How to Create a Free eBook Cover Graphic (Boxshot) Tutorial Using Gimp
If you want to add a visual component to your e-Book, then you can create a simple cover. Creating a cover (or e-Book image) is completely optional. I have seen many online e-Book sellers who market their e-Books without a cover image. Other sellers will use very professional looking cover images to market their e-Book. Whether you decide to create a cover or not, just keep this in mind: It would be better to have no cover, than to have an ugly, unprofessional looking cover. If your cover design looks bad, it will probably say to the customer, “This e-Book cover is bad, and so is the content-don’t buy it.”
Also, if you are going to sell your eBook with companies such as Clickbank, Amazon (Kindle), Createspace.com, Lulu.com, or any other company, I would indeed recommend creating a cover.
To create a cover, you will need to use a drawing software program. There are various programs you can use to do this. Here are some programs you can use: Adobe Photoshop, Corel Pain Shop, Microsoft Paint, and Gimp. Adobe Photoshop is probably the best software you can use, however, it is also the most expensive & complicated to learn. You can download a free trial of Photoshop at www.adobe.com. Corel Paint Shop Pro is another great software package you can use to create a cover image. It is less expensive, and you can also download a free trial by going to www.corel.com. Microsoft Paint and Gimp are both free programs, however, Gimp is a much better program. You can also create a cover image with this software. You can download and use Gimp. This program is great & I have used it frequently. In fact, this entire tutorial will be using Gimp, and to get your own copy or to find out more, click here.
Now, I will go into a detailed tutorial on how you can create a simple, attractive e-Book cover design. I will use Gimp for this tutorial since it is available as a free download, however, if you use another software program the process will be very similar. If you are going to use Gimp, go ahead & install it on your machine when you are ready to create your cover.
Before you start to create your image, you should think about the title, the colors you want to use, and any other design aspects you need to consider. It is a good idea to browse online for a few minutes & study e-Book designs that you like. Try to see what they have done, how they have placed shadows & reflections.
This is a great way to gather ideas for your own design. Also, you may want to sketch a rough design on paper before you use the software. When you are ready, you can begin to create your cover. The process usually needs to be completed in this order: Insert the background color or image, add any borders, insert any images, and then write the text. Next, you will create the side of the e-Book, distort the image to make it look 3-D, draw the remaining portion of the e-Book, create a shadow, and finally create a reflection (optional).
First, open up the Gimp software. Go to File–> New. You will then see a small box display that asks you the image size. For the cover, select about 800 width X 600 height. This should be enough room to create your image.
eBook Pic 1
Next, select the rectangle select tool in the upper right hand corner & draw a rectangle in the picture. This will be the front cover. Now, at this point you should think about the basic background color that you want to use for your e-Book. For this example, I am going to use a simple maroon background. Also, to create a shadow effect, I am going to use a gradient to fill the background.
To do this, I first select a gradient color. I will use maroon as my foreground, and white as my background. Then, I select the gradient fill button and click inside of the rectangle that I have already drawn & drag the line & release. Then it will show the color inside. You may want to drag the cursor a few times at a diagonal angle until you get a nice white glare in the upper left hand corner as you see below.
eBook Cover 2
Now that I have the basic background color drawn, I will insert a small white line down the far left-hand side of the background from top to bottom. This makes for a nice glare effect for the edge. To do this, I select the paint brush. Then, I select a small line, and select the color white as the foreground color.
Then, I click the left mouse button in the lower left-hand corner where I want to start my line & I release the mouse button. Then, I hit shift to see the line function. To draw the line, stretch it all the way to the top & then click the mouse to draw the line. Now I have a faint white line down the entire left side of the background.
Next, I want to make a basic yellow border around the top of the e-Book to give the appearance of a trim border. Again, I will select the paint brush as before, change my color to yellow, use the shift key to draw a straight line, and then click the mouse to draw it from the top left to the top right as pictured below.
eBook Cover 3
I will then draw another yellow stripe on the bottom of the book using the exact same method as described above. At this point, the e-Book is starting to take shape, but it could use an image or two. Since I am making this e-Book up just to show you how to create one, I will pretend this is going to be an e-Book about vines.
