Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Book Cover Design Part 2 - Design Your Own, Unique Book Cover: Concept Photos Added to Background

As you know, I not only wrote  my book, 
but I edited, and designed my own book cover.  Oh, and don't forget to sign up for my blogs! 

Part 2 - Adding photos to your background photo.  Now, it was time to add the faces to my background photo.  (All photos are copyrighted by © LK Kelley)  This will probably be the shortest blog, because the last 2 blogs I will show you not only my successes, but my goof-ups as well.

If you will recall from Part 1 


I chose my background cover from a photo I had taken of Echo Lake in Colorado.  (Photo 1)


1. This was my photo of choice

Next, I put a title onto the cover, and my author name. And, bingo! I had a pre-concept cover that could be used by my publisher, Michael Kiser. This appeared on everything until I finished my book cover. (Photo 2)

2. Used on the Publisher's site, and my Website

Now, what faces to put on the background photo?  Luck would have it that I had two volunteers among my friends.  Both were excited to be a part of my Trilogy, and of course, since it revolves around Kaitlan O'Hara, I had to pick the perfect face for my heroine and hero.  A smaller picture was dedicated to my hero, and Kaitlan's mate, Cordone Valon.  The real names will remain anonymous - at least for now.  

Thanks to Matt Mclenahan for the use of this photo
http://razorbackfoto.com
Cordone Valon

Face of The White Wolf Prophecy
Kaitlan O'Hara

Both of these photos had backgrounds, and they had to go!  I took the photos I had, and in Photoshop, I had to ERASE all the backgrounds. This took me the longest time I've ever spent on any photos.   And, since I was knew at all this, it took me a lot longer than I had ever thought, but I did it, and now, I can do it quite fast, and easily.

 For Cordone's photo, I ended up with this.  I liked it, but I couldn't erase the entire background for whatever reason after trying every way I could think.



 Until the photo shoots, I had to use some photos so I could get an idea of what I wanted.  Now, how big, and where to put them?  I did several prototypes.  After several days of trying to figure it out, I decided on the two above, and this is how it turned out.  I was thrilled, and happy, because until now, I wasn't really sure I could do it!  Now, I knew I could! 

Original Concept Cover Photo



Not bad, but still not perfect.  I needed current faces and photos.  So, we set up photo shoots from this point.  That will appear in Part 3 along with a whole lot of photos.  

Until then, I had this, but it still did not appear online, or anywhere else.  It wasn't complete, and I just wasn't totally satisfied.  No.  I had to wait for the photo shoots to get the photos I wanted.  this involved choosing the right photogs for me.

I had some great photogs - Erica Boniface - Independent, and 



I want to thank these great photographers, again, for all their help.


After submitting this as a prototype to my publisher, he told me the mistake I had made, and something I had never thought about.  The SPINE of the book.   The position of the faces was not going to work, because of where there were.  The spine was going to cut some of the faces off.  

Now, I tried moving them around, and got a possible "OK" from Mike, but the fact still remained that since these were not the actual photos, I was up the you-know-what-creek without any proverbial paddle!

Well, what could I expect?  It WAS my first time to design a cover!  After a couple of days, I realized that I would just have to wait until I got the first photos from the first photo shoot.  

So, my next thing was to play around with Photo Shop.  I had a couple of ideas while I waited for the faces. 


I even tried to make a night design.  This wasn't my best shot, and I admit it.  I did like the night photo though.  In Photo Shop, it's fairly easy to change the sky to whatever you want.  


Night Photo

Night Photo Concept


After polling some people, it was 5-1 against the night photo, so I threw this concept out altogether.  

At the time I did this, I didn't know how to post a blog, let alone how to even write one!  I had not even thought to ever write one, either.  

Well. There you have it!  Adding the photos, and how I did it, and believe me, I did make more mistakes before I had it all finished!  And, you will find out in Blog 3! 


Until then, I hope you'll take a chance on my book, and buy it!  I can guarantee that you will never look at werewolves, vampires, and even elves again the same way! 





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