Category Archives: Client Work

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

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. 🙂

Stock Photos from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-afroammerican-businessman-points-finger-up-image29241340
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-sunset-sky-image24432770

All other images provided by author. Photograph of Doubleday Field used with permission.

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Tagged as A T.J. Jackson Mystery, baseball player, book cover design, cover art, Paul Ferrante, photographic illustration, photoshop CS6, Roberto's Return, SBibb, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint

April 2, 2014 · 8:00 am

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. 🙂

Stock photo from: Dreamstime.

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

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Tagged as book cover art, book cover design, ebook covers, Gabriel Constans, Melange Books, photographic illustration, SBibb, SBibb's Photographic Illustration, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint, The Last Conception

March 26, 2014 · 8:00 am

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. 🙂

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Tagged as Amy Ray, Barking Rain Press, book cover art, book cover design, book covers, Dangerous Denial, ebooks, motion blur, photographic illustration, photoshop CS6, radial blur, SBibb, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint, thriller

February 26, 2014 · 2:36 pm

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:

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. 🙂

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Filed under Book Covers, Client Work, Photo Illustration

Tagged as A Thousand Sunsets, book cover art, book cover design, book cover illustration, cover design, cover reveal, custom book covers, Jannie Lund, Melange Books, patch tool, photographic illustration, photomanipulation, photoshop CS6, romance novel, SBibb, Stephanie Flint

February 19, 2014 · 7:00 am

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. 🙂