One of the ways in which I keep my Adobe training current is by subscribing to Lynda.com, which has more insanely useful tutorials than you could ever watch in your life. I’ve decided it would be fun to post reviews of the tutorials, plus it might help with my retention.
Chris Orwig’s tutorials often focus on photo retouching, which plays a very useful role in cover design. This short tutorial (just over an hour) covers a full color portrait converted to a distressed sepia-tone image. Not with the click of a one-size-fits-all button, but with complete, discerning control every step of the way.
My favorite tutorial highlights:
-Using the Photoshop CS6 content-aware patch tool for removing a distracting logo from a t-shirt
-Removing a distracting element from the background of the composition
-Adding film grain with a mask made from the red channel’s luminosity so it looks more integrated than adding it in a solid field
-Leading the viewer’s eye around the composition by use of light and dark. (I think many cover designers could learn a lot from this!)
You can watch a few of the segments, such as the patch tool, even if you're not a member, at the
Lynda.com website.
Published on November 14, 2012 12:00
And I wanted you to know how delighted (ok — hyped) I was when I earlier today discovered the JCP Books 2012 Cover Art Callery book on http://jcpbooks.com!
It's STUNNING. I've always admired your cover art, but to have all the covers "bind" together with your comments — well, THANK YOU. I found your comments about the covers absolutely fascinating. It's wonderful to get a "behind the scene" glimpse of the cover art I like so much. And from now on when I want to spend a moment with something beautiful, I'll just take out my iPad and look at those lovely covers. Did I already say "Thank you"?!