Volunteer CD Covers!

[Availle]

Actually, there are three pages...

The old one:
http://www.archive.org/details/librivox_cd_covers

The first new one:
http://www.archive.org/details/LibrivoxCdCoverArt2

The second new one:
http://www.archive.org/details/LibrivoxCdCoverArt

Or did I miss something?

[Availle]

I've done a cover (and back) for Sylvie and Bruno and uploaded it to http://drop.io/librivox . I've used pictures from the book. [snip]

Please tell me what you think - ideas for how to improve greatly appreciated. (I suspect a better program than paint, so things get centred properly and get less distorted when moved around would work wonders, but I work with what I've got.)

I concur with Hokus: This can be done in Paint?

As you asked for it, I'll share a few of my own discoveries for creating covers - I'm not overly artsy, so I'm happy to get pictures from the book and arrange them nicely (or at least what I think is nice)...

If this is the only thing you want to do rather than create an entirely new picture, you can do this directly in MS Word (Open Office Writer). Just use Insert - Picture - From File to get it into the .doc template that is provided somewhere on here. You can resize the pictures and move them around as much as you like, and for some reason they will not get blurry when you save the file (paint does that in general ) You can also apply background/font color, different fonts... well, I guess you know how to use Word And it's straightforward to fill the rest of the template - the back and the sides of the cover.

However, if you'd like to create your own images (and believe me, at some later point you will... ) paint is getting limited pretty soon. For my cover for 'The Leavenworth Case' I have used 'gimp', a free program. That cover took a whole afternoon and evening, there are a lot of things that are a bit difficult to understand and get used to, but I think in the long run it's worth learning to use gimp. Apparently you can also insert pictures, do photo retouching,... but I guess that's for real artists... And the good thing about it - no image blurring in the saving process!

Hope this helps, I am looking forward to see more of your covers!

[Lucy_k_p]

This can be done in Paint?

I copied the original pictures into a paint file, then I opened up a new one and arranged them nicely. Resizing them did distort them a bit though. The program I got to make CD covers resizes your picture automatically to CD size, so as long as the paint file started out roughly the right size and shape it didn't get particularly distorted. I was very lucky in finding a suitable font for the title though.
(Attempting in word - yes the shrinking is much less blurry, but you are limited in where you can place your pictures, you can't just drag to where ever you want. As I was using multiple pictures, it would have been hard to arrange them altogether. And the background colour on mine is the colour of the paper from the scans - In paint I could cut/copy bits of it to get the whole background the same colour, this wouldn't work in word.)

I have used 'gimp', a free program.

I tried downloading gimp for something once before. Attempting to save a file caused my laptop to crash. I tried downloading it from several different locations and it always gave the same result. I suspect I shall have to give it another go though. I think it was my old laptop, so maybe this one will work better.

By the way, in the word file, why is the back of the CD case wider than the front? (Not including the side bars.) It's a rectangle not a square. My CD creator put back and front the same size, but my back then had to be stretched to fit into the word space.

[chocoholic]

OK, this is fun

I uploaded two more to http://drop.io/librivox . Next time I'll do something with fewer chapters, lol, those took a long time to type. Hokus, I will try to add mine to the catalog myself, I just parked them at the drop in case of a problem like last time. I will let you know.
edited to add: Done, and the new Archive page worked great! Hokus, you can delete mine from the drop any time. (Burgess Animal Book and Burgess Bird Book.)

I used Paint for all 3 of mine too -- you can paste a B&W picture over a colored background and have the color come through so it looks nice (not sure you can do that in Word) -- and the fonts are about the same as in Word. It's hard to finagle things to exact dimensions, though, if you are a perfectionist. I decided not to be a perfectionist. For the backs I used Word and the CD template linked in the Wiki. Is there a better one? It works OK but seems weird about margins and tabs and such.

By the way, in the word file, why is the back of the CD case wider than the front? (Not including the side bars.) It's a rectangle not a square. My CD creator put back and front the same size, but my back then had to be stretched to fit into the word space.

I wondered too so I went and looked. A standard case is a rectangle, but on the front there is a hinge that's about half an inch wide, making the viewing area a square. The slim cases are square on both sides, though, so our backs won't fit in those.

[Lucy_k_p]

I wondered too so I went and looked. A standard case is a rectangle, but on the front there is a hinge that's about half an inch wide, making the viewing area a square. The slim cases are square on both sides, though, so our backs won't fit in those.

