Okay, at this point we have created a nice eBook cover thus far, however, there is still work to be done. Again, this is great to do if you plan on selling your eBook on eBay.com, Createspace.com, Lulu.com, Amazon.com (Kindle), Clickbank.net, or your own website. Also, if you haven’t yet downloaded the free graphics software I am using to do this, make sure to check that out.
Okay, back to the tutorial. The next thing you need to do at this point is select the “move” tool from the sidebar & carefully move the sidebar until it is right up against the front cover. It should really start to look like a 3-D e-Book now as pictured below.
If you need to adjust your image, just reselect it & use the perspective tool until it looks the way you want it to look. You may have to work with it for a couple of minutes to get it to match up & look correct. This is what it should look like after you move the sidebar up to the front cover:
eBook Cover Tutorial 10
Now it is really starting to look like an e-Book. It is now time to put the finishing touches on your cover. Let’s start by drawing the top portion of the e-Book. First, select the yellow paint brush again & draw a line from the end of the yellow on the sidebar towards the front cover as shown below. Don’t forget about using the shift key to draw a line.
eBook Boxshot 11
Then, simply draw another line (slightly smaller) using either a light black or gray color from the end of the yellow line to the other yellow line. This will create the look of pages. You can then go back and draw a few very light lines going across the top to give the appearance of pages. You can finish the image by adding a small triangle of gray to give the illusion of a shadow. The picture below shows the small shadow I drew in & the finished e-Book.
eBook Cover 13
How to Make a Reflection Under Your eBook or Boxshot
If you would rather make a reflection under the e-Book instead of the gray shadow, you can do that as well. It will probably take you a few more minutes to do this. Here is how you make a reflection. First go to the top menu & select Layer–> Duplicate layer.
This will add a new layer over the old layer of the exact same image. Next, select the perspective tool & then click on the image. Then select the corners of the perspective tool & move them towards the center of the picture to make the image smaller. You should begin to see the other layer behind it as shown below.
eBook Cover 14
Keep working with the image until it is upside down, and just below the original image as shown below. Also, it helps to first outline the cover image with the select rectangle tool first, then use the perspective. That way, you can reduce the amount of white space around the image. When you have positioned the image, click the transform button.
eBook Shadow Illusion
Now, I don’t want the entire reflection to show up. Therefore I will use the eraser tool, and erase about half of the lower image. So now, the image is cut off around the vine image on the lower e-Book cover. Then I will make the image more transparent, so that it looks more like an actual reflection. To do this I will use the layer box as pictured below.
If the layer box is not already open, you can open it by going to the top menu & selecting Dialogs–> Layers. This will then open the layer box. After it is opened, I select the layer that says “background copy.” This represents the small image we manipulated under the real cover. Now, I will simply click on the “Opacity” bar and move it left until the image is barely visible. This makes it look just like a reflection as seen below:
eBook Cover 16
After you have created your e-Book image, you are ready to save it. I would make a few backup copies as well. Also, save it in a few different formats so you can see which format has the lowest file size without compromising the quality of the image. Simply go to File–> Save As.
Finished eBook Cover
Remember, if you have a lot of white space behind the e-Book, it will also save this space in the image. Therefore, you may want to open a new layer & copy only the image with no white space behind it. Or, you can simply open up Microsoft Paint & use the selector tool to drag it & remove the excess space behind it & re-save the image.
You’re finished! That wasn’t so bad was it? It only took about 30 minutes to complete the cover. If you are unfamiliar with the software, or you want to use more sophisticated features, it may take longer. This is really a great software package & you can create very professional looking e-Book covers with it.
There is no need to spend hundreds on other software packages or design services when this is available on the internet as a free download. Also, just remember that you do not necessarily need a cover image. I just feel it does add quality to your e-Book & sales page. You don’t have to make it as sophisticated as the one I made, and if you want to spend even more time you can make it even better than the one I made by adding your own images! Either way, now you know how to easily create you own e-Book cover images for free! Also, if you appreciate this tutorial, please let others know about it.
Adding Hyperlinks, References, Footers, and More in Your eBook
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Posted under Write an eBook, eBooks
This post was written by Ben on June 7, 2009
