Monday 27 January 2014

I've Got it Covered

I was chatting to a friend about my book cover and I thought it might be fun to show how I made it, using a lot of different photos. 

Most of the photos I use are from a great place called morguefile. The sky is from Scotland, which is appropriate! I put that in first, changing the colours slightly, since this isn't a sky on Earth. ;-) Then I added in the "beam of light". It's actually made up of three white stripes, one wide and two narrow. I made the wide stripe partially transparent before I fused all three together and then added a white glow around it.

Then I added in the building dome. This has been altered and had the colour changed as well. 


Next was the park. The original photo had no grass, so that was taken from another photo.


I had to lighten it a little, as the printing comes out darker.


The only photo that was paid for, from a professional site, was the two models for the characters on the cover.As you can see, they had no clothes! I had quite a time finding a dress, but the man was easy. I already had a smashing jacket, worn by a facebook friend, Jesse. He's let me use his photos before, for my book video.

I also "removed" the woman's modern make up and had to find hair for the top of the man's head (another photo). The woman's dress I had to change the colour and add shadows. Here it is, half way done...

All in all the couple took five photos to create and the background took another five plus the light beam. A lot of work, but well worth it. I'm very happy with the end result. :-)

7 comments:

  1. Oh my GOODNESS...you're one TALENTED woman. I can't even begin to think about what I want to create if I have to do something like this...but what you've created is just BRILLIANT. THANK YOU for this step-by-step post. I'm enlightened! :-D

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  2. Thanks Amel

    It was HARD work, but I really enjoyed it. What is the worst is when I can see in my mind what I want, but can't find the photos to create it.

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  3. Thanks for sharing this, Michelle. Though it must be satisfying to create exactly the cover you envision, the hours it would take to learn how to do something like this boggles my mind.

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  4. Ah, yes, that makes sense! :-)

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  5. Hi Margaret

    It's very satisfying when it works. :D There are other moments when I know exactly what I want and just can't manage to create it. :(

    I did evening classes in Corel years back. That helped, although there were hysterical moments as I'm computer self taught and knew none of the jargon. So the first night, when the lecturer said "Scroll down the task bar and click on the icon" she could have been talking Martian! I spent the first two lessons desperately watching what the woman beside me was doing.

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  6. Jan Krause Greene18 February 2014 at 23:14

    Wow, Michelle. That is amazing. I am so in awe of your ability, not only to do this, but also to even figure out how to do it.
    Very, very cool!

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  7. Thanks Jan

    I have a lot of failures as well. I must have made up at least seven book covers I hated and deleted before I came near reaching one I liked.

    But that's the best way to learn - struggle, fail, improve. ;-)

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