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We’re often told to not judge a book by its cover, but in most cases we do. If a book doesn’t have a nice cover, it probably wouldn’t catch our attention in the first place. In this tutorial, I’ll be teaching you how to create a dirty grunge book cover design complete with bleeds!
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Tutorial Details
- Program: Adobe Photoshop CS4
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Estimated Completion Time: 2-3 hours
I’m a fan of horror, thriller and crime investigation novels, which are quite often linked with dirty and grungy covers. Two of my favorite things combined! This is the beauty we’ll be working towards:
Step 1 – Setting Up Your .PSD file
A book cover, in most cases (unless it’s an eBook) is going to go to press, which means we have to set it up correctly. There are hundreds of different book sizes, but a few that are commonly used for fiction books. One of them is 108x177mm (front cover only). Spines change width obviously depending on the length of the book, but in this case we’re going to use 26mm, giving us a total dimension of 243x180mm including a 3mm bleed.
If you’re setting up your document for a real book cover, whatever you do, do not guess the width of the spine! There’s a simple formula which can determine that width for you: you have to take the number of pages and divide that number by your text papers PPI (Pages Per Inch), which all depends on the weight (GSM) of your paper. You should be able to get that from your quote sheet, or ask your printers for it! You can use this awesome spine width calculator if you can’t be bothered to work it out yourself!
Head over to Photoshop and set up a new document; make sure your width is set to 243mm and your height is set to 180mm. Make the resolution 300 pixels/inch and set the color mode to CMYK. Hit OK!
Make sure your rulers are showing by going to View > Rulers, or press Command + R. A lot of people don’t use rulers very much, but they can come in very handy for dragging out guides later on in the project. Go to View > New Guide… and with Horizontal selected insert 3mm into the Position box. Do the same again, this time inserting 177mm into the position box. Repeat the process using measurements 3mm and 240mm, this time with the Vertical checkbox ticked. That’s our 3mm bleed added to the document – our design will go right up to the edge of the document, but for those that don’t know, when the document goes to print, 3mm from each side of the document will be chopped off.
This means the printers can assure you that there will be no white gaps on any of your documents so long as you set up the file correctly. Also, with any print project, not just this one, always keep your text at least a few millimeters away from the bleed guide, this is just to be on the safe side incase a few of your prints aren’t aligned correctly when being cut down to size. You might find it easier to create another set of guides for this, or you can do what I do and use your eyes as a guide.
It’s time to add some guides for our spine. Go to View > New Guide… and with the Vertical checkbox ticked, insert 108mm and hit OK. Repeat the last step using the measurement 134mm. Remember we’re working in millimeters, not centimeters or pixels. You should now have a nicely aligned .PSD document. Always remember to save your documents regularly!
Step 2 – Choosing a Color Scheme and Adding Some Initial Background Texture
Crime, Horror and Thriller books are often associated with grungy covers, which means this tutorial is going to use a huge handful of textures, blending modes and brushes.
I’m going to go with a blood red color scheme mixed with some warm browns, dark oranges and a pure white which will be used for the majority of the typography in our design – what color scheme you choose is entirely up to you, I suggest you play around with your design for as long as you have and see what you can come up with; after all that is the best way to learn and pick up new techniques.
Select a warm blood red/orange (#db2900) and using the Paint Bucket Tool fill your background layer. We’re going to add some texture to our design straight away. Make a new layer and fill it with white. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise… In the new window, insert 100% into the Amount field, and make sure Gaussian and Monochromatic are both selected. Hit OK.
With the new layer still selected, drag it down to the New Layer symbol at the bottom of the palette – this will duplicate the layer. Repeat the step again. Set all three layers to Overlay and using a large, soft Eraser, get rid of some of the areas on each layer. Name each layer sensibly so you can find them later; I named mine “Noise 1″, “Noise 2″ and “Noise 3.”
Already our cover is looking quite grungy, and so far we’ve only used one built in Photoshop Filter! Head over to Textur.es and download this lovely grunge texture. Insert the texture into your document by going to File > Place. Rotate it so the grungier side of the texture is on your front cover, and upscale it to the same size as your document. The easiest way to do this is by going to Edit > Free Transform or by pressing Command + T and then dragging the corners of the texture out whilst holding the Shift Key to keep everything in proportion.
