiti.deviantart.com/
And here's a direct link to this image: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Woman-in-a-red-dress-5-354980004
Now. Download this image and open it in GIMP. Go to the folder you sent the image to, right click it and choose 'open with' and pick GIMP.
With our image now in GIMP, we're going to create a new layer. You can do this one of two ways. Both are just as good! At the top, click on "Layers" then click on new. Make sure your layer is set to transparent. The layer will appear in the dialog box over the image. That's precisely where you want it. The other way to open a new layer is to click the layer button which I've circled, in the layer dialog box that's on your right.
Now, we want to cut out out picture from the black background. To do that, go to the tool dialog box and choose the free select tool. I've circled it in red. A dialog box will populate. Make sure you check the box that says feather edges and stick to a radius of 10. Now, you're ready to start cutting out your image.
I used 'colors' and contrast to brighten the image to make it easier to cut it out. To use free select, you click to make anchor points. It's like connect the dots! Just click around the image, getting the line around it as I've demonstrated here. You will go around the entire lady until you reach your first anchor point. Connect them with a click. It will then become a blinking line. Go to the top of GIMP and choose Edit. Then choose "Cut" Then click on your new layer, the one that doesn't have an image and go back to edit. Then click on "paste". It will make a floating layer. I will show you.
You will right click the floating layer and click 'anchor layer'.
Go down to the first layer and delete it. You will end up with something like this:
Great! Let's soften the edges and clean it up. I'll do this and then tell you what I did to improve the look of this image.
Here's what I did. I used the erasure and chose a soft, round brush. You can find your brushes under your layer dialog box. I made her less blocky looking around her hair. Then i went in with the smudge tool and softened the lines of her hair. The smudge tool looks like this:
Then I brought up the Curves tool again. Color--> Curves and I played around with the image until I made her vampire pale and her hair coal black. I'm happy with how she turned out, but I want her hair to look more natural.
This is a good stopping place for this part of the tut. Tomorrow, I'm going to show you how to download brushes and install them. We'll play with this image some more and make it really stunning. I will show you how to do this.
If you have any questions: rachel.zellers@gmail.com or leave a comment and I'll do my best to explain anything I may have left out.
Cheers-- Lillian
This was wonderful! Thanks! And thanks for the stock resources too.
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