Category Archives: Book Covers

Cover Reveal – The Last Conception

This is a cover for Melange Books.

In this case, the author had a stock image in mind, and it worked out quite well for the cover. I had my own textures that I used to create the overall, papery text. Otherwise, I just played with color tonality, blending modes, and text placement. I gave the bottom of the cover a darker brown color to represent dirt, and the author asked that the main image be green to symbolize life. This was the end result. Simple, but elegant. πŸ™‚

SBibb - The Last Conception - Book Cover

Stock photo from: Dreamstime.

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-image-woman-tree-image18317296

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Dangerous Denial – Cover Reveal

This is a cover I edited for Barking Rain Press. In this case, they already had the main image they wanted, and they had the cool text placement in the cross hairs. However, they wanted me to do the final touches and adjust the sizing and such. So, after a bit of playing around with effects, I ended up playing the the motion blur and radial blur filters to add a sense of movement and disorientation. I also played with blurring and retouching the background so our main focus would be on the woman, and I played with the overall lighting. This is the end result. πŸ™‚

SBibb - Dangerous Denial - Book Cover

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A Burning Hope – Book Cover Reveal

This is another cover for Melange Books, for a fantasy short story.

SBibb - A Burning Hope - Book Cover

 

The author and I went through a few slight variations, debating how to get the swamp to look right and where the best place to put the fire was. I also tinkered with lighting to create the mood we wanted. One thing to keep in mind when doing covers is that lighting, and using strong color contrast, can help attract the eye to the image. Β Another trick to keep in mind when looking for stock photos is that you might look for something that already has some photoshop done to it, then tweak it further to suit your purposes. In this case, I found the ‘monster’s’ eyes already partially edited. But, because the monsters are supposed to be blind, I did additional photoshop to create the final look.

Stock photos from: Dreamstime.

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-floating-fishing-village-image26604324
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-boat-fog-image12261557
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-fire-image16068630
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-horror-blindness-image20380689

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Cover Reveal – A Thousand Sunsets

A cover for Melange Books.

This is another example where I changed the hairstyle of the person in the stock photo. The image I used had long hair, but we needed short, curly hair to better fit the main character. In this case, I started by using the Patch tool and Clone brush tool in Photoshop CS6 to fill in the background where the hair had been previously, then tweaked it using layers to smooth out where her shoulders where. Then, on a new layer, I used the smudge tool. First a softer, but larger size for the over all shape of the hair, and then a smaller, harder brush to give it the little details in the hair. Then I created another layer to sharpen it and lowered the opacity to make it look a little more natural. Viola. New hairstyle.

This is also a case where I ended up using a discarded cover proof from another project. A while back I’d tested this image and text placement (different font, though) for a different romance cover, but the author and I ultimately chose something different. However, when I read the art form for A Thousand Sunsets, this proof came back to mind. So I asked the publisher if they’d mind me recycling the proof (since we hadn’t used it), and I did check with the author, but it turned out to be what they were looking for. So… without further ado, the cover for A Thousand Sunsets:

SBibb - A Thousand Sunsets - Book Cover

Stock Image from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-couple-love-silhouette-lake-sunset-image21896121

Little side note; I had fun highlighting the faces with a very faint heart-shaped overlay. It’s not super-visible, but it’s there. πŸ™‚

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Cover Reveal – Elmo’s Sojourn

This is a cover for Melange Books.

Initially I thought this cover was going to be a bit more difficult to reconstruct from the proof image (since I start with a proof before creating the final), but again, the align layers function came in super handy, and all I had to do was some finishing tweaks to bring everything together. Once the basic pieces were in place, I went in and tweaked the lighting further, added in shadows and played with blending, and removed some of the distracting pieces from around the edges of the cover. Blades of grass and little star specks can distract from the center image if they stand out too much. Since we wanted a wormhole effect, this is also a case where I ended up using illustrations as well as photography in order to add to the science fiction look of the piece. Sometimes its helpful to look in the illustrated sections of the stock sites, and not just the photos. You never know what you might find that could be useful. πŸ™‚

SBibb - Elmo's Sojourn - Book Cover

Stock Photos from: Dreamstime.

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-tornado-green-field-image18897874
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-back-view-senior-man-white-background-image35078222
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-old-trees-mist-laurel-forest-madeira-portugal-image35702305
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-banyan-trees-hilo-image18648599
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-tornado-city-image21115451
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-tornado-image3181364
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-traveling-wormhole-image21501588

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Cover Reveal and Review – The Devil’s Third

This is the third and final book cover for Rebekkah Ford’s Beyond the Eyes trilogy, as well as a few of the promo pieces I put together for it. You can see the wrap-around cover here:Β http://sbibb.deviantart.com/art/The-Devil-s-Third-Book-Cover-423981244?q=gallery%3ASBibb&qo=0

SBibb - The Devil's Third - Book Cover

Facebook Banner:

SBibb - Devil's Third Promo

Bookmarks:

SBibb - Devil's Third PromoΒ SBibb - Devil's Third Promo

A bit about the cover: All images are my own, and I used the camera’s timer to get a few shots of me posing for the main character. We had a couple different ideas to work from, and when the first didn’t work out, it turned out handy that I’d done a few standing poses as well. Side note for photography– it can help to take multiple angles and poses in case one doesn’t have the desired effect. Photoshop CS6 to blend everything and photomanipulate the hand reaching out from the text.