Change the textures layer to Overlay, and change the layer name to “Texture 1.” Drag the layer down to the New Layer icon at the bottom of the palette to duplicate the layer. Rotate it by 90 degrees, and align it next to the spine (this should be easy if you have Snap to Guides selected – if not, go to View > Snap To > Guides). Grab the same soft Eraser we had a minute ago and erase a few areas of our duplicated layer. Rename the layer to “Texture 2.”
The joy of using textures in your work is that you can create a stunning piece of work with a very minimal amount of time, effort and resources. One texture can go a long, long way.
I’ve just realized our whole design is turning a little bit orange – not so much that blood red I was hoping for! The overlays on the Noise layers seem to have lightened our red up so much that it’s turned to orange. To fix this, make a new layer above our original background and fill it with a dark red/brown (#5c0000). Rename the layer to Background 2 and drop the Opacity to 60%.
Step 3 – Making Different Areas Look Different
When it comes to books, there are three different areas. The front covers main purpose is to advertise the book – it needs to stand out. The spine is to make the book easy to find on a shelf full of others. The back cover is to present a blurb – meaning it should be easy to read. So far, our front, spine and back look virtually the same. We need to fix that!
Duplicate your layer “Texture 2″ and select the Paint Bucket Tool. With the same dark red/brown we selected earlier, click somewhere on your duplicated layer to fill some areas. Rename the layer to “Texture Blobs” or something of your own choice. Your image should currently look like something below.
Select a large, soft Eraser, and erase out some of the inner areas of your “Texture Blobs” layer. Change the Blending Mode to Multiply, and lower the opacity to something you think is suitable for your piece; I used 20%. This should give us a dark, grungy front cover that fades into the background as it reaches the center of the page, which is where we will be featuring an object.
Make a New Layer and name it “Front Border.” We’ll be making some more darker areas where, later on, we will be presenting some text with a Spot UV overlay. Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool and select the front of your cover up to the spine.
Select a large, soft brush and change your color to a dark grey or black. In your marquee selection, paint a dark area at the top and bottom of your front cover – you could even paint a very small streak of black up the sides of your cover. Use the Eraser with a soft brush to thin out any areas you felt you applied too thick.
Change the Opacity of the layer to about 25%. Repeat the last two instructions again, this time making the border even thinner – remember to make a new layer! Name it “Front Border 2.” I also used a different color – a dark red/brown (#6f2009).
You should have more subtle grunge area at the top and bottom of your front cover now, which is suitable to present some nice typography later on in the tutorial.
Now we’re going to work on the spine of our book cover. The spine should be very subtle and easy to read, especially as we don’t have too much space to work with. Make a New Layer and name it “Spine Background.” Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool and select the spine – this should be relatively easy because, with Snap to Guides selected, it should automatically connect with our spine guides. Grab a soft brush and using the same color we used in the last instruction, paint the bottom and top of your spine, leaving a small area in the middle. Lower the Opacity to 70% just so a little grunge shows through!
With the front cover and spine virtually complete (we will probably add a little more background texture later on!), it’s time to move on to the back cover. The back cover will have a lot of text and important information on it, so it’s important we don’t show too much texture and keep it pretty plain. We will need to display: a blurb, a couple of one-line reviews, a price, a barcode, an ISBN number and maybe an authors web address and a designers web address.
This step is pretty much the same as the last few: make a new layer and name it “Back Cover Background.” With the Rectangular Marquee Tool, select the back cover. Select the Brush Tool and choose a large, soft brush – again using the same color we used in the previous step. Brush over the back cover, leaving a small, low opacity area in the middle.
Lower the opacity of the layer to 85% and then make another New Layer called “Back Cover Background 2.” Lower the size of your brush a little (I lowered mine to 1000px) and choose pure black as your color. Repeat the same step as before, this time not going as far into the center of the back cover as we did previously. Change the layers Blending Mode to Overlay and drop the Opacity to 50%.
With your marquee selection still active, fill it with pure black on a new layer named “Back Cover Black Overlay.” Lower the opacity to 15%. This just takes a little color out of our back cover which will make it easier to present readable text.
