It's a good place to be - elements are in place and the main feel of the cover seems to have been defined, but I have some issues. The vertical balance is off - the title is smaller than the author name, making the layout bottom-heavy.
I'm also thinking of adjusting the color of the photo - specifically the dress, to make it darker and red.
But first I'll work on that title. And since I've discussed the Move, Scale, and Text tools in previous chapters, I won't explain those tools. Instead, I'll show that I first enlarged "BLACK SMOKE" to span the top area. I then made "BROKEN" the same font size:
But that empty space is going to be an issue. The original title looked okay on its own, but with the treatment I gave to the author name, it now looks like the title should somehow fill the same area. So I enlarge "BROKEN" to span the top area as well:
That's a bold cover. If I were designing this in 2005, I might think it's too bold for the subject - especially as a print book. But it's 2014 and cover designs need to work really well in tiny sizes. So I'm sticking with bold.
Now "by the" looks too small, and I don't like the way it's overlapping "BROKEN". I have an idea to fix that, but it involves pulling a color from the photo - and since I want to alter the photo, I'll work on that first.
I duplicate my photo layer so I have a safe copy under the one I'll be working on. Right-click on the layer and select Duplicate Layer from the dropdown menu. I now have a layer named "woman at fence copy" - and it's blue, so it's selected, which is what I want.
The woman's dress is pink - kind of a dusty rose. The hue looks about right - it's red-based - but pink/dusty rose is a Tint of red - meaning red with white added. It's light red. Tint = adding white to a hue, Tone = adding grey (which, of course, is black and white), and Shade = adding black. Check out this article to learn more - color is really fascinating and deep subject, but understanding its basic components is a great way to start.
So the dress is the right hue (red) but I want to make it darker. I like to think this way before I start making adjustments so I'm not just trying anything and everything. I like to know my initial goal, even if I wind up diverting from it.
Under Colors from the top menu, I select Hue-Saturation and I get a new popup menu:
As you can see, the menu is really named Adjust Hue/Lightness/Saturation. Saturation is usually what people call "brightness" - but it's actually how much or how little hue is greyed down (Tone). And Lightness is just how much white (Tint) or black (Tone) we have. We can adjust anything this way.
The default in the center is Master - if you make adjustments that way you'll alter everything in the photo. I only want to affect the red, so I select red from the color "wheel" and begin experimenting with the settings.
I played around for a while. Photoshop has much more sophisticated methods to control exactly which color range you're working on, but GIMP is, not surprisingly more limited. I manage to get the dress looking red but though the sky, grass, trees, and fence weren't as red as the dress initially, they still had some amount of red in them, so they were still altered:
I don't mind the overall hue change - if anything, it unifies the photo even more by adding a red cast. But, as you can see, the adjustment falls apart in the sky, where it lightens next to the woman and fence post. What was a subtle gradation previously has now been emphasized, and it while this effect might work well elsewhere, it just looks like a mistake here.
I use the scale tool at the bottom of the main canvas window, and change the scale to 100% so I can see what I'm doing. Then I select the Eraser tool from the Toolbox and start erasing the sky in my layer. This works because we made that safe copy - the original, unadjusted layer is below the one we just modified, so any areas I erase will show what's underneath.
Here's a before and after of one area:
 |
| original image |
 |
| cleaned up |
This is a precision process and can take some time. There are other tools you can use as well, but the Eraser seems to be working well for me now. I'm not erasing everything except the dress/woman - I'm just getting the areas where the sky was touching other objects.
Also, experiment with the settings on the Eraser tool (or whatever tool you're using). You might want to make the size larger when you've got a bigger area to work with.
And a general tip for any kind of image modification like this where you're working on complex areas: do little chunks, then unclick your tool (release the button from your mouse) - then do more work. Why? Because if you make a mistake, you can easily Undo instead of getting almost there... and erasing the wrong part right at the end. Working in chunks is much more efficient.
Yet another tip - hold the Space Bar and grab the image to move around as you're working in closeup like this. It's way more efficient than using the scroll bars in the canvas.
I worked for about ten minutes, even cutting out some parts of the woman's hands to create some additional highlights. Bonus! Here's where I am:
That's more how I envisioned it. There is a witch element to the story, and we said it's suspense/thriller, so red is appropriate.
I mentioned that I had an idea to bring the red into "by the" - so I first select the Color Picker Tool (the eyedropper) from the Toolbox. Then, still with my newly adjusted image layer selected, I grab a bit of the color of her dress from a part in the middle that's not too light or dark:
Sure, I could just pick red when I modify the type, but this isn't exactly a pure red. An out-of-the-box color that a program offers you (Microsoft Word!) is usually too saturated anyway, and if you use it, it can come off as cheap. It's a common problem. The Foreground color changes to my new color:
So now I have the exact red used in my photo. I click on my "by the" layer, then select the Text Tool and highlight my text. I click on the color chip for the text in the text menu above it (the white chip in the corner) and this brings up the same kind of menu above, though it's now named "Change color of selected color". My text color has been changed:
It's important to look at that text color. What works in a photo, with different colors next to it, may not work elsewhere. Color appears to change based on what surrounds it - that's Simultaneous Contrast (no, you weren't imagining it).
That red text looks good on the black and the little bits of white where it overlaps. It's saturated just enough and just the right amount of dark/lightness. It would very different on a yellow background, or a green background, or a white background - and in those cases, I'd make modifications to make it appear like the new dress color. But I'm good with it now, so I'm keeping it.
But, I said I don't like the size and position of "by the", so I change the size of the type:
I like the size but the position is really awkward. Be aware of tangents like this - areas where objects touch or overlap slightly - but not enough - creating an awkward, visually stress-inducing layout.
But that's okay because I intended to move it anyway. I grab the Move tool and reposition:
Now I really like what I'm seeing. I actually wound up kerning the text a bit more, so the text either falls onto the white text in a nice, clear way, or it avoids it entirely.
I'm mostly happy - but there's one more thing I like to do. I'll almost never outline text - it can look crude, and it's often a sign of a bigger problem (like your background elements not having enough contrast) - but I do like to cut out when possible.
A quick overview of what I do next, because I've covered it all previously: I duplicate my "by the" layer - turn off the top "by the" layer for a second - and make the lower "by the" layer black.
Then I use the Move tool, click the text, and use the arrow keys to move it up and to the right, to cover more of the "BROKEN" text. To keep this drop shadow in a consistent direction from the original (which we can't see right now), I click the Up Arrow and Left Arrow at the same time - so it's moving diagonally. This will look cleaner than trying to move it manually.
Then I turn the top "by the" layer back on. I actually went through this process a couple more times, moving the black drop shadow text a little more or less each time. Why not just move the top, red "by the" layer? That would be easier, but the text was already in a good position, so moving that wouldn't be a wise choice.
Here's what I got:
So the title has two nicely contrasting fonts that work well together. There's size variation, there's color variation, and by positioning the overlapping text in a good spot as well as adding that drop shadow, the whole cover looks intentional (a term I use a lot).
One more thing to notice. Everything in the cover is centered - except two elements: "by the" and the woman. See how the reader's eye flows? (this is only a simulation):
The cover as it stands now has solid balance and direction. It fits together and it looks like someone really designed it. There's flow. Everyone has an innate sense of these components of visual design, even if they aren't conscious of them. And handling them well will not only help you sell more books, but it will make those who do buy your books see value them more. We humans are so easily influenced.
But... I have another idea. Maybe two. I'll save that for next for Final Adjustments.