Scifi Novel Cover

Playing the role of a book author, I brainstormed ideas for a fictional science fiction novel. Then, using Adobe Photoshop tools, I developed graphic art from creative commons images and designed a complete book cover. The goal was to create a visually intense book cover with bright contrasting colors and alien themed images. Several photographs were used for the background landscape on the book cover. A combination of layer masks, spot healing brush, clone stamp tool, adjustment layers for Hue/Saturation and free transform editing helped to bring them together. Changing a layer’s opacity and blending mode also gave the landscape the planned color scheme and alien planet effect. Several figures/shapes were manipulated from creative commons images to have a black and white graphic look. The black and white look was achieved with several layers by various selection tools, copy via layer, expand and contract selection, and layer fills. Getting exact selections was challenging but with some adjustments to tolerance, the contiguous setting, and adding and subtracting with a combination of selection tools, a nice graphic was achieved. Figures were placed on the landscape and adjusted with free transform. Ground shadows were added on a new layer with a low opacity. The layer style effects of drop shadow and outer glow gave figures a green highlight. A fake ISBN number was made by rearranging numbers and bars with selections and layering via copy. The story synopsis and quotes were placed on the back cover using the type tool and positioned by making a selection area into a path. Text was then given layer effects of drop shadow and outer glow. The front cover title and author name was placed with the type tool, given drop shadow and outer glow effects and then transformed into a smart object. As a smart object, the wave smart filter was used to add a dreamy effect. The book spine was designed with an overlay blending mode and by preserving and locking transparency. Text was added with the type tool and drop shadow and outer glow added effects. Lastly, a handmade geometric graphic was added to the book spine and given an outer glow.