Our back cover, compared to our spine, seems a little dark. To fix this we’re going to make our spine a little darker. Reselect the spine with the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Make a New Layer and name it “Spine Dark Background.” With the same brush as we used in the previous instruction, brush over the left half of the spine using a color from the back cover (use the Eyedropper Tool to select a color). You should have something look similar to the screenshot below:
Lower the Opacity of the new layer to 70% – you’re spine should now merge in a little more between the back and front covers.
Step 4 – Organizing Our Document!
I often take a few minutes throughout a project to tidy up my mess – it doesn’t take long when we’ve been renaming our layers throughout the length of the tutorial, but now we have a total of 16 layers it’s time to put them into some folders.
Make a total of four new folders by clicking on the New Group icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Rename them to: “Main Background,” “Front Cover Background,” “Spine Background” and “Back Cover Background.” Move all the related layers into the appropriate groups.
This was a bit of a short step, but plays a vital part in keep our document organized. If you’re not to sure what you’re doing when it comes to pre-press and you send in a Photoshop document, having a well-named layered and grouped document really helps out and ultimately means the turnaround time for your print job will probably be quicker – we all win!
Step 5 – The Typography
It’s time to add some typography! As this project isn’t actually for a real book cover, I’m going to make some names up. I’m going to use my name, “Callum Chapman” as the author, “BOOK COVER TUTS+” as the book title, “A Tuts+ Print Tutorial” as a mini description of the book, and a section of text from Tuts+ about page as the blurb. On top of all this, I’ll be making up some mini one-line reviews by several made up magazines/newspapers.
Select the Type Tool and drag a text box over your front cover. Type in your authors name, in my case I used “CALLUM CHAPMAN.” I used two separate lines for “CALLUM” and “CHAPMAN.” Select your text and change to a suitable font – I’m going to use Myriad Pro for the majority of text on my cover as it has a lot of styles such as condensed, semibold, oblique, bold, and a combination of them all together. When designing for print, try to stay clear from Faux Bold and Italic as in the end they don’t always come out as great as they could.
Change the size of the authors first name to 45pt and the size of the authors surname to 60pt – this is the time to make sure your text box is lined up with the bleed on the right-hand side of the document and the right side of your spine. Open up the Character Palette by going to Window > Character. From here we can change the leading and tracking, which is always important when it comes to typography – never bypass it! Change the Leading to 55pt – this will bring your authors surname closer to the bottom of your authors first name, but not too close! If you’ve used a different typeface or size to me, you might need to play round with these settings as they differ depending on the font and size used.
With your text layer still selected, open up the Blending Options by going to Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options. Alternatively you could Alt-Click on the Text Layer and select Blending Options from the menu.
We want to add various styles to make our text really pop out from the cover. We’ll be using the following styles: Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Bevel and Emboss and Stroke. The screenshots below show the different settings I used for each individual style:
Create a new layer beneath our authors name and call it “Author Shadow.” Grab the Brush Tool, and with a medium-sized soft brush, paint a black shadowed beneath the authors name.
Change the layers Blending Mode to Saturation, this will turn everything below it to greyscale. Lower the layers Opacity to 40%. The point of this step is to just make it that little bit easier to read, and makes the text pop out even more!
Repeat the previous steps to add a book title. I’m using the following text in the same text area on separate lines: “A Tuts+ Print Tutorial” and “BOOK COVER TUTS+.”
With your mini description selected, change the size of the font to 15pt. Select your mini description and book title together and change the Leading in the Character Palette to 30pt. Select your mini description and change the color to an off-white/red – I used #ffdada.
Make a new layer beneath your book title layer, and using the same technique we used earlier, brush in a black shadowed area with a small, soft brush. Remember to rename your layer – I called mine “Title Shadow.”
Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Change the Angle to 90 and the distance to 250. To preview the different Distances before applying the blur, make sure the preview box is checked. Hit OK to apply the blur to our shadow.
Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Change the Amount to 25, the Distribution to Gaussian and make sure Monochromatic is unchecked. Hit OK.
Change the layers Blending Mode to Overlay and its Opacity to 60%.
