Category Archives: Book Covers

June 11, 2014 · 7:00 am

Behind the Scenes – Mira’s View

This is a cover for Melange Books.

For this cover, since the background was horizontal and worked well to wrap-around, I went ahead and created a wraparound background, rather than my usual basic background. This ended up using two different images for the elf… the face and head were one photo, to match the description of the character, and the body/outfit were another, to match the style of outfit requested on the art form. On the final image, since the hair was cut off at the edges on the original photo, I played with the smudging effects to create a more illustrated, fantastical look, and I also played with the softness of the background using Gaussian blur, Lens Blur, and overlay/soft light effects.

Here’s the end result. 🙂

Basic wrap-around, no spine or text on back cover:

Front E-Book Cover:

Stock images from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-portrait-young-beautiful-woman-long-flowin-image24027857
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-elf-image37703849
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-green-forest-mountain-view-top-some-villas-image32433154

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as book cover designer, cover art, creating a book cover, Erin Elliott, fantasy novel, Gaussian blur, lens blur, Melange Books, Mira's View, photoshop CS6, SBibb, SBibb's Photographic Illustration, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint, Sword of Lumina, wrap-around book cover, wraparound cover

June 4, 2014 · 7:00 am

Behind the Scenes – Seducing Sir Gwain

This is a cover for Melange Books.

I’m really pleased with the overall effect of this cover. Given that my first couple attempts at this cover were… less than fruitful… I had a little more success when the publisher suggested I try looking at Romance Novel Covers for a stock model. (http://www.romancenovelcovers.com/) Since the stock site specializes in romance, it was a bit easier to find a couple t fit the description of the cover. Then I did my usual search through current popular covers in time travel romance, erotica, and romance in general, and got a bit of an idea of a style I wanted to try. I chose texture stock from Dreamstime, played with the coloration (including the dawn-light coloring on the text) and this is the end result. It’s a style I’ll definitely keep in mind for the next cover of this series. 🙂

Stock images from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-old-paper-background-texture-image23521032
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-red-satin-silk-fabric-1-image424694

Couple stock image from Romance Novel Covers.

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as book cover art, cover design, Dreamstime, erotica novels, Melange Books, Romance Novel Covers, SBibb, Seducing Sir Gwain, Shari Dale, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint, stock sites

May 28, 2014 · 7:00 am

Behind the Scenes – Lead Poisoning

This is a book cover for Barking Rain Press. In this case, the publisher had a couple images they knew they already knew they wanted to use (the family picture and the prescription bottle with the bullets), but they wanted the image itself put together. They mentioned wanting a picture frame on a mantel or nightstand, and we added in the cracked glass effect later. I added in some of my own textures to add the gritty feel, and tinkered with the coloring to add to the “Lead Poisoning” title effect.

This was the end result. 🙂

Stock images from Shutterstock:
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=166887041
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=71932054
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-134077130/stock-photo–mm-bullet-isolated-on-white-background.html
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=97680992
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=49243009

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as Barking Rain Press, book cover art, cover design, crime novel, J.E. Seymour, Lead Poisoning, photographic illustration, SBibb, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint, stock photography, using stock images

May 21, 2014 · 7:00 am

Behind the Scenes – Fateful Encounters

This is a cover for Melange Books.

The fun thing with putting this cover together was trying to convey the sinister/mysterious mood and keep with the thriller category. In this case, I went with showing the city at the bottom and hinting at one of the characters on the cover… without actually showing her full face. Add in the gritty city textures, and you have a cover. Something to keep in mind during cover creation is what you do with the text. Using clipping masks, you can add texture directly to the text and help incorporate it into the overall image.

Stock photos from: Dreamstime.

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-melbourne-night-image15166508
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-client-prostitute-image24545929
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-girl-near-brick-wall-image14524801
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-grunge-background-image19731104

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as book cover art, book cover designer, clipping masks, creating a book cover, Fateful Encounters, Melange Books, photoshop CS6, SBibb, sinister mood, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint, thriller novel, Vovo Verdan

May 14, 2014 · 6:00 am

Behind the Scenes – The Art of Madame Whitsome

This is a cover for Melange Books.

I really enjoyed putting this one together, especially given that so much of it was playing with how the textures interacted and overlapped. This was a case where the art form gave me enough detail to give me an idea what kind of mood I needed to convey, and the kind of symbolism that might work well, but gave me a bit of free reign as to what I actually did. The result? I had an idea almost immediately that I wanted to try, though it was a while before I had a chance to work on the actual cover.

Of course, the auto-align function in Photoshop CS6 came in helpful as usual, and I also played with various filters and masking to achieve the final effect. One thing to keep in mind when playing with filters, especially if you’re starting with a proof, is that it can be really helpful to name the layer you worked on with what filter you used, and the basic numbers you input into that filter. That way you achieve the same, or a similar effect on the final image. 🙂

Stock images from: Dreamstime.

