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Covert Art From Real Image
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Do you mean actually taking a photograph myself and using it for a cover? Yes, I've done that a lot. The amount of manipulation all depended on what the cover needed. One of my books has a completely unaltered photo that I just slapped titles over. Another was given a lot of touches to make it look ethereal. I've also Incorporated photos I've taken into art, and used composite images made by users on sites like pixabay.
Yes, I took a picture of an odd piece of stonework and ironwork used to cover a pond sump in a small town in Derbyshire called Foolow. It must have been at least 150 years old and looked like a very dark and mysterious entrance to a passageway dripping in slime. I based a short horror story on it, which I am hoping to publish in a collection in a few months.I used GIMP 2.0 and Inkscape (free to download and I find just as effective as Photoshop or Illustrator) to convert it into a cut out silhouette for my cover art and drew in the scary thing behind the bars with a graphics tablet. I then spruced it up with some background texture and my brand typography for title and name.
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Yes. I have at least one cover with my wife on it and one with me on it. Fun stuff.
Hmm..so it is a thing and can be done effectively..interesting.
For my novel I've used a photo of one of my charcoal drawings, so yes and no.I got a friend of mine who has a decent camera to take the picture, edited it not at all and did the design in canva. It turned out excactly the way I wanted it.
It was a lot easier and got a better result than to scan or copy the image, pluss I got to choose the light-setting when taking the picture instead of fiddling with it afterwards.
It is also good because you don't have to worry about the image copyright, it's yours.
Yes, I've made all of my covers using pictures that I've taken, although they have been manipulated significantly using different photographic programs. As Photoshop insists on a monthly subscription rather than offering to sell discs these days, like Kat, I use GIMP 2.0. It takes a while to get to grips with, but it's pretty versatile. Before I figured out how to use it, I wasn't happy with my covers, but they're looking a lot better now that I'm getting to grips with it, and the best is yet to come :-)
Has anyone ever taken a picture of something and then made it their cover for their book? If so did you use photoshop or edit the photo to make it more prone to looking like cover art?
I am considering this for my upcoming book and thought I'd get some thoughts and peoples experience on it.