Using similar styles and fonts, add a few short reviews beneath the book title. I’m going to use “‘A top-notch book!’ – PSD Times” and “‘Fantastically gripping!’ – Vector Mag.” I’m going to use Bold Condensed Myriad Pro for the review, and Condensed Myriad Pro for the reviewers name.
Step 6: The Back Cover
It’s time for the Blurb on the back page. Head over to the Envato homepage and copy the brief introduction to the Tuts+ Network. Select the Text Tool in your Book Cover document and make a new text box on the back cover; make sure it’s center! Paste the introduction in to the text box. Back over at Envato, copy and paste the information under the ‘About Envato’ heading, head back to your document and paste this in, too. At the top of your text box, insert a line that will be used as an opening sentence. I’m going to use: ‘You’re about to learn how to make your very own book cover!’
It’s time to style up our back page! We want our opening line to stand out from the rest of the blurb. To do this, I’m going to use the same color we used for the mini description above the book title we used on the front cover (#ffdada). Make the selection bold and change the font size to 15pt.
I’m pretty happy with how the blurb is looking already! Change your main two paragraphs font size to 12pt. The only problem we now have is some words are being separated and split in to two using a ‘-’ symbol. To fix this, hit enter to send the word to the next line – repeat this step until there are no more unwanted hyphens.
Make sure the top of your blurb is lined up with the top of the authors name on the front page. To do this, drag a new guide down from the ruler and line it up with the top of the authors name. If they aren’t lined up, use the cursor keys on your keyboard to nudge your blurb up or down until they are aligned correctly.
Add a couple more reviews on our back cover. The easiest and quickest way to do this is to duplicate the two reviews from earlier and rearrange the new layers on the back cover beneath our blurb. With the Text Tool selected, click on the text and change the words to something different. To make sure the two reviews are centered your can drag the text box out to the very edge of our guidelines, like I have done below:
Our book cover is starting to look like a real book cover! It’s time to add some information the shops are going to require, such as a barcode, a ISBN number, a price and some other information. Unfortunately, barcodes can’t be read by scanners on busy backgrounds, so we’re going to have to use a white block. Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool and make a selection beneath our two reviews. With the Paint Bucket Tool, fill the selection with white on a new layer called “ISBN Background.”
Reselect the Rectangular Marquee Tool and highlight a area at the bottom of our white ISBN background. Fill the selection with the off-white color we have been using throughout the tutorial.
Grab the Text Tool and rough out some text. I’m going to use: “USD 9.99,” “GBP 5.99″ and “EU 6.99,” “Cover Design by Callum Chapman,” “Be sure to visit PSDTuts+ website at http://psd.tutsplus.com/,” and “ISBN 000-0-0000-0000-0.” Style your text – you know what to do! Make sure you use pure black, though! Instead of finding an actual barcode, just use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to produce a rectangle to use as a placeholder.
Step 7: Adding Some Interest with a Stock Photo
We’ve got two things left: The spine, and an image on the front cover. We’re going to leave the spine until the last minute – we’ll simply be duplicating, resizing and rearranging some items from the front cover to produce our spines content. Head over to sxc.hu and download this great free stock photo of an old ammo box. Once you’ve downloaded the stock photo, place it into your document twice.
Grab the Magic Wand Tool and click on the white areas of both images – hit the delete key to remove the background. If you find the Magic Wand Tool is selecting areas of the stock photo that you don’t want to remove, try lowering the Tolerance in the Magic Wand Tools options at the top of the screen.
Rename your two layers to “Ammo Box 1″ and “Ammo Box 2.” With “Ammo Box 1″ selected, go to Edit > Free Transform or press Command+T to resize the photo. Whilst holding the shift key, drag the image right out of proportion.
Change the Blending Mode of the layer to Overlay, and using the Eraser remove some of the outer areas of the image – for example the part that is overlapping the spine.
Go to Edit > Free Transform or press Command + T on the “Ammo Box 2″ layer and scale it up a little – don’t worry if it’s a little pixelated – we’re going for a grunge look and pixelation all adds to it! Change the layers Blending Mode to Hard Light. Duplicate the layer twice: Lower the first ones Opacity to 30%, and the second ones Opacity to 20%. With the second duplicated ammo box still selected, hit the Shift + Cursor Down key to move the selection down – move it a little to the right and rotate it by going to Edit > Free Transform or by pressing Command + T and dragging the corners round.
