So I took my own advice from last week and shut down all my social media/distracting websites (there’s always that one site …) and took a deep dive into Photoshop.
I worked through two tutorials. The first was to create an illustrated cover using stock illustrations.
For this cover, I reused the butterfly image I had (see Friday’s free fiction) and the background. The only new element is the illustration of the girl’s face.
I put my name on this one, even though I have no story idea whatsoever. Maybe someday I will, and then hey, look! I have a cover!
Also, I often misspell butterfly as butteryfly. Pretty sure I didn’t do that here.
Then yesterday, I worked through another tutorial. The objective of this one was to create a sweet romance cover.
It’s definitely a romance, and a sweet one at that. How do you tell? They’re smiling, and they have all their clothes on.
This probably has more of a romantic comedy vibe, but I think it meets the requirements. (It’s not like I’m being graded or anything, so …)
You’ll notice it’s also penned by Callie Robb. Callie is my imaginary author friend for whom I design book covers. She’s way more prolific than I am. I’d be jealous, except none of us here believe she has a rich inner life.
Writing Wrongs 
The second cover is really nice. The image and font look great. It’s very eye-catching.
The first one needs a little more work IMO. The font just has very ‘self-published’ vibes. It doesn’t look great. I say that in the spirit of honest feedback.
I’ve never tried photoshop. For covers, I really like picmonkey. Sometimes I use Canva and pixlr. And I usually grab my stock photos from depositphotos or bigstockphoto.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting! I appreciate it. I also get most of my stock from Depositphotos (and stock up on credits when they have those black Friday sales).
I really like the second cover as well — and that tagline is great. Am not-so-secretly hoping that this idea evolves beyond lorem impsum…
You know, I kind of like the tagline as well, not that I have a story to go with it. Thanks for stopping by!
They are really cool.
Actually, canva is what I usually use. Maybe I’ll try out Photoshop
Thanks for visiting–and the kind words. I really like Canva. It’s a great app. It took me a long time to get the hang of Photoshop, but now that I have, it’s a lot of fun.