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-grunge-texture-image19642535
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-grunge-wood-texture-image6312920
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-green-grunge-background-abstract-texture-image33062940
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-musical-notes-image6760767
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-sheet-musical-notes-image1041320
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-angel-wings-digitally-rendered-image-white-feathered-image31948892
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-celtic-harp-chair-image17238791

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as auto-align layers, book cover art, book cover design, Dale Hollin, filters, horror, masking, Melange Books, photoshop CS6, SBibb, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint, The Art of Madame Whitsome

May 7, 2014 · 6:00 am

Behind the Scenes – The Horse Rescuers Anthology

This is a cover for Melange Books.

We played with a few ideas for this cover, and ultimately, we decided to keep to the cover theme of three books going into this anthology. Like the others, only one photograph was used in the main picture, but I did do quite a bit of color changing to match up the characters and horses. Both the horses had their colors changed, the brown horse got a mane, and the two girls had their hair darkened to a brown. I even tweaked the ears on the brown horse a bit, and thus had to play with the background sky. If you do photomanipulation, don’t forget that you can use digital illustration techniques to edit a single image without changing a whole lot else. 🙂

Stock photography from: Dreamstime.

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-buckskin-horse-closeup-image203204
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-horse-riding-image26824429

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as anthology cover, book cover art, book cover design, changing colors, Pat Gilkerson, photographic illustration, photomanipulation, photoshop CS6, SBibb, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint, The Horse Rescuer's Anthology, thematic design

May 4, 2014 · 6:42 pm

Roberto’s Return – Update

I got an email today from the author of Roberto’s Return, (sold by Melange Books, LLC), and he informed me that he got his latest book into the National Baseball Hall of Fame Gift Store’s Bookshop. The below are a couple pictures he sent me. I thought it was cool and decided to share (with his permission in regards to posting the photos).

Just goes to show that it helps to keep your target audience in mind while marketing. In this case, Paul Ferrante’s story centers around a famous baseball player, and h e was able to get a bookstore that focuses on baseball to carry it.

Awesome, right? 🙂

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Filed under Book Covers, Photo Illustration

Tagged as Book Cover Designin, book stores, marketing your book, Melange Books, National Baseball Hall of Fame, niche markets, Paul Ferrante, Roberto's Return, SBibb, Stephanie Flint, young adult novel

April 30, 2014 · 6:00 am

Behind the Scenes – Turn on a Dime

This is a cover for Melange Books.

This was a pretty simple design. Mostly we just tinkered with the coloring for the border and the text outline, with the intent of making it stand out better without looking exactly like the previous covers. We did keep to theme of Penny Pony and Nickel-Bred, but this time we included a girl on the cover. As per the other covers, I included a faint horse image over the border itself. 🙂

Stock photos from: Dreamstime.

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-young-girl-bay-horse-outdoor-standing-image34809821
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-two-brown-baby-foals-image6955592

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Tagged as book cover art, book covers, contemporary YA novel, cover design, Horse Rescuers, Pat Gilkerson, photographic illustration, SBibb, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint, Turn on a Dime

April 16, 2014 · 9:00 am

Behind the Scenes – Kragan

This is a cover for Melange Books.

Sometimes the trick in creating images isn’t creating your own image completely from scratch, but combining images and making them look like they’re all part of one logo. For example, the lion crest was its own stock image, but I added the swords in separate. However, I wanted them to look like part of the image, so I erased parts of the swords where they met up with the crest. The result was that it looks like its all part of one piece.

Meanwhile, it’s been a while since I’ve added a logo to fabric material, and I remembered there are a few tricks in Photoshop to do it. Though I didn’t use any one tutorial specifically, these are a few I glanced over before creating the flag image:

This one has some neat tips and reminders (though I only skimmed the video with the sound off). http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/links/go/8308/

This is more of what I was trying to find initially, using displacement maps. http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/texture-map/

Stock images from Dreamstime.

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-ancient-castle-edinburgh-image19198663
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-horse-knight-armour-helmet-sword-hand-image30467774
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-warm-autumn-sunbeams-image16518554
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-medieval-sword-image3628148
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-lion-crest-2-image24850145
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-templar-flag-medieval-combat-society-white-red-cross-waving-wind-against-blue-sky-clouds-image33995287

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as book cover, book cover design, cover art, Dennis K. Hausker, displacement map, Kragan, Melange Books, photographic illustration, photoshop CS6, SBibb, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint, tutorials

April 9, 2014 · 9:00 am

Behind the Scenes – Roberto’s Return

This is a cover for Melange Books, the next in the T.J. Jackson Mysteries.

For this cover, the author already had a pretty good idea of what he wanted, and he even had images of the park he wanted used for the background. However, since it was a recognizable building, I did have the author check on the need for a property release. (Just like models, many buildings and areas require property releases. It’s a good idea to check before shooting in an area to see if you’ll need one). The author was able to get permission, and so we were able to proceed with that image.

I also ended up doing a bit of digital illustration (Photoshop CS6) to piece everything together. Since we wanted a very specific pose, and the author had the outfit necessary, he had a friend model for him and shoot the image, and then I picked out the stock images of the man’s head to best fit the character. I added in a different sky, since we wanted sunset, and we tried to mimic the baseball text for the title itself.

Side note: Since most of these covers have been revealed by the time I post them, and since I usually try to post behind the scenes information when I reveal the covers on my blog, I’m going to start calling these posts “Behind the Scenes” instead of “Cover Reveal.” Sorry for any confusion. 🙂