I like it. I could have gone in many different directions, but this blog isn't for designers with large budgets, access to resources, and lengthy deadlines (though it would help a ton if you don't rush your design). This is a practical guide, and I worked with what I found for free. Taking that into account, I'm pleased.
But a couple things still bug me: The title and author name both form big blocks that span their respective areas of the layout - but one area is larger than the other. That can come off looking careless.
And I want to add one more element - something to suggest smoke. Smoke is the most visual term in the title (specifically black smoke), and it's likely critical to our fictional story. We could have gone literal and found or created an image of actual smoke - but literal covers like that can be unsatisfying. Viewers will feel more satisfied if they have to work a little for the solution.
We could, as we currently have, leave out the smoke completely - and that can work, but it might feel a little disjointed conceptually. I feel like it should be in there somewhere. I considered making it a subtle background texture behind both text blocks, but I have a better idea - but first, to make the text more cohesive.
So which should I resize - the title or the author name? Or both? Hmmm...
As big as the author name seemed to me a couple steps back when I first enlarged it (and when the title was much smaller), I wonder if it will work even bigger. I'll give that a shot first to see how it works.
First, I drag out some vertical guides from the left ruler by clicking it and dragging them into place, aligning them with the left and right sides of the top text. FYI, when setting up guides to elements like text that aren't always perfectly straight lines, ignore little parts that stick out like the serifs or round part of letters. Let them stick out - your eye will ignore them when it comes to aligning.
Now I select the author name layer, then select the Scale tool from the Toolbox and enlarge it. Since we have multiple type sizes in one text box, it's easier to do it this way than to try changing the text size.
Because GIMP won't let me retain the center position of my already-centered-on-the-layout text box (GIMP!), I have to click a corner, scale out - guess at how big it needs to be - then click the Move tool, slide the box over, see how off I was compared to the guides, and do this again. I don't mean to sound elitist, but clumsy processes like these are another argument for Photoshop. But as I've said before, GIMP is free, so I can't knock it too much. It works.
And while I'm at it, GIMPster, showing me the original size while I'm resizing the element is no help at all - it's confusing.
But... I get it in place:
I'm going to keep it. As I mentioned in the previous step, if I'm stuck between smaller and larger text, I go larger these days. It may seem a little extra huge if you're viewing it on an eReader or on a printed book cover, but it'll make your cover more clear at smaller sizes, and those smaller sizes are what potential readers will be using to make their decisions.
Only problem? The author name is a little too close to the lower edge when compared to the upper black box or the title at the top. So I move it up first. And I don't cheat by just centering it in the existing area - that would be the easy way out. No, I turn off the guides and use the Move tool to get the bottom edge correct first, using the space between the "BLACK SMOKE" text and the photo beneath it as a guide:
Right, so now there's not enough black above it. I'm trapped! I already fixed the photo so I wouldn't have an awkward cropping into the fence rail. Yet if I move the photo up (remember, it's under the Black Cover layer which contains the rectangle cutout through which we see the photo), I may lose too much of the top of the woman, which may be critical to show that she is indeed a woman and not just a big red blob.
I'll have to figure that out later. Now I click on my Black Cover layer, use Rectangle Select to define an area that matches the spacing elsewhere, and Fill with Background Color.
There's that awkward cropping again - though it looks slightly less awkward now since it's right at the lower edge of that last fence rail. Still, I can't be lazy. I move the photo back up so the bottom is cropped back where it used to be in relation with the lower black area.
Remember, we now have two layers with our photo - the redder dress layer with areas cut out and the original layer beneath. We need to move the both up the same amount - and apparently you can't select more than one layer at once with GIMP. So I clicked on the empty area to the left of each layer name (and to the right of the eyeball icons) to link the layers so they'd move together:
I click on the lower of the two layers (though it doesn't matter which one you choose) and, using the Move tool, I click on the photo, then use the Up Arrow to push it up. You could try to do it some other way, but you're likely to inadvertently move your photo(s) a couple pixels to the right or left, leaving unsightly white areas. Arrows work better in this case.
Here's what I got:
Hey, you know what? I don't mind the slightly less amount of the top of the woman. We still have her hands, and there's a little more focus on them now. I don't think we lost anything critical to reading the image. So I'm going to keep it.
Crap, I just noticed something else I don't like. It's minor but it's bugging me. Do the squint test - squint your eyes and look at the cover, focusing on the overall areas of image. Doing this helps you see the big picture instead of getting all the details.
See that one tree, with the sun hitting it from the one side? It's lighter than anything else, and it's drawing my eye too much to the left instead of the moment. Don't think this is nit-picking - I noticed it and I can change it, so I will.
I click on the top of the two photo layers - since I didn't cut the tree out of that layer, that's the one we're seeing. Then I click on the Clone Tool (the rubber stamp) in the Toolbox:
We get a lot of options that we did with the Eraser tool, which makes sense. Size, Aspect Ratio, Angle, Hardness - these are all important when you're retouching an image. Play around with them to see what they do.
