Dark Sun - Graphic Shop [CLOSED]

[Walkthrough/Tutorial] Cover Shop

Hey guys! A little treat for you today! I've decided to upload my first tutorial!

While I was making the cover for this book, a friend of mine asked me to guide her through it step-by-step, so at each point I took screenshots for her to understand the process better, and today I'm putting them up for you along with an explanation!

In this tutorial, I'll be showing you the process that was used in making the cover for this cover shop. It's a cover that's along the lines of a horse manipulation found on DeviantArt. 

I use GIMP Image Manipulation Program for all my covers. It's a free open source program that was brought in to compete with Photoshop (although PS will always be the best photo editor on earth), and it's still a very powerful tool.

This is NOT a PicsArt tutorial. I'm unsure, but perhaps PicsArt experts could adapt this tutorial to their mobile devices, but I use a computer (laptop specifically since my computer is out of commission), and if you want to follow along, you're going to need one as well.

This is also not a beginner's tutorial. I'm going to talk a lot about layers and their functions, so you're going to need to have at least a basic knowledge of photo editing softwares (even PicsArt uses layers) in order to completely follow along with this tutorial.

So, without further ado, let us begin!

You will need:

GIMP
A computer/laptop
Music (if you like listening to music while you edit)
A pet (dog or cat is preferred)

Before you begin: Collect your stock

I mostly get my stock from DeviantArt, even for my regular covers that I make for people. In this tutorial, we'll be using three stock images, i.e., a cliff, a horse rearing and a sunset. I got the cliff from The-strawberry-tree, the sunset from BreezeStock and the horse from Eltear-Stock, all of whom are DA users.

Keep in mind that your stock images should always be big. Honestly, the bigger the better, because you can always size them down later. It's a better and more effective alternative to having a small picture and then having to scale it up, hence losing definition and having it become pixelated. 

Now, let's put it all together!

Step 1: Open GIMP and create a new canvas