Hi, this is Evelyn, who just so happens to be @tropicalsunsetsmag. Well, on to the topic at hand!
So, I don’t pretend to be an expert cover-maker, but with all of my experience making covers, looking at others’ covers and reading cover-making how to books, I think that the tips I have to share with you are pretty valid. Hope this helps!
So, since all of you book-cover makers have different programs and experience available, I am just going to give you some tips, not step-by-step tutorials on how to use programs. I will give you some websites, though.
First of all, pictures. weheartit.com and just plain Google search, as well as Deviantart and Tumblr are good places to find pictures. Make sure there is a good place to put the title. This place should be either fairly light or dark, DEFINITELY not a mixture of both, or any good title color will be difficult to see.
Now you need to crop the picture. How you do this depends on the program you use but the dimensions are 256x400. Once you make enough covers you can probably just guess, but it’s still better to be safe than sorry. You don’t want to be giving people covers that don’t fit their books.
So, it’s time to put the title on the cover. Below are a few title DO’s and DONT’S.
DON’T use clashing colors. I find that combos like dark red and white, black and white, or dark red and black work nicely. You also want to make sure the colors don’t clash with your background pictures.
DON’T use bright colors.
DON’T use too many different fonts. Try to keep it to two, but if you have to use another for the author that can be okay.
DON’T use two fonts in the same category or two that look sort of similar (cursive/handwriting, serif, sans serifs, etc.)
DO change the opacities of titles if it works with your picture.
DO give some words shadows. It doesn’t mean you have to do it all the time, but it is a cool effect. If your program doesn’t do that automatically, you can just put a slightly transparent, black or grey version of the title behind the real thing.
DO give your words 3D effects. You can basically do the same steps you would take to make shadows, or, in some programs like Pixlr advanced and Photoshop, you can “bevel” your words.
DO use light or dark versions of colors
DO give your words different spacing. Sometimes, to make a word fit better, you can space it like t h i s . I find that works particularily well for making professional-looking author names.
DO use a plain font (Times New Roman, for example) and a... not-so plain font! Make sure to put the author’s name in the plain font.
If you start getting advanced, there is MUCH more you can do with cover making than just adding pretty titles. I don’t want to go over all of that here, but below are a few examples:
-Textures
-Putting titles behind people or whatever else
-Photoshopping (though you can do it in programs other than photoshop) parts of other pictures onto new ones (ex. putting a celebrity on a gradient picture for your cover)
The programs I use are Pixlr Efficient and Advanced. I also know of people who use Gimp, Photoshop and Picmonkey (although I must that is not very advanced).
It’s also sometimes nice to create covers on devices like iPads or other tablets. I’ll give a list of apps that are helpful in cover-making. Some of these are free but others aren’t. (I have an iPad, so these are all Apple apps. I don’t know if they are available for any other companies.)
-Phonto
-Pixlr Efficient
-Paint fx
-Snapseed
Well, this just covered the basics, but I hope it helps!