Covermakers Chat Thread

Post by **annise** » February 13th, 2017, 6:23 pm

WE've needed to have a chat thread for a while , so that you can all talk freely about things without risking burying actual "work" posting , so I've decided to try this way . I'll link the thread from the first post in the main thread and we'll see how it works out.

I'll start with an explination about a slight change , that we have had to make as a work around for the recent changes at Archive which caused our pages there to display a fuzzy pdf.
Archive has made us a special image handling routine (

for Archive) for files labelled booktitle_yymm_itemimage.jpg
and as our software for our catalogue display will not recognise this we need 2 300X300 files so all in all we need 4 files

booktitle_yymm.jpg (300X300)
booktitle_yymm_itemimage.jpg (300X300)
booktitle_yymm_thumb.jpg (150X150)
booktitle_yymm.pdf

At the moment I've just been copying and renaming the file in the zip but it would be nice if I didn't have to

. And if I forget it takes a bit of juggling to get it to work properly

When I make the covers I just save the 300X300 twice , adding the extra bit

Anne

Basquetteur · Post by **Basquetteur** » February 16th, 2017, 3:10 pm

Dear Annise,

Interesting!!

I will try to upload my covers following your suggestions.

Nice thing to have this thread; I think some ideas will be arising. I suppose the simplest thing is to ask which software people use for making covers. I suppose many, probably the most sue Gimp. But may be there are cover makers using photoshop or other software. There are many available: Krita, Pinta, Mypaint, paint.NET, Corel etc...

Gimp would be the "Audacity of the covers" in the sense that is free and open source.

I use Gimp. What about others?

Cheers

Basquetteur

carthinius · Post by **carthinius** » February 18th, 2017, 8:10 am

Basquetteur wrote: I use Gimp. What about others?

Photoshop and Indesign. I use them at work and I am familiar with them, so it would be strange to drop them for projects like these. But I totally understand that they are too expansive for hobbyists – would be the same for me.

On a sidenote: Everytime I try to understand Gimp and/or Inkscape, I quit for several reasons (very different approach to usability and workflow is just one of them, I find these tools and their menues ... confusing). Any tips from other users like you to help me get started?

oh, and thanks, Annise, for informing us about the 4 images needed! I am afraid there is no easy way to change our database here at librivox to use the archive's filenames, too?

Post by **Carolin** » February 20th, 2017, 6:28 am

annise wrote:I'll start with an explination about a slight change , that we have had to make as a work around for the recent changes at Archive which caused our pages there to display a fuzzy pdf.
Archive has made us a special image handling routine ( for Archive) for files labelled booktitle_yymm_itemimage.jpg
and as our software for our catalogue display will not recognise this we need 2 300X300 files so all in all we need 4 files

anne, my apologies, i only just saw this. ill send an extra file from now on. one of my poetry collections is deriving so ill send you a cover image for that tonight and we will see if i get it right

Post by **Carolin** » February 20th, 2017, 6:35 am

Basquetteur wrote:I use Gimp. What about others?

im still new to this right but i use gimp too. it isnt too friendly to noobs, but you learn by doing of course.

is there a simple way to get script outlined in another colour? i find it difficult to find a colour for the script that will be easily readable on the background. i know dark letters with a white outline are readable on all backgrounds so id like to use that when possible, but that isnt an option (for someone on my level of expertise), is it?

Post by **annise** » February 20th, 2017, 6:51 am

carthinius wrote:
Basquetteur wrote: I use Gimp. What about others?
Photoshop and Indesign. I use them at work and I am familiar with them, so it would be strange to drop them for projects like these. But I totally understand that they are too expansive for hobbyists – would be the same for me.

On a sidenote: Everytime I try to understand Gimp and/or Inkscape, I quit for several reasons (very different approach to usability and workflow is just one of them, I find these tools and their menues ... confusing). Any tips from other users like you to help me get started?

oh, and thanks, Annise, for informing us about the 4 images needed! I am afraid there is no easy way to change our database here at librivox to use the archive's filenames, too?

