Showing posts with label How to create a book cover. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How to create a book cover. Show all posts

Making of a Book Cover: Highland Son

I've been at it again, making book covers and lots of them. 

Four to be exact for my newest series A New Dawn, a continuation of the Highland Sorcery series.
I don't make covers for other people because that's not really where I want to focus my time and energy, but I gotta say, I love making my own. Searching for just the right cover model is fun. I always go for the expression, more so than looks...

Original picture for AlexanderAnyway, here's the picture I used for Alexander. I just love the way the photographer Konradbak captured him in motion...and the intensity on his face is perfect.

Shirt to overlap Highland Son coverThe only thing I don't like about this is that he's shirtless. It doesn't fit with the brand of my books, which are more action and behind-the-door snogging, less skin. And since I don't want readers expecting something they aren't going to get, I try hard to keep everyone clothed. So the next step before I bought the picture for use was to see if I could find a shirt to cover the poor guy up with.

I found this picture with the model's body turned in close to the same position.

So now I have the two pictures. I overlaid the shirt picture on top of Alexander's picture, sized it to fit, tilted it a bit to fit more, and then used the eraser tool to erase everything on the top picture except for the shirt. I also had to get a little creative with the cloning tool to fill in more of the shirt color where I erased the shirt guy's arm which took out some of the shirt.  (Weird sentence. As a writer I should do better, but as a lazy person this moment, I'm going to leave it.) The bottom of the shirt is a bit fuzzy but the words will camouflage that a bit. Not too mention it draws the eye up to the face since it's more in focus. That's what I tell myself anyway.
Before and after saturation on photograph of Alexander


So now I have a shirt on Alexander.  But he's kind of gray. So I saved the picture into one layer and then used the saturation tool to pull up more color. He's just about perfect now, except I want a different background.

Kay, I cheated a little here by using a background I already had. I loved the greenish building scape cover for Highland Shapeshifter. So I pulled up that original cover (I already own that picture for use) and cropped a background out of it from the left bottom corner below her arm. So now that little piece will be Alexander's background.
Cover for Highland Shapeshifter

Once that photograph was cropped and sized for the background layer, I overlaid the saturated picture of Alexander over it and went to work with the eraser tool, enlarging it to work to make sure I erased around every strand of hair very carefully. It's painstaking work, but worth the time and effort.  


So here he is. He, of course, is missing an arm because that's where the original picture's edge cut off. So that is obviously going to be where I crop it for the ebook copy. I saved this version to be able to use some of that for the back cover when I work on the paperback jacket. 
So after cropping and adding the title and author name (moi), which takes only a few minutes because I already have a series template saved so that all the books in the same series are uniformed. 
Voila!!!

Now, to move onto the cover for the paperback. The trick there is knowing how large the spine needs to be depending on how many pages (or how fat) the book will end up. Once I knew that, I got to work. I had to add a little more to the back cover because what I had cropped out of Highland Shapeshifter didn't go all the way to the edge. So what I did was take the photograph (two pictures up) before I added the words and flipped it horizontally into a mirror item. Then I slid that along the edge of this picture. If the bigger was larger, you'd see a mirror version of Alexander on the left side. In fact I had to use the cloning tool again to paint part of his jacket out. If you look closely you can see the line where the two pictures meet. So, don't look that closely. Well, okay, go ahead. 
Paperback cover jacket for Highland Son

And remember how I said I made 4 covers? Well, that's because I wanted to put all the series covers on the back cover jacket. Cool, eh? I learned that trick from my friend Suzan Butler, cover artist  and author extraordinaire. She knows all the neat things to do. 

But then I thought, "Hey, since I used the same background on two covers, they should match real well." Since I was playing in photoshop anyway, I decided why not update my blog. It's been a while anyway. So I meshed the two covers together and came up with the new heading above. I'll stick it here too for when I decide to update it again.

Clover Autrey blog header

And then, since I'm having a new series release party on facebook next week, (You're all invited by the way, just go over and "like" my Clover Autrey Books facebook page so you'll be sure to get the posts.) I thought I might as well go ahead and make a cool banner to advertise it. I had to flip him horizontally again since the facebook profile picture takes up the bottom left corner. And, well, he's still missing that arm...
New series Release Celebration for Highland Sorcery A New Dawn
Anypooh, that's it for now. 
Highland Son, Alexander's book, is for sale on the kindle and also for sale on the nook.
It's at all the other retailers through Smashwords.
The paperback is in review and will be ready for purchase at Amazon and Barnes &Noble toward the end of next week. 

And in case you are wondering, I'll be posting the transformation of the other three cover photos within a few days. 

Making of a Book Cover: Highland Sorcery Christmas

I really enjoy playing around with Photoshop. I'm not an artist by any means and I seriously just know enough to cause myself trouble, but I think I have a half-way decent eye at finding the stock photos that will work. I mostly go for the model's expression on whether they capture the feeling I hope my book evokes.