Step 8: The Spine
That’s our front cover complete! We now have to move onto the spine. Locate your authors name layer and your book titles layer – select them both and drag them down to the ‘Create New Layer’ icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette to duplicate them. Rearrange your two layers so that they’re at the top of the Layers Palette. Arrange them so that they’re sitting next to each other, as seen in the screenshot below:
With the authors name layer selected, go to Edit > Free Transform or press Command + T and scale the selection down whilst holding the Shift Key to keep it in proportion. Rotate the selection whilst still in Transform Mode and arrange it neatly into the spine.
Repeat the previous instruction again with your book title layer. Once the text is on it’s side, grab the Text Tool and edit it. Delete the mini description, and spread “Book Cover Tuts+” across two lines by pressing the enter key to send any words after it onto a new line. Line the new text up with the author name.
Hopefully you’ve taken my advice and have already put our stock photo layers into a group. If not, do that now! Once that has been done, duplicate the group, go to Edit > Free Transform or hit Command + T, resize to a suitable size and rotate the selection round. Rearrange the image so it nicely fits in the center of the spine.
That’s it, we’re all done! If you’re following this tutorial for a real project, you will need to replace your barcode placeholder with a real barcode, as well as setting the file up ready for print – all printers require different settings, so it’s always best to speak to them first!
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Hey Callum Chapman very good and detailed Tutorial, I have got one question basically i am not from print media you use here PS for Instead for IL.
You use PS here instead of IL why ?
My guess is because it’s PSDtuts, and so it fits better with the website. But you’re right — it could have been done in Illustrator.
It might also be that the author is more comfortable (as I am) in PS than IL — partly because IL is downright clunky sometimes and doesn’t have such a friendly interface as PS. I wish they’d bring it more in line.
I work with a lot of production art.
It would definately be better to do the final layout in either Illustrator or InDesign. Printers have a hard time working with just photoshop files (for colour separation and registration issues), not to mention the fact that all of the copy (type) will lose it’s hard edges.
I would have gone to this extent creating all of the elements and working out placement in the photoshop document (including shadows below the text). Then I would remove all the copy, flatten and place in illustrator within a dieline to ensure exact sizing and appropriate bleed. Then I would re-create all of the copy within Illustrator (I just prefer Illustrator to InDesign since I work in the packaging industry and it tends to be the standard).
Also I wouldn’t say that Illustrator is clunky, it’s just different from Photoshop and takes a little getting used to.
You can save your PSD file as a Photoshop PDF which will preserve the layers and type, but the file size will be really large. To reduce the file size you can flatten the background artwork, and convert the type to paths in photoshop and then save it as a PSD PDF and the type outlines will be preserved. I have never had a problem with printers preparing my files this way and I deal with printers in the States and in Asia. I am more comfortable in AI, but PS is totally capable to create great camera ready artwork.
please shut up
What designers need to remember when laying out type in PS (which should be done in ID) is black is never K, when converting your design to CMYK for print (if you original worked it out in RGB) go back and change all your black/gray type to K % only. Then you wont get a call from your printer saying “your type is in four color.”
What program should you use for what:
PS – for creating/manipulating imagery
AI – for creating infinitely resize able objects
ID – for type and format layout
Honestly it all depends on the printer and your own style. I can use any file types with our large format printer, but book covers are going to be a little different
I wish that they had a site here at tuts+ for InDesign and general Print design (PrintTuts?). I know InDesign is the one program in the creative suite that I barely use, but definitely want to improve my skills with. Plus having a site devoted to Print would be SO helpful as I know that the majority of graphic designers out there have a hard time understanding the print process, much to the chagrin of pre-press artists and printing houses.
I totally agree with you, Margaret. It’s hard when producing tutorials for print because you tend to use 2, 3 or maybe 4 pieces of software. Photoshop to create graphics and manipulate photos, Illustrator to create vector artwork, InDesign to put the two together and add typography and Acrobat to finalize it for print (unless you get the pre-press guys to do it for you!).
So a PrintTuts+ would probably work well, in my opinion!
I’d second that as a request for an InDesign Tuts site here
Very interesting article, btw … thanks.