I am sitting in a room with a floor to ceiling bookcase filled with nothing but CDs that belong to my house mate. And I didn't think to get up and look for myself. I am both stupid and lazy. *facepalms* Thanks for clearing that up for me - who knows how long it would have taken for me to actually use my brain and figure it out for myself.

P.S I've downloaded gimp and it seems to work this time around. Must not get so distracted by making covers I get behind in my PLing and recording.

[Lucy_k_p]

And because I wanted to try out gimp I've made a cover for the just completed Celebrated Crimes. It's at the drop.
I was inspired by the summary describing a famous painting of one of the historical figures mentioned.

Analysis of gimp - Preservation of image quality, excellent.
Intuitiveness of use - dreadful. Why does everything you paste start out tiny? And how do you change the size of something once you've clicked away from it and pasted in a new image?

And the back is one big wall of very small text - too much information to fit on.

EDIT: And it's nearly 4AM. When did that happen? Bedtime!

[Hokuspokus]

Ava,
thank you for the hint. The first new one shouldn't be there at all. Archive told me that creating this item failed and I didn't check back. It is gone now. I hope.

KathrynD,
don't really know why the pdf is so big, but maybe it is because your Word.doc was big? With every change you make in a doc it grows bigger and bigger. Don't know what the pdf should do with all these information. You could try to save your doc under a different file name and make the pdf from that. This is a trick from Windows 3.1 to make word.doc smaller. Not sure if it still works. I don't have word here so I can't check.
The cover looks really nice

chocoholic,
beautiful covers
I always copy the information from the catalog page, put it into a txt file and delete what I don't need. It can take a long time to delete all the file links but it feels easier than typing.

Lucy_k_p,

And how do you change the size of something once you've clicked away from it and pasted in a new image?

Hm, not sure, but as far as I know Gimp works about the same way as the professional graphic suits. They work with layers. When ever you put something new into the picture, there is a new layer. In Paint Shop there is a side bar where you can select the layer you want to work with. So there should be something similar in Gimp, too.

And the back is one big wall of very small text - too much information to fit on.

When there is too much information to fit on the back side, you can add another table the size of the front, to make a sort of booklet. I did that for Winnetou 1.
http://www.archive.org/download/librivox_cd_covers/winnetou_1.pdf
It is meant to be folded and goes behind the front picture.

About Sylvie and Bruno: The doc is only an example, very roughly made. The back is hardly readable. Do you want to polish it up a little bit? I haven't uploaded it yet.
I think you can make it look as good as Celebrated Crimes.

Celebrated Crimes and This Side of Paradise are added to the catalog.

And I have changed the settings of the drop so you can delete the files, if something goes wrong and you want to re-upload.

[KathrynD]

OK, here's the scoop:

I'm using the recommended CD insert template (CD Stomper), which appears on my MAC as a Word document. I import my cover picture (which is 4.75"x4.75" 300 dpi) and then type in the text and import a small photo for the back cover.

I save all this to a pdf, and it's coming out huge, 3 - 5 MB. The word doc itself is about half that, but it seems to double in size when saved as a pdf. I've tried re-saviing the work doc under another name, but it doesn't get any smaller.

What am I doing wrong? Can you use documents that big? What is the typical size of the cover you receive from others?

I have four other covers ready to upload, but don't want to weight down your site with these behemoths.

[Hokuspokus]

It is quite normal that the pdf is double as big as the doc. But 2 MB for a doc is unusual. The other pdfs in our collection are between 200 KB and 1 MB.
Maybe it is a Mac thing? Are mac files normally bigger than windows files?
You could try to use Open Office. odt files are smaller than docs.

But it isn't really a problem. Only a bit inconvenient for the downloaders. There are 100 MB in the drop, so you shouldn't upload 25 files at once. They go from the drop, when they are on Archive and 4MB is not really a problem there, I think.

And compared to an audio file, 4MB is rather small.

[KathrynD]

Thanks, H-P

I guess I'll just upload my big ole files. Anyone using LibraVox probably doesn't have dial-up anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem.

[Lucy_k_p]

Right, Sylvie and Bruno in the drop.

It turns out Florian knows how to use gimp and so when I started moaning he explained how to use all the bits I'm going to need. So things should be much less difficult from here on out.

[Hokuspokus]

Kathryn and Lucy,

thank you for your covers! Beautiful works
They are in the catalog now.

I lock this thread and open a new one with updated information.