This Christmas book is a first for me as it has no cover model. I wanted something that said "Christmas" with just a glance, but also "monsters" because for the life of me I cannot write a fluffy happy everything's harmonious and joyful story to save my life. I wanted a book where all the main characters from the first four Highland Sorcery novels got together to celebrate just being family all in one place...and as it happens, one time too, since they have all been traveling back and forth through time.

Well, I got them all together. *Clearing throat and ducking*. But it wasn't easy and they had one heck of a fight on their hands to get there. It basically goes: Toren and Charity's son is in danger (in two time lines), they kill the monsters, so yeah, let's have Christmas now.

Best freakin plot ever, right? Brings all sorts of Holiday cheer. In case you're wondering, that squishy sound is my eyes rolling.

Back to the cover:

I started out searching for something Christmasy: Loved this picture because the ornaments have a kind of Scottish pattern on them. (Note: I play around with the pictures and make mock-ups before buying them so this still has a watermark. My favorite place to purchase stock photos is Dreamstime.com.



Then I went searching for the perfect monster breaking into their happy little Christmas. The monsters actually come through rifts in time so this one breaking through the wall seemed perfect.
 I also found this broken ornament that symbolized a disrupted Christmas nicely. Well, I think so at any rate.
Next I layered the three photos on top of each other to see if they would work together. Using the eraser tool, I erased the bits I didn't want like the glob of red ornaments and the gray wall the monster was coming out of. I also used the clone tool to blacken over the top of the monsters snout and teeth so I would just have a clawed hand, since my monsters' faces don't look like that at all.

With a little placement, here's the mock-up I came up with at first. (Again, notice the watermarks since I haven't purchased all the pictures yet since I may not use them. That's what I like about Dreamstime. They allow you to play around with their images first.)

As much as I like how this turned out, it also seems a little busy, especially when you take into consideration that it will mostly be viewed as a much smaller thumbnail on most of the distributor sites.
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So I played around some more, got rid of the Scottish ornaments (glad I didn't buy it yet--maybe next Christmas?) and moved and angled the monster's hand a little bit. Then I went back to Dreamstime and purchased the two pictures so I can legally and honestly use them, and started over again, darkened the font color, and here's the final version.

It will be officially released on November 2nd, because when else would a Christmas with monsters be released except on Dia de los Muerte I ask you?

But it is also listed for preordering at Smashwords and hopefully soon at Barnes and Noble as well for the whopping price of $1.99. 


Also out now is the boxed set of the first four books in the Highland Sorcery novels. Four books for the price of two. 

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Making of Highland Moon Sifter Cover

This one took a lot of tweaking. I started out with this stock photo from Dreamstime. Well, minus the modesty slash. I saw it months and months ago while I was looking for another cover and just fell in love with this model's hair and facial expression. I bought it right then. In fact, this is the only cover model that I've ever written a character to match. Usually I just see the characters in my mind, but Bekah I wrote seeing this picture. This is her. That's a first for me.


However, even though Bekah is naked quite a bit throughout the book since time traveling doesn't allow anything material, like clothes or weapons, to go through, half-nekked people on covers gives a different impression for what's inside the book. I don't want to be misleading, so the search for a cover up ensued. That was really hard to find something that fit the way her body is twisted kind of sideways.
Finally I settled on this poncho.  And it kind of fit on her. It was fun getting her arm in front of it.

I also had to get rid of the hot red jalapeno key chain she was holding since, like I said, nothing material can travel through time rifts, including red key chains. That would have come in useful in the 13th Century though now that I think about it. Too bad.
  
Okay so next came the background. This brown one is kind of bleh, plus as this is the last book of the series and the characters are back in 13th Century Scotland where the first book began, I wanted to have the same purplish cloudy look to it that Highland Sorcerer has. Then I thought it'd be cool to throw in the moon since Shaw gets his magical power from moonlight. 
Okay, well it made sense to me and it took less than five minutes to find the perfect moon shot.
Added the purple saturation.

Next I placed Bekah onto the Moon background.
Added the Title and stuff... And softened the edge of the poncho on her shoulders and 
Here we have it... 

And the Series is complete!



Making of a Book Cover: Banshee's Cry


Original model for Jake




So here are the two models for the half-human, half-Anointed Gillant brothers Cael and Jake. As you can see the lighting is way different. Cael needed some darkening up some.
Darkened photograph of Cael modelCover model for Cael


Superimposed the pictures together, but had to put a wall for Cael to lean on so he wouldn't be floating in mid-air. Then I grittied them up in keeping within the dark edginess of their world. 
Below, I was playing with turning them into illustrations, but decided not to go with that look.   