As a printer, i would cry if i recieved a book cover made entirely in Photoshop.
All these answers just reinforce what I said: they need to update Illustrator so it’s as friendly as Photoshop.
And it would be nice if they could make CMYK as friendly and good-looking as RGB.
The world has moved on, evolved. Let’s evolve the printing presses too.
To all the comments above, most printers can deal with Ps files now. If not, they probably need to update their software or pre-press staff! So long a the PSD document was correctly set-up (i.e. it’s all in CMYK, spot colours are labelled as spot colours and so on), and the document is above 300dpi (I usually use 600dpi if I’m designing a large document in Ps which will be sent to press), then there shouldn’t be any problems with type.
But saying that, yes – you are safer to lay type out in either Illustrator or InDesign because its vector, but it’s a risk you take!
Speak to your printers first, they all work differently
Ok as for CMYK vs RGB. you can’t print in RGB…. It is a colour format that only works for light. Therefore TV screens and computer monitors.
Yes there are some limitations to the colours you can achieve with CMYK process colours, but that’s what spot colours are for.
As for your opinion of illustrator being hard to use or unfriendly… It just does different things. I started out with photoshop too and found illustrator intimidating at first, but i’ve heard people who start out with illustrator can have the same problem using photoshop. They are just different programs with different uses/purposes. If you have a hard time with illustrator I would recomend that you practice more. It can only make you a better designer. There’s so many great tutorials over at VectorTuts…
I know that many people may not agree with this technique, but when I am in PS I start out in RGB mode and design the whole piece in RGB. When I prepare my piece to print, I flatten the artwork and covert to CMYK. If you are designing something for web or TV always use RGB. I would not suggest using this technique in AI or ID. You must have your artwork layers flattened before you convert or you artwork or the colors will get really messed up! They wont teach this technique in a book or in design school, and some people will not agree with me, so use my comments at your own risk!
@ Luke,
That technique works fairly well sometimes, but you have to be really careful. It tends to be in the blues that you have the biggest colour shift when switching from RGB to CMYK. This is due to the fact that you can achieve much richer deeper blues with a blue base rather than cyan base. So if you’re creating something that has a lot of different blue tones you’re going to be very dissapointed when you switch to CMYK and your whole image looks less vibrant and almost greyed out… unless you’ve worked in a spot colour (generally by adding another channel).
“And it would be nice if they could make CMYK as friendly and good-looking as RGB.”
LOL! Yes, if only those crazy guys at adobe could make CMYK as good as RGB. If only. Damn you paper and ink with your subtractive qualities, why can’t you be more like computer screen! She knows that it’s all about additive colors.
It doesn’t really matter how much a designer knows or does not know about printing. Good designers pay the $50 up front for Pantone specific color-matching. Otherwise it’s like throwing darts at a color wheel and hoping to get that specific blue. The majority of the turn-around time it takes for your printing to be complete is good old-fashioned trial and error. Thats right, print until the sample comes out like the pantone color.
No offense, but saying anything other than than is a load of crap. We have the latest in printing, including a digital spectrometer that converts spot to lab colors, and calibrates your monitor’s color palette, and still we match this way.
Having designers try to figure out the whole printing process is a waste of time, simply because every printer has it’s own kinks, far too many for someone so busy to learn. Just bring in physical samples of colors, sign a proofing agreement, and never approve anything digitally when color is an issue.
My printer will not accept PS files. I have to give him .AI or .EPS only
I don’t like the style and the outcome, but it’s a nice tutorial.
Really good
Pretty simple.
I like it!
Very nice. Thanks for the tutorial.
The tutorial itself is well written, but I’m not a huge fan of the outcome. Still though, for beginners, this would be helpful.
Very nice tutorial.
Thanks.
nice design and powerful article thank you
I think in depends of their budget, because I won’t a job in Illustrator, if they won’t pay for the extra time it takes.
Also, this was like a Photoshop Class 101 design and process.
why should it take more time if you do this in illustrator?
too harsh.. meh
well is ok… 2-3 hours is unreal isnt it? what are u doing after 30 minutes? lol…;) anyway… thx for one more inspiration
I notice a lot of the time the estimated completion time seems really high. I guess they just want to be on the safe side.
