I have a companion book on my @VictoriaKaer profile with writing tips. This book will cover some basic elements of cover design as well as some dos and don'ts of design. I also have information about requesting from a designer here on Wattpad.
I ce...
A manipulated cover must be seamless and believable. The point is to create something people see as a cohesive end result.
Let's hop into it and see a few things you shouldn't do when creating a manip cover.
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Let's begin with a bad manip so I can explain some of the things that you shouldn't do.
This cover was created based on a cover I saw a designer deliver. I changed the title and my images are slightly different, but the setup for the final design is the same.
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There is nothing that is pleasing that would make a reader pick up the book and read it.
Let's discuss why this is a bad manipulation -
1) Proportion- If you want images to appear as if they go together then you must consider the proportions of the things you place together. The house is sitting on top of the grass, which makes it quite obvious the images were not meant to go together. The blades of grass are also enormous and the tops are abruptly cut off. The blades of grass are halfway up the guy's arm, if you walked into the lawn you'd vanish never to be seen again it's so huge. The lawn doesn't meet up with the house naturally and doing it this way makes it appear as if the models are standing in front of a huge forest of grass that happens to be holding up a house.
2) Cardboard Models- Please do not ever put a drop shadow on people. It makes them look like cardboard cutouts. There is a difference between putting a drop shadow and outlining as some people do on covers. A drop shadow matches your image exactly because the program simply creates a shadow of the object using it as a base. It also allows you to see the badly cut edges of the PNGs.
3) Quality- There's a difference in the sizes and quality of the PNGs used for the cover models and they don't go together. The male is very fuzzy because the image wasn't good enough quality to be made large enough to go with the female, he also looks like a stalker. The two don't appear like a loving couple. Try and make certain to pick PNGs that go together, don't make awkward pairings.