From the icon (the soft circle) in the Tool Options section at the bottom, I see that the default brush is soft and small, so I'll start there.
To use the Clone Tool, you have to define the part of your image that you're cloning from, and you do that by holding down Control (PC) or Command (Mac) and clicking in that spot. You want to pick a spot that's similar, and since I have a light vertical area that I want to correct, I pick the top of the tree a little further to the right, where it's darker. That way I can just go down vertically and it all should look pretty even.
I'll also mention that natural objects like trees are very forgiving. This shouldn't be too tough.
One more alteration - I set the Opacity of my Clone Stamp to 60 - because I don't want to completely eliminate the highlight. I just want to soften it. And since I'm pulling from a darker area of the tree, keeping the Opacity at 100% would actually make the tree darker on the left - then lighter in the middle - then darker again. Our eyes might notice that odd lighting.
Once I've defined my starting point, I just move down the highlight. It works very well - this is not precision work. Thank you, trees, for being so varied in your appearance!
When I'm done, the tree is no longer distracting to me:
Okay, now one more thing - I want to add a smoke effect. This is going to be fun.
I could look for a free stock image of smoke. I could even draw something - maybe smear some ink around a piece of paper to simulate smoke. I could start a fire and then take my own photo of smoke - but that seems a little dangerous. So I get another idea - something I've never done before. An idea borrowed from a tried-and-true special effects technique for making smoke in movies.
This is my homebrew solution: I fill a glass with water, then sit it next to my white stovetop. And then I get some soy sauce. Yes, soy sauce - black food coloring would be better but I don't have any handy.
Then with my phone, I get close to the glass and position it so I'm aimed right through the glass at the white background. Tip: it's hard for phones to autofocus on blurry things like water and smoke, so I click the center of my screen on the next step to focus).
By the way - I'm writing this post before I've proceeded with the technique - so I don't even know if it will work at this point.
As you probably expected, I drop the soy sauce in and capture its swirly goodness:
It's not as clear as I wanted, but I think I can work with it. I wound up grabbing a knife and creating a mini whirlpool to try to keep the soy sauce in the center. It kind of works... kind of...
I e-mail myself the photos and save them, then I open the one I think will work best - the second one - from GIMP.
Now I'm thinking, "What is it that I want to do?" I want to retain that dark cloudy area in the middle and delete everything else, so I can easily add it to my cover layout.
There are many tools in a photo editing program that you can use to select an irregular area like this. I start with the Fuzzy Select Tool (looks an awful lot like a Magic Wand to me). Once I've selected the tool, I click in my image and check out the selections it made, which vary depending on where I click. The tool is selecting a region that it interprets as being connected to the spot where I click.
Also note that I adjust the Threshold setting at the bottom of the Tool Options. This grabs more connected area.
And I click the box for Feathered Edges (meaning they're soft edges) and increase the amount a bit more than the default.
When I have a shape that looks interesting, I stop. I know I can go back later and try this part of the process again - or I may just make modifications when I go to the next step.
Here's the selection, indicated by the "marching ants" outline:
So now, to really see what I have, I hit Copy and then from the Windows option in the top menu, I drop down to select my original layout file.
I hit Paste and my selection drops in as a new top layer:
Okay... I think I can work with that. I mean it looks like a continent on an alien planet, but it seems like what I had in mind, more or less.
I click the move tool and drag it to the left of the photo:
That's about where I wanted it.
Then I select Colors from the top menu and Desaturate. A menu comes up and I just go with the defaults, which creates a grayscale version of the image. It's not dark enough but that's okay.
Then under Colors from the top menu, I select Levels. That little menu is a histogram, and it's showing me how much dark and light there is in my current selection.
What I want to do is make the darkest parts of my soy sauce blog black. So, I drag the little triangle at the lower left, which represents the black point (the darkest point of my image) over to the left of that mountain showing my gray. I play with it and get it where I like.
Now I move my layer down, so it's under the text but over the image:
I like it, but it's a little too prominent. I just want a hint of the smoke - maybe something so subdued that you don't immediately even recognize it as smoke. I try this size and position:
And then this:
I really like those wisps on the left side of the smoke. Initially I thought I was going to put the smoke more on the left, but I like the way it seems to be stalking the woman here. And the additional focus it brings to the lower right side of the image seems to retain the flow around the layout.
There are a couple extraneous wisps higher than the main one, so I use the Eraser tool to delete them. There's also a tiny bit of empty area at the lower right corner (you may not be able to see it here) where the photo is showing through. I'd rather keep that whole thing opaque so it seems like the black area on the bottom of the layout is creating or turning into the smoke. So, I use the Airbrush Tool to fill that in with my foreground color, which I make sure is black.
Here's the updated image:
Soy Sauce. Who woulda thought?
At this point, I've been working for so long that I'm kind of blinded to the layout. I need some time to rest and come back with fresh eyes - I just may see something else that I'd like to work on.
So that's the end of this amorphous step. The next step (possibly the last of this layout) will be Sizing and Saving The Layout.
No comments:
Post a Comment