You should spend time on your work, not rush it!
Nice tutorial! Still, I must agree with some of the other commentators – I think photoshop isn’t the tool to choose for such work.
It’s like getting a website screendesign in Indesign format (not kidding, it already happened to me).
Doing all in Photoshop is easy and it might turn out ok, I also use PS for print layouts on smaller stuff like flyers.
But still, for a book cover that is probably going through offset printing I would definitely have used Illustrator or Indesign! Your printer would be glad!
Photoshop is excellent for a great deal of things, but type is definitely not one of them.
Anyone working with type would consider this a blasphemy against the gods of typesetting. ID/Quark/Illustrator are the tools of the trade.
kind of amateur.
Either way we all learned what not to do so yea..
good details, but the finished work istn’t exiting. That is real man
Thanks
On PSDTuts+, like in all Envato sites, there are very professional tutorials, so they also should fit the correct way to work professionally.
Yes, it is possible to design and send to the printer a PSD file for a book cover, but it is NOT the correct way, exactly like it is possible to write a letter using Excel, and also correctly print it out, but the right software to do this is Word.
A book cover is correctly processed with PS for the background, with Illustrator for eventual vectorial parts and with InDesign for the final assembly of all parts, type management, final correct PDF.
There are no risks on working in such way. Every software is perfectly fitting the needs for its special area, even if is capable to cover “temporarily” other areas.
All the tutorials should teach to do things correctly, not only to do things.
IMHO.
*nods*
I agree, which is why Margarets suggestion of printtuts+ site would be a great solution!
Well, this is simple and having nothing interesting tutorial. Bored.
simple and usefull
thanks
That’s not grunge. It’s just overused noise.
Not talking about color speration, file size or whatever here. I doubt working this way is really good. I’d also cry (as a designer) if I need to reuse such a document.
The (from adobe) proposed workflow is to use every application for the tasks it was/is being developed. This would mean in this case, to use Photoshop to creat the background, and switch over to Illustrator or InDesign to place your text.
Especially for a text-driven work like this it wouldn’t make sense to use Photoshop for this. Photoshop is a image processing apllication, not a text-oriented application. InDesign or Illustrator offers you much more options to optimize your text. Still, the end result looks definitely good but the workflow is not the modern way to go.
Anyway, keep up your good work. Thanks for the tut!
not that specal…
but its ok ;D
thaks for this
This is an official request for a print.tutsplus.com site so I can write tutorials producing artwork for print using Ai and Id as well as Ps
thanks you…nice to meet you in here. Because you get so many tutorial…so it’s take chance for people to learn experience from you…:) i hope you will support any tutorial..:)
I agree, printtuts+ site would be a great idea! There’s so much to learn about that, both in theory and practice.
There’s a whole world between having a psd file on your desktop and having an artwork correctly printed.
I think this is a poor design which has been designed in the wrong way to fit its purpose.
photoshop = image manipulatin
illustrator = creating vector graphics
indesign = layout and typography
if you are serious about being a graphic designer and designing for print, you need to put in the time to use these packages properly!
Printtuts+ woul dbe a superb addition!
Nothing says GRUNGE like Myriad Pro.
nice design! thank you!
I do not mean to be one of those trolls who post negative comments on blogs, but unfortunately, I really have to voice this one out. PSDTuts has been publishing really great tutorials since they first launched but this particular tutorial is not the kind of tutorial I was expecting from them. I am not complaining about the use of PS vs AI here (unlike the rest of the comments), but the design quality of this tutorial is just plain horrible. Amateur. Sorry.
You are right Robert!
The tutorial is kinda low product. The design is not finished, there is missing something. It isn’t smooth like a book cover needs to be.
You might earn 150 dollars, but if this is the way to go then I predict some boring tutorials in the future.
There aren’t really tips in the tutorial.
Nothing personal!
You’re entitled to your own opinion – but remember there are people out there who are just starting out with Photoshop and would like to see tutorials with more simplistic techniques once in a while!
You may not have found any tips here but you never know who did, a new user may have found some tips they can use in other work. New users need a place to get their feet wet.