(See the the previous covers for the series:Β https://sbibb.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/dark-spirits-cover-reveal/ andΒ http://sbibb.deviantart.com/art/Beyond-the-Eyes-Wrap-Around-309769699 )

And now for the review. πŸ˜€

Disclaimer: Paranormal romance isn’t my preferred genre, and therefore, my opinions may be skewed compared to that of someone who regularly enjoys paranormal romance.

Overall, an enjoyable read. The characters have a realness about them that I enjoyed, and the description of setting was wonderful. (Seriously, I read one passage that made me think I could smell a rainy autumn day. Descriptions that really engage the senses like that make me a happy camper).

My favorite part of the story was where Paige goes into Carrie’s memories (so-to-speak, trying not to give away spoilers). The visuals were awesome, the pace really picked up (the beginning was just a bit slow, but served well to remind me what happened in the previous book), and the plot revealed a few nice tid-bits of information about the dark spirits.

I also enjoyed the magic system and finding out more about their world and <spoiler>the different doorways Paige can open. I actually would have been interested in seeing more of the different dimensions</spoiler> but we also got to see other new abilities, as well, which I enjoyed reading about.

That being said, there were a few downsides for me. A minor thing, but I did notice more typos in this story than in the previous ones. Also, there were several times I felt like something convenient happened or wasn’t fully explained. In all fairness, I was reading this in ten minute intervals while on break at work, so my attention wasn’t completely focused. Might have been different if I’d been able to read it in longer intervals.

I didn’t really get into the romance between Nathan and Paige, but then, I don’t typically read stories for the romance. And Brayden… I still kind of want to strangle him. I did, however, like seeing more of Ameerah’s character, and I also liked seeing the new characters, like Pip.

For me, I think my favorite book out of this trilogy was actually Dark Spirits. I really liked the interactions between Bael and Paige in that story, but I liked seeing Paige’s new powers in this one. Overall, though, I think this was a good series that paranormal romance readers are likely to enjoy. πŸ™‚

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Pony Dreams – Cover Reveal

Another cover for Melange Books.

This is one of those covers where the photoshop auto-align layer came in helpful. So did smart object, as a way to keep everything sharp. I created the proof image, and when I went to create the final, I found everything was far too blurry. Finally suspected it had to do with how I’d been tweaking the angles of the image. I ended up redoing the final, with the help of the auto-align tool I was mentioning earlier, and that simplified the process considerably. Like with other covers where I used the proof image first, rather than using full size stock to start with, I did more clean-up to the final image, and thus came out with this. πŸ™‚

SBibb - Pony Dreams - Book Cover

Stock from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-blank-vintage-photo-paper-isolated-image26934533
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-pony-express-rides-again-image147907
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-pony-tail-portraits-image2181833
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-young-caucasian-male-portrait-attractive-handsome-model-wearing-jeans-white-button-shirt-isolated-white-background-image31290860
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-old-farmhouse-shed-image1933102

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Second Best – Cover Reveal

Another cover for Melange Books.

SBibb - Second Best - Book Cover

 

This one was actually one of the easier covers for me, largely because we were working directly from a stock subscription, so I was able to work with the full-size images right from the get-go. For this, I played around with overall mood, trying to get a sense of the setting per the art request sheet, and I also asked about extra details regarding the character (which age to go with and so forth) from the author. We later added the faint scar on her cheek, which is more visible at larger resolutions, but wasn’t meant to be the point of focus. Overall, I’m really pleased with how this came out. πŸ™‚

Stock Photography from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-portrait-girl-image15706682
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-old-abandoned-factory-image18763339
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-chain-link-fence-image7247619
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-abstract-chain-link-fence-image7536291

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The Feast of Yule – Cover Reveal

This Β was a cover that managed to come together really easily. In this case, the author requested that there be a gnome on the cover if possible, and if we could get an autumn background, that’d be good, too. Mentioned that the gnomes were mischievous and at one point had axes in the story. So I went browsing through Dreamstime looking for images of gnomes. I didn’t find a gnome, per say… but three images later, I’d say that gnome looks mischevious, don’t you?

Sometimes a cover can be amazingly simple to put together. This was one of them. Also, I kept the same sort of title treatment to help it tie into her other story, Forgetting Fallenwood. πŸ™‚

SBibb - The Feast of Yule Book Cover

Stock Photography from Dreamstime:

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Santa’s Special Girl – Book Cover Reveal

Another cover for Melange Books. Today I talk about how photomanipulation is like a puzzle. πŸ™‚

Santa's Special Girl - Book Cover

This was a case where character creation was useful. The author requested that we have the little girl sitting on the other character’s lap, who is dressed as Santa. In this case, I didn’t have much luck finding the perfect picture from the main stock site I used, so I wound up putting a few photos together to create the resulting image. Found a guy dressed in a Santa suit who matched the description– changed his hair color. Gave him a slight smile. Found a Santa hat. Found a little girl sitting cross-legged in pajamas– helpful. Found a sitting Santa to use for the lap… and used puppet warp on the arm. Found a background. Put everything together, and voila! Photomanipulation is a bit like putting together puzzle pieces, but it helps to have an idea of what the pieces look like before starting the search to find the right one. Kind of like finding the corner pieces first and working your way into the puzzle from there.

Stock Photos from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-teen-punk-santa-image5438109
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-image-portrait-handsome-guy-image3590996
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-girl-sitting-santas-lap-getting-hug-image27538055
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-beautiful-six-year-old-girl-sitting-pajamas-over-white-image125808
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-doctor-s-office-image480487#_

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