Playing in PhotoShop to Prep for Cover Work


I am prepping for the cover work for the next scheduled book release. I love playing in Photoshop. The time just vanishes in the blink of an eye, however. Tonight I sat down while the sun still shone with full daylight and stumbled away from the computer a few hours later with the house completely dark, including the sunroom, which is where the computer is located.

The book I am working on cover art for is a fantasy, complete with nymphs, skin changers, and a wyvern. Everyone knows that a wyvern is a dragon with four limbs, right? It gets confusing sometimes. There's a wyrm, a cockatrice, the wyvern, the western dragon, the eastern dragon, and so many other variations. I searched Amazon for nymphs on a whim and what came up made my eyes pop open. When did nymph become synonymous with female sex objects? At least that's what came up in Amazon books by searching with keyword nymph, a whole slough of scantily clad or even partially naked women on the covers. My nymphs are not sex objects.

Back to Photoshop. I could play in there all day. It's so much fun to create images and try new processes. What a powerful tool PS is! If you can dream it then it can be done in Photoshop, if you can figure out how. All of my PS experience is from playing in there. It took a few years to get comfortable and though I've been using it to create fantastic images and effects for years now I still find more and more methods to enable me to transition from my brain to the digital palette and I feel like I have only touched the surface.

I like the idea of a single object on textured background for cover for the upcoming release. The trick is coming up with a relevant, stunning, and memorable image. I meant for this book to be a standalone but it's looking like it will be at least two books since I'm closing in on almost two hundred thousand pages and am about within arm's reach of the climax then resolution. I think two books will do it though. We'll see.

So here is one of the images I created tonight. It won't be the cover but the cover image will use this process, which is why I was playing with the process. It tickles my fancy buttons.

I selected a strip of leather and wrapped it into a band then did the same with some text for the lettering on the leather band. Some shading and highlighting to give it depth and the feeling of having dimension. The amazing stone is actually an image of a stormy sky. I liked the way the clouds looked. I take a lot of photos of things a lot of people scratch their heads over but you can see how handy those images are for playing in Photoshop.

This second image is of the cat trapped inside the bauble. I can't decide if I like it or not. Maybe I will have to play around with it some more. Placing the image of the cat (Max) inside the bauble drops the feeling of the stone having dimension. But the different feel to it has its own merits. I might have to warp his face as well as lower the opacity. This is why I play in PS and this is how I lose track of time while creating fun images.





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