Good job friend. I like it
Callum,
Don’t even pay heed to the naysayers. I’m a bit more advanced in PS than I was 6 months ago and I am still learning. There was quite a few little things I learned from this. Not everybody has all three programs to work with, some of us will have to do the final product in PS. If you are savvy enough, you can always figure out a way to make it work.
nice one…ill do it on ps….you can type it in any other formats though.stilll..a gud one…
Nicely Executed but i still think that it could have been better in :
1. Font Selection
2. Background
Still *****
Keep it up !
ok… hmmm where to start? Firstly Callum, great job on your tut… nicely organised, not really for the advanced among us however. But, none-the-less.. an interesting look at various techniques that can be applied into a multitude of tasks. So well done on that. Now, designing a bookcover in photoshop, is essentially a cheat method really. To get the maximum effect and result, you would in fact use all 3 software packages to allow them to specialise in the tasks they were designed for. Indesign is a massively intuative program the has excellent control over large bodies of texts (copy) whereas Illustrators pure Vector power is essential for the nice tight sharp images and edges, with infinite scale. And photoshop… well that does exactly what it says on the tin. So.. when undertaking this kind of task, and if you have the Mastersuit, Let the software do its job. If you don’t ,then do the best you can.
RGB vs CMYK… yes yes we all know what they are. But do we know what they do and why?
For those advanced users amongst us i would certainly hope you do.. if not, then here it is.. RGB is light based (Red, Green, Blue) whereas CMYK is pigment based (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, K Black)
This can be quite confusing if you’re new to these terms, or don’t fully understand their concept.
We would normally use RGB if we are using PS normally as this by far offers the greatest dynamic light range and offers the full use of all the filters.
RGB works by ajusting the tonal light frequency between pixels to create the colours you see. eg white is full combination of all 3 whereas black is the absence of all 3.
Illustrator as its name suggests has been designed for the print medium in mind.. and is best used in CMYK… hence TRUE black is attain from all 4 downmixed.. and TRUE White is full upmix. Do not be fooled by either programs black/white (or greyscale) for blacks in a colour document (unless this is absolutely required)
eg in illustrator, create a nice gradient from Green to Red with black in the middle…
I see this often with my students, they will natrually just click on the Black colour picker from the swatches and they get this horrible grey banding from the mix of colour to the black. This is because the Black colour swatch is in Black/White (greyscale) and is NOT True black. Try it yourself.
The way to get true BK/W is to pick a colour and use the sliders to define True Black/white.
printers use the CMYK medium.. NOT RGB. so if you’re prepping something for print ensure your document is printer friendly… However that said Digital Large format printers are getting ever more capable of handling most file type and format…
My staff and I work closely with our printers to ensure our colour ranges are within tolerable working modes. Step outside this and you can start to run into trouble with your print work not looking like it started.
If you really need to, all 3 main Design elements do have the International Pantone colour palettes that should be printer friendly.
So to recap, wonderful tut. Ignore comments that are negative about the overall design… so what . this is a tut afterall.. even if you learn something about blend modes its worked! Wonderful Job.
love the cover. thanks for the tutorial
You read Patricia Cornwell books I guess? This must have been inspired by the Scarpetta series, and I love that series
Definitely gonna give this a shot at some point, mainly cause I love the books haha
hmm very good!
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really great tutorial
i didn’t do the tutorial, but wanted to comment on Envato’s mission statement/mini bio on the back cover. i really dig the philosophy and the vast amounts of valuable information and resources You guys provide. thanks
Hey not all Print has to be outputted to CMYK. If it’s destined for a Digital press!
Small Runs (under a few hundred pieces) should be done on a digital pres these days… 1 the color output is so much better!
I work as a commercial designer full time and output a huge base of design for both offset and digital print.
I use photoshop to convert everything from RGB to CMYK and any image editing needed. Illustrator I only use for vector manipulation or creation. And the only final layout too I’ll use these days is indesign. Whether it’s for offset or digital press. Pre-press is a must for any designer to know how to do. If you can output prepress then it doesn’t matter what printer you use you’ll not have an issue!
Apart from my rant..
The tutorial was great thanks… I like most of the tutorials here as they all may only have one or two things that stand out, but they all let me see new ways of achieving an effect differently to how I may do it.
really Good Work
This is a very useful tutorial.