Many thanks to Pothi.com for wonderful cover page creator (Cover Creator) free online facility; How I used it to create my ebook cover page
Over the past few days, I used Pothi.com's Cover Page creator (Cover Creator) free online facility, https://publish.pothi.com/tools/cover-creator/, as the main software, though not the only software, to create the front cover page for my part autobiography ebook. I have shared the final cover page that I created on my blog here: https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2019/05/final-autobio-ebook-cover-page-is-ready.html.
Many thanks to Pothi.com for this easy to use and wonderful facility. These are the key steps I followed in creating the cover page for my ebook. I expect it to be somewhat similar for later paperback version though that will additionally involve spine and back cover page design:
1. Used Pothi.com cover page creator (Cover Creator), https://publish.pothi.com/tools/cover-creator/. Specified ebook and page size as A5. For paperback I will need to uncheck ebook and additionally specify number of pages (297 in my case, as of now) and binding (Soft Cover).
2. It remembers covers between sessions and across days! But it does not have an option to save a cover design with its separate elements, and reload that later. So if one resets the cover page there is no way to recover an earlier cover design in the software and then modify it. One will have to recreate that cover design from scratch.
3. Elements drop-down allows Pothi.com logo to be removed (applies to paperback cover page as by default the Pothi.com logo appears on the cover back page).
4. It allows modification of title, sub-title etc. and images over time (unlike Paint where once a text or image is finalized then that cannot be picked up as an item and manipulated later on). This is a great advantage over Paint. [Note that GIMP has that facility but is somewhat complex to use, if I recall correctly. I did not want to wade into GIMP but stick to simple Paint and Pothi.com's cover page creator. I have not used Photoshop but I am sure it would have that facility too.]
5. Images can be added to the cover page. However, it seems that the images layering cannot be changed from how Pothi.com layers it. I think the layering order is that the last image inserted goes to the lowest layer. Previous inserted images that have an overlapping area with the last image, come on top (are visible) of the last image (the overlapped area of the last image is not shown).
6. I added a background nature pic image to the whole ebook cover page. That had to the last image inserted so that it goes to the background and does not cover earlier images that are supposed to be in the foreground.
7. One problem is that besides the title, sub-title and author text boxes that Cover Creator automatically provides in the cover, I could not figure out a way of adding new text boxes. So I had to add a small text piece about not-for-profit and free reuse, which I wanted to be transparent (as against opaque), using Paint on the final image extracted from Pothi.com Cover Creator pdf file. Note that text pieces which have a background colour and so are opaque, can be made in Paint as images, and then those pieces can be added as images to the cover page in Pothi.com's Cover Creator.
8. Download creates pdf file (and there does not seem to be a way to directly download image).
9. Used https://www.pdf-online.com/osa/extract.aspx to extract image from pdf and save in jpg format to local disk. The saved image file has DPI of 472 and Pixel size of 2849x4096. In cms it is 15.33 cm x 22.04 cm.
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Note that I am quite sure there will be other free cover page creator online software. But I have not explored those options. Just Googled for free ebook cover page creator and got some interesting results:
* https://snappa.com/create/ebook-covers
* https://www.canva.com/en_in/create/book-covers/
* https://www.adazing.com/cover-mocks/
At least one of the above links claims to provide a stock library of images that one can use in the created book cover, with some being free and some being priced.
When using such images, even if one pays for an image, I wonder how one can be sure that one will not face copyright violation legal challenges in future. I mean, what one online app may say is free or sell at some price, may be contested by somebody else who claims to be the owner of the image!
I wanted to play fully safe and so have used only pics that I have taken or that I own (e.g. I own my passport pics) or which were provided to me by friend(s) who clicked the pic(s), in the cover page and in the book.
And for this kind of safe and easy cover page creation, I found Pothi.com cover page creator to be very useful.
Many thanks to Pothi.com for this easy to use and wonderful facility. These are the key steps I followed in creating the cover page for my ebook. I expect it to be somewhat similar for later paperback version though that will additionally involve spine and back cover page design:
1. Used Pothi.com cover page creator (Cover Creator), https://publish.pothi.com/tools/cover-creator/. Specified ebook and page size as A5. For paperback I will need to uncheck ebook and additionally specify number of pages (297 in my case, as of now) and binding (Soft Cover).
2. It remembers covers between sessions and across days! But it does not have an option to save a cover design with its separate elements, and reload that later. So if one resets the cover page there is no way to recover an earlier cover design in the software and then modify it. One will have to recreate that cover design from scratch.
3. Elements drop-down allows Pothi.com logo to be removed (applies to paperback cover page as by default the Pothi.com logo appears on the cover back page).
4. It allows modification of title, sub-title etc. and images over time (unlike Paint where once a text or image is finalized then that cannot be picked up as an item and manipulated later on). This is a great advantage over Paint. [Note that GIMP has that facility but is somewhat complex to use, if I recall correctly. I did not want to wade into GIMP but stick to simple Paint and Pothi.com's cover page creator. I have not used Photoshop but I am sure it would have that facility too.]
5. Images can be added to the cover page. However, it seems that the images layering cannot be changed from how Pothi.com layers it. I think the layering order is that the last image inserted goes to the lowest layer. Previous inserted images that have an overlapping area with the last image, come on top (are visible) of the last image (the overlapped area of the last image is not shown).
6. I added a background nature pic image to the whole ebook cover page. That had to the last image inserted so that it goes to the background and does not cover earlier images that are supposed to be in the foreground.
7. One problem is that besides the title, sub-title and author text boxes that Cover Creator automatically provides in the cover, I could not figure out a way of adding new text boxes. So I had to add a small text piece about not-for-profit and free reuse, which I wanted to be transparent (as against opaque), using Paint on the final image extracted from Pothi.com Cover Creator pdf file. Note that text pieces which have a background colour and so are opaque, can be made in Paint as images, and then those pieces can be added as images to the cover page in Pothi.com's Cover Creator.
8. Download creates pdf file (and there does not seem to be a way to directly download image).
9. Used https://www.pdf-online.com/osa/extract.aspx to extract image from pdf and save in jpg format to local disk. The saved image file has DPI of 472 and Pixel size of 2849x4096. In cms it is 15.33 cm x 22.04 cm.
--------
Note that I am quite sure there will be other free cover page creator online software. But I have not explored those options. Just Googled for free ebook cover page creator and got some interesting results:
* https://snappa.com/create/ebook-covers
* https://www.canva.com/en_in/create/book-covers/
* https://www.adazing.com/cover-mocks/
At least one of the above links claims to provide a stock library of images that one can use in the created book cover, with some being free and some being priced.
When using such images, even if one pays for an image, I wonder how one can be sure that one will not face copyright violation legal challenges in future. I mean, what one online app may say is free or sell at some price, may be contested by somebody else who claims to be the owner of the image!
I wanted to play fully safe and so have used only pics that I have taken or that I own (e.g. I own my passport pics) or which were provided to me by friend(s) who clicked the pic(s), in the cover page and in the book.
And for this kind of safe and easy cover page creation, I found Pothi.com cover page creator to be very useful.
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