contemporary fiction | Stephanie Flint

Tag Archives: contemporary fiction

August 27, 2014 · 7:00 am

Behind the Scenes – Seven Days to Goodbye

A cover for Barking Rain Press.

For this one, the main character is training an Australian Shepherd, and since the main stock image we wanted to use had a different breed of dog, I ended up swapping out dogs. We tried a couple different versions, but this is the one we finally settled on. We also changed the girl’s hairstyle. In order to get everything to look natural, I used Photoshop CS6’s overlay blend mode in layers and used the black and white paint brushes to change the lighting of her hair so that it would match the lay of the hoodie underneath. I also applied lighting techniques to the dog, and covered part of the dog’s paws to look more natural.

This is the result:

Stock images from Shutterstock:

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=91979300
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=3724855
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=86808145

Cover Reveal – Slip Sliding Away

This is a wrap around cover I did for Barking Rain Press.

(You can find the book here: http://www.barkingrainpress.org/dd-product/slip-sliding-away/ ).

(See a larger version on my Deviant Art Account: http://sbibb.deviantart.com/art/Slip-Sliding-Away-Cover-394872911 )

For this particular cover, I actually did a photoshoot (three, to get the angle and items right) of my own. The publisher wanted a desk with the drink on it and the photos, and when I first started trying to put it together with stock, I realized I’d have a much easier time if I just set the shoot up myself (especially since we’d just finished that dresser…. which worked well for a desk setting). I set up the glass, notepad, and alarm clock, as well as used an empty picture frame and two gift cards to hold the place for the photos. (Note to self: Next time someone has the stock photos they want used already picked out, just print them off and put directly in the image… it’ll save editing time later). I also changed the card reflections to that of the stock photos (from Shutterstock). For the alarm clock, I quickly discovered the numbers weren’t going to appear on their own (same reason you can’t have your shutter speed faster than 1/200 or you get a black line through your image). We had considered using a digital font for the numbers on the clock, but I found the LEDs just faintly showed in the image, had so I used the overlay tools to bring out the parts I needed.

I also changed the color of the overall image so it’d look more like night (I played with in-camera color settings, but found Photoshop was a bit more versatile for me). I did try to angle the lights (Alien Bees) so they’d look more like a lamp or low window.