I use Paintnet - cos it's free. I did have Photoshop for 32 bit machines , and although I couldn't make it work via it's disk for my 64bit one , I did get it working via the copy of my old machine . Then my hard drive died and it no longer worked . I thought I'd buy a new version but they charge monthly now, I tried Gimp but struggled then I found Paintnet . It's not bad , only thing I really miss is that I could copy text from outside and it would turn it into the font I was using - very handy for non-English covers **

We can't change the database handling things at all at the moment , Now I think about it I've never actually tried to see what it would do it If tried using the new name - it might work . I just assumed I knew how the programming worked. How embarrassing that would be

Anne

** added much later it is possible I just hadn't found out how

Post by **annise** » February 20th, 2017, 7:01 am

is there a simple way to get script outlined in another colour? i find it difficult to find a colour for the script that will be easily readable on the background. i know dark letters with a white outline are readable on all backgrounds so id like to use that when possible, but that isnt an option (for someone on my level of expertise), is it?

What I do if I'm desperate is duplicate the text layer in a different colour and move it a little
Sometimes I use a fuzzy effect on the underlayer to make it a little bigger
Or you can make a rectangle just under the text of a suitable colour and make it more transparent - trial and error as to colour of layer and degree of transperency
or you can put the text in a suitable frame and stick it over the image
I have tried all the effects like outline and things I have but they don't do what I want usually

Post by **Carolin** » February 20th, 2017, 7:48 am

annise wrote:I have tried all the effects like outline and things I have but they don't do what I want usually

my experience exactly

i havent tried adding a transparent layer, but thats for next time. i saw it used in some other covers and it looked really pretty!

Post by **Carolin** » March 12th, 2017, 11:58 pm

Did anyone using gimp add extra font styles? If so, how and what?

Basquetteur · Post by **Basquetteur** » March 21st, 2017, 4:42 am

Dear Carolin

What do you mean by extra font styles?
Gimp can use virtually any additional font, like any other raster graphics software. What do you mean exactly by styles?. There are virtually no limits for using extra fonts in gimp.

There are also even free online servers (gimp based) using fantasy fonts to make logos, buttons, banners and things and you do not even need to install potentially additional thousands of fonts in gimp (or even to use gimp just for that). The output of those servers (a png image or an xcf image) can be used to make covers also.

Cheers!

Basquetteur

Post by **annise** » March 21st, 2017, 4:47 am

Basquetteur wrote: There are also even free online servers (gimp based) using fantasy fonts to make logos, buttons, banners and things and you do not even need to install potentially additional thousands of fonts in gimp (or even to use gimp just for that). The output of those servers (a png image or an xcf image) can be used to make covers also.

Basquetteur

That sounds fun - how would I find them?

Anne

Basquetteur · Post by **Basquetteur** » March 21st, 2017, 9:43 am

Following Annise comments,

The free gimp server sites I know are:

cooltext.com

and

flamingtext.com

There may be others.

It is a lot of simply playing with the options.

I would recommend using the least "fantasist" (probably not proper English) choices for the old classical audiobooks like the ones we mostly see here.

Anyone can see in some of my covers that I have used them sometimes (with mixed results).

Cheers,

Basquetteur

Post by **annise** » March 21st, 2017, 12:58 pm

Thanks - I do mainly try to match the fonts to the period but there have been odd projects which just cried out for a fancier font than I had, and it's nice to have a sprinkle of "fantasy" amongst our covers.
Some times I have managed to use the book title as an image, depends on whether I can use or get rid of the background

Anne

mahne · Post by **mahne** » April 4th, 2017, 12:51 am

Hi there,

I'm also using gimp here, actually I was starting making covers to get more aquainted with gimp.
Using other fonts is pretty simple, they need to be installed on the computer, then they are available for all programs, so also for gimp.
Just need to restart gimp to refresh its fonts list.

The 'standard way' in gimp, to get an outline on text, is described e.g. here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXOfD5eQDzM
and yes, it feels clumsy. I used that way here: https://archive.org/details/abbotsford_newstead_abbey_gg_1701_librivox

Cheers
mahne

Post by **Availle** » April 5th, 2017, 8:03 pm

Basquetteur wrote: I would recommend using the least "fantasist" (probably not proper English) choices for the old classical audiobooks like the ones we mostly see here.

I think that depends a lot on the project. Science Fiction really screams for something modern, and even the occasional science project does:
http://librivox.org/the-fourth-dimension-simply-explained-by-henry-parker-manning/

And sometimes, the project allows you to go really, really wild:
https://librivox.org/karawane-by-hugo-ball/

(both covers are mine)