In this article we discuss about how to create an E-book cover with GIMP. Complete discussion about it follows under:
You would have read many books. What catches your glimpse while you look at them? Yes, it is the cover of that book that generates great deal of interest in it. Later comes the author and content of that book. Book cover has been the crowd puller from the beginning but it has gained its perfection and prominence with the advent of advanced printing and designing technologies.
If you are looking for economical options to have a professionally looking cover for your book, you have come to right place. GIMP is the open source program from Sourceforge team that can be used to create stunning E-book covers. This write-up explains the steps to be followed to create covers for your E-books.
- Firstly install the GIMP software in your system. The file size is around 86MB and it is pretty easy to install.
- Soon you run the program you would be seeing a blank rectangle sitting in the middle of the screen and flanked by different menus on either side of it.
- Those are the menus that would help you to create fantastic covers.
- These menus are of 3 types i.e. Tool Pallet, Layer Pallet and Tool options. Canvas area is the arena where you sharpen the skills of making great covers.
- Now click on File>Open and select an image from the hard disk drive of the computer.
- Open the image and then go to Image>Canvas Size option to check the size of the image.
- Set the dimensions of the image to suit to the cover size.
- Copy the height of the image that is just set and come back to the selected image.
- Select the image once again and click on Image>Scale Image and then change the height dimension by pasting the value of the height set previously.
- Once you have successfully pasted the height, click on ‘Scale’. With this you have set the canvas and image sizes.
- Now click on Edit>Copy and copy the selected pixels to the clipboard.
- Go to the template and right click, select ‘Background’ and create a new layer. Now you would be having two layers in the pallet.
- Now chose Edit>Paste and up on clicking the pixel values stored in the clipboard would be pasted.
- Select ‘Move’ tool from Toolbox and move the image and place it wherever you want. If the image is larger than the cover, the edges would be automatically trimmed by the software.
- Right click in the layer pallet and create a new layer and give a name to this new layer.
- Select ‘Rectangle Select Tool’ from the Toolbox and by holding the left button of the mouse drag the tool till you get the size of your choice.
- Choose a color of your choice and click on Bucket Fill option from Toolbox and then chose ‘Invert’. Now you can see the color selected by you would fill the outer area of the rectangle drawn in the previous step.
- Click on ‘Text Tool’ and set the font type and size. You can justify the text as well.
- Draw a text box in the canvas and type the title of the book.
- Use the same Text Tool to add author’s name and other details.
- You can do many cosmetic changes for both image and text.
- Once you are through with the beautification, now Save the image in .PNG format.
- Export the file by merging the visible layers.
- Set the Compression Level to 0 and click ‘Save’.
Your exotic cover for your E-book is ready.
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