Best tutorials for amateur book designer and photoshop newbie
July 31, 2015 12:22 PM Subscribe
I'm an indie writer who wants to learn how to do good covers. I am also completely new to photoshop. Would like to know of good tutorials that will teach me photoshop AND good book cover design. Preferably at the same time. The web is littered with sites and video that's supposed to help. But I'm hoping someone here will steer me to something really good.
I use Pixlr as an alternative to Photoshop. It can do most of the same stuff, it's free and it's online so it doesn't fill up your hard drive with a huge program. They have a lot of tutorials on their site.
I publish eBook smut and do my own covers. I had art experience before, and I'm just kind of teaching myself cover design by doing it and looking at lots and lots of covers on Amazon and figuring out what works.
My two big tips would be:
1) Look at the covers of the books in your genre, focusing on the most popular. Don't slavishly imitate what they're doing, but try to use them as a guide. Certain illustration styles and fonts predominate. Use those. Don't worry about being "unique" until you've gotten so good at this that you can dick around and not look like an amateur.
2) BIG COVER FONTS. Mainstream publishers use a huge logo and author name, and cover illustrations are usually an afterthought. That's hard to get used to, and I keep erring on the side of a cool illustration with a modest title. But if I wanna look like a pro in 2015 I gotta make the title take up most of the cover, with a little illustration lurking behind it.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:16 PM on July 31, 2015 [2 favorites]
I publish eBook smut and do my own covers. I had art experience before, and I'm just kind of teaching myself cover design by doing it and looking at lots and lots of covers on Amazon and figuring out what works.
My two big tips would be:
1) Look at the covers of the books in your genre, focusing on the most popular. Don't slavishly imitate what they're doing, but try to use them as a guide. Certain illustration styles and fonts predominate. Use those. Don't worry about being "unique" until you've gotten so good at this that you can dick around and not look like an amateur.
2) BIG COVER FONTS. Mainstream publishers use a huge logo and author name, and cover illustrations are usually an afterthought. That's hard to get used to, and I keep erring on the side of a cool illustration with a modest title. But if I wanna look like a pro in 2015 I gotta make the title take up most of the cover, with a little illustration lurking behind it.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:16 PM on July 31, 2015 [2 favorites]
As an aside and another suggestion, I just redesigned my two novel ebook covers and two non-fiction book covers in minutes using Canva's templates. I'm not a graphic designer by ANY stretch of the imagination, but I think I did okay.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 4:44 PM on July 31, 2015
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 4:44 PM on July 31, 2015
I promise this is my last entry!
Canva also has a great, free Design School which will help you with some basics.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 5:19 AM on August 1, 2015
Canva also has a great, free Design School which will help you with some basics.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 5:19 AM on August 1, 2015
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Don't let the crazy prices scare you away.
Sign up and get an account. Pretty soon, Udemy will start sending you coupons.
I've gotten $497 classes for $10 before.
Even if I don't plan on immediately taking the class, I'll plunk down the $10 for future learning.
When looking at class, look for the preview and play those. They will show you exactly what you're getting into.
Look at the "About This Course", "About The Instructor" and "What You Need".
You want to make sure they are using the same version of Photoshop that you are.
Also look at the reviews, but don't let them sway you too much, because there is a Facebook group with thousands of instructors who play the "I'll Give You My Class At A Discount Or For Free If You Will Give Me A Good Review".
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 2:41 PM on July 31, 2015 [2 favorites]