So this is the final cover. I'm quite proud of it.
book cover for Banshee's Cry final

 Kindle version                                                  Nook version 



Making of a Book Cover: A Haunting

For the third book in The Anointed series, A Haunting,  I wanted to keep both brothers on the cover again. This one was a little harder to get just right. I loved the picture of Jake standing by the window, but I couldn't find any full bodied pictures of Cael to go with him so I had to not only cut and paste him in, but use one guy's body, and Cael's head. Here's the three original stock photos I had to work with:

Had to mirror image this guy's body to fit in the picture and darkened him up a little. He'll be darkened a little bit more after the fact.


Then desaturated Cael's head because he is so light  And then layer up the three different pictures. Head to body, Cael to Jake's photo... Cael still is too light for the whole though, but that will be taken care of.

Next put the gritty texture onto it and then darkened Cael up more.
Voila!! 

So after all that I decided Cael's head was too big, so started over and resized to a smaller head size. Geez.


Kindle version                      Nook version




Making of a Book Cover The Anointed

The more I learn how to Photoshop, the more I want to play around with my covers. It's terribly addictive. This week I updated all three of the covers to my Anointed series, taking them from a horror look to more of a gritty texture with the monster hunting half-human teen brothers.

Here's for the first book in the series The Anointed.
The original photo. This model just has that hard-edged take no prisoners look that big brother Jake embodies. But I wanted the covers to have both brothers so I went scouting around for a stock photo to both fit Cael's more innocent outlook, but also fit the picture. Fortunately the cover model I already liked for Cael also happened to have a photo of him sitting on steps. Perfect!

He needed some darkening up to match the dark tone and saturation of the first picture, and I had to shrink him just right to get his butt planted perfectly on the steps behind Jake.



 A little cropping here, a little cropping there.

Now to go all grainy and texturing. These guys fight demons and operate in a pretty dark gritty world so I wanted the cover to reflect that.



Add the Title and Author (moi) and it's good to go.

                                                   Kindle version                Nook version








Making of a Cover: Death & Kisses

This was a fun cover to play around with. Much more difficult than usual. This is my first published Young Adult book so just finding the picture took a long time. Since the story is about a girl who no longer fits in with her crowd at high school and also has some dark elements dealing with death and ghosts and revenge, I thought this first picture fit the bill, with this bright flower floating in dark water.

Then I group emailed my siblings. Oh man, I opened a can of opinions. More than 100 emails between us all later, and after one sister pointed out that with the title and the flower, it looked more like a "self-help book to aid people in saying their final goodbyes to loved ones"--Yikes--I scrapped this cover design completely.

The title itself brought even more controversy, but I figured that was good since I wanted something edgy that would make potential readers do a double-take. It has been titled Outcast for about 3 years while it found a literary agent and she tried to place it, that it was hard to let go of that title. If there weren't already so many books and albums with that title I would have gladly kept it. Death and Kisses though. Controversial. I'm pleased. We'll see how it goes.

Back to finding just the right cover picture. It took a while, but this picture finally felt perfect.
I love the dress, I love how we can't see the girl's face. I love the rose. However, since a haunted pond plays a big part in the story, I wanted water. This is where Smart Photo Editor comes in to change up the background.

We added water to the bottom of the background, but the lighting didn't mesh in the two color versions of both background pictures so we made the background black & white and kept the girl in color and the lighting blended perfectly. It also gave the book a surreal quality, which totally fits the vibe of the story. In keeping with the ghost and death theme, we also painted the rose black.

I wanted the bottom of her dress to be darker so it looks like water is seeping into it so we played around with that on Photoshop.

Next step is playing around with the fonts and colors and word placement. I could do that for hours. Then a coworker of my husband's had a brilliant idea to make the flower's stem pop out from behind the letter "S". Honestly, that is my favorite feature and so easy to do once my husband (the Photoshop, Sagelight, Smart Photo Editor genius--yes, he uses all those programs and more for different effects on one cover) showed me how.

At this point I thought it was done. I loved it as is, but no. You know how creative people can't stop dinking  around? A writer will always find something to edit in her book, even after it's published. Well, my artist husband is the same way, so he threw these at me:

Dang it. Now I love both this first one and the black and white background. I honestly could not decide so I took it to Facebook and had my friends choose between them. I paid close attention to my younger fb friends since this book is really for them, and nearly 90% choose the black and white background. I was surprised, thinking for sure teens would choose the color. Just goes to show you, you can't second-guess kids.

The next challenge was to make a version with a spine and back flap for the paperback version. Usually I pick pictures that have a width to already accommodate the extra for the back, like this, but this picture didn't have any, so we either had to find a picture to go with it or simply go with a black back. I found a forest that kind of goes with the original forest so we used that after darkening the trees a bit and converting it into black and white. I also had to redo the title words to make them fit, which meant redoing the flower between the two "S's" this time, but like I said before, that was easy and kind of fun to do, so no biggie.


                        For your Kindle            For your Nook          Coming Thanksgiving in Paperback

If you have any questions I can help you with for your own covers, just ask me, well, okay, I'll probably have to ask my husband, but he loves talking art...so...just ask.