Since it is going to be about vines, I will try to incorporate an image that relates to vines. Remember, you do not necessarily need an image. I am just doing this to show you a few things with the software. It is very possible to create a dazzling looking cover graphic using only Gimp & no images at all.
For the image, I am going to use Gimp’s built-in paint brush with the special vine tip. To use this, I simply select the paint brush tool from the menu, and then I click the brush button at the bottom. Then I size the vine brush using the scale. After that, I simply click the mouse button on the e-Book cover where I would like for the vine to be shown. This is super simple & only takes a couple of seconds as pictured below.
eBook Cover 4
You can also use this same technique with any picture you want. If you want to use another picture, you simply open up a new picture by clicking New–> Open as layer –> and then open the picture you want to insert on your graphic. You can delete any portion you want, and add neat effects to your images.
At this point, I have created a simple background, added a nice trim look with yellow, and inserted the vine image with the paint brush. Now, I am finished with the graphics & I would like to add my title. To do this, I will simply click on the A symbol to write text. Then I will choose the color, font size, and style. For the main title, I will use white text, 39 font, and Sans Serif type. For the subtitle at the bottom, I will use yellow font (size 24) with staccato222 BT font style. I simple click on the part where I would like the words to appear, and then type them in the box as pictured below.
eBook Cover 5
Now I am going to flatten the image. This simply compresses all of the different layers that have been used (text, vine, & background) into one simple image. To do this, you go to the top menu & select Image–> Flatten Image.
Let me just stop right here & tell you that this could be used as an e-Book graphic. Most online bookstores (such as Amazon.com) use simple one dimensional images to represent books. You could use this image in a similar way. If you want to stop here & use this image, just go to File–>Save As and save the image in a location where you can easily find it (and in a format such as .bmp, .jpeg., or .png. For this tutorial, however, I will keep going to show you how you can create the nice 3-D look.
Now the front cover is completely finished. So what I need to do is create the 3-D look. First, I will use the perspective tool to change the shape of the front cover. I will do this by selecting the perspective tool, and then clicking on the e-Book image. This will select the image, and I can then click on the four corners & drag the image with my mouse. Try to drag it so that it is slightly bent upwards toward the upper right as shown below. When you are finished hit “transform.”
eBook Cover 6
When you have finished changing the structure of the picture, you can create the side image. To do this, I will use the rectangle select tool that I used at the beginning to draw the background. This time, however, I will draw a much smaller size. I will then use the gradient fill tool just like I did earlier when I created the maroon background. Make sure to have the lighter side facing the front cover. Next, I will add the yellow lines on the top & bottom as pictured below.
eBook Cover 7
Now I will add some text to the side bar. This is also optional, and the e-Book will look fine without the extra text. To do this, simply select the text button just like earlier. Then select the font size, color, and style. When you are ready, type out the text you want to appear. The text will be in a horizontal position, but it needs to be vertical so it can fit inside the long rectangle. To fix this, select the side bar first & use the rotate & move button to move it away & rotate it on its side. Then use the text button to write your message as shown below.
eBook Cover 8
When you have finished writing your text in the sidebar, go to the menu & select Image–>Flatten Image. This will then compress your work thus far. Then, use the rectangle selector tool to draw an outline around the side bar. Then click the rotate button on the side menu, and rotate the bar to its normal vertical position.
Next, we will want to skew the side bar using the perspective tool. Do this by selecting the perspective tool, and then dragging the side bar until it is in a position where the upper left corner is up higher than the right corner and the lower left corner is higher than the lower right corner as pictured below. When you have got it in a good position, click the transform button.
eBook Cover 9
Okay, after that you can move on. Click the link below to see how to finish up this eBook cover using Gimp, and so you can list it for sale right away!
Finish the eBook Cover Using Gimp: Part 2
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Posted under Write an eBook, eBooks
This post was written by Ben on June 7, 2009
