“Desire” by P. T. Michelle

Tags

composition, Cover Art, Cover design, Desire, golden ratio, Keith Draws, P.T. Michelle, Photo compositiing, Photoshop, Vampire

Patrice had a very specific vision for this cover.

She gave me the stock shot of the Main Character and together we decided I would paint everything else (including the wings).

Realism is always a challenge but I feel it was a great success, combining the best elements of both media.

Her  blog is here and her facebook is here

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Breathtaking book cover

Just wow!

Apparently my cover for “The Island” by Teri Hall is breathtaking.

See the actual post here

E-Book cover sizes.

Tags

Apple iBook, Barnes and Nobel, Book Baby, book cover, composition, Cover Art, Cover design, Keith Draws, kindle, Kobo, Lulu, Smash Words

I’ve noticed that finding the correct format for an e-book cover is not exactly easy. Even if you manage to find a guide on the publishing website you intend to use you soon find the documents are are filled with jargon and useless information that serves only to confuse. So what I’ve done is break it down to the essential information. Please remember though that some of these formats are  quite different from each other and I’d recommend you tweak your cover layout somewhat for each one. If I have missed any format out please let me know and I’ll add it. So in no particular order here is the only information you actually need:

Barnes and Noble (for Nook)

Aspect ratio:1.2

Image size: 600 pixels wide 730 pixels high.
DPI: 100
File size limit: 2 MB
Format: JPG (Maximum quality should not take the file size over the limit)

Kindle and Book Baby

Aspect ratio:1.6

Image size: 2820 x 4500 pixels (previously 1563 x 2500 pixels)
DPI: 72
File size limit: no limit specified
Format: JPG (Maximum quality should not take the file size over the limit)

Smash Words and Kobo

Aspect ratio:1.5

Image size: 1600 pixels wide x 2400 pixels high
DPI: 72
File size limit: 2MB
Format: JPG (Maximum quality should not take the file size over the limit)

LULU

Aspect ratio:1.3

Image size: 612 pixels wide x 792 pixels high
DPI: 72
File size limit: 2 million pixels
Format: JPG (Maximum quality should not take the file size over the limit)

Apple iBook

You need two covers for Apple.

1. Sales image:

Aspect ratio:1.6

Image size: 1563 pixels wide x 2500 pixels high.
DPI: 72
File size limit: none
Format: JPG (Maximum quality should not take the file size over the limit)

2. Internal cover (you can just reduce the sales image by 70% for this)

Aspect ratio:1.6

Image size: 1094 pixels wide x 1750 pixels high.
DPI: 72
File size limit: 2 million pixels
Format: JPG (Maximum quality should not take the file size over the limit)

If anybody finds anything to be incorrect please let me know in the comments. As far as I am aware these sizes are correct but it wont hurt to double check for yourself.

Of course this may seem a bit daunting so it may be worth remembering that I only charge $10 per format to tweak your cover layout and provide a suitable file.

Creating Gold text.

Tags

book cover, cd cover, composition, Cover Art, Cover design, Gold text, Keith Draws, kindle, layout, Photo compositiing, typography

This is  a simple way to make gold text in PS. The music is a bit distracting but the technique is good.

How to mask hair in PS5

Tags

book cover, Cover Art, hair, Keith Draws, masking, Photo compositiing, Photoshop

This is a great video tutorial on creating a cut out mask for hair.

And this is even better:

Free Photoshop 6 video tutorials

Tags

book cover, cd cover, Cover Art, Keith Draws, Photo compositiing

I’m sure this link will be very helpful to all who want to work on photo compositing.

3D Buzz is happy to announce that the Photoshop CS6 Fundamentals class that was made freely available to the general public is now available for download… free to all!

You can find the download links here:

http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?193870

I’ll be going through these, you can never know enough.

Simple Photo Compositing

Tags

book cover, cd cover, Cover Art, Cover design, illustration, Keith Draws, kindle, layout, Photo compositiing

This Video is great for a beginner, to learn some basic techniques in photo compositing.  Though it’s not mentioned in here I also recommend you get used to working at a minimum of 450 dpi at actual size. When your work is printed it will usually be at 300 dpi, so you will be working at a higher resolution. This is standard practice, and means that you work will be reduced in size when it’s finally printed. The reduction will improve the quality.