cover tutorial

Hello and welcome to this session of Seamir

Shows You How She Makes Covers. Please take

a seat.

Today I’m going to be showing you how to

make a cover like this:

Ready? Okay.

Step One

Open PowerPoint and make a new slide.

Make sure the page size is the same as how big you’re wanting to make your book.

Step Two

Insert your background photo. In this case, I’m using a picture of my face, but you can use anything you like.

Step Three

Resize it.

You want it to be at least the same height as your page.

Step Four

Now you need to crop it. Try to position the photo so the part you’re wanting on the cover is the part on the page.

Step Five

Here comes the fun part. Editing.

Feel free to play around with the settings as much as you like on here.

Step Six

For this, I chose to start off with Background colour 2 light.

Step Seven

Then I changed the Brightness to -43% and the Contrast to 78%.

Once again, play around with things until you’re happy with how they look.

Step Eight

Now that you’ve sorted out your background picture, it’s time for the layering.

Insert a rectangle.

Step Nine

Cover the entire page with it.

Step Ten

Now we get to mess with these settings.

Head over to “Format Shape”.

Step Eleven

Get rid of the line around the edge first.

Step Twelve

Once you’ve done that, head over to where it says “Fill”.

Choose “Picture or Texture Fill”.

Step Thirteen

Now you go pick the picture you want to layer over the top.

In this case, I’ve used my newspaper words.

Step Fourteen

Turn up the transparency.

I’ve gone for 65% here.

Step Fifteen

Now because of how things are when you layer them on here, you’re going to have to stretch your top image out a little so that the edges cover everything.

Make sure everything’s adjusted and positioned how you want it to be.

Step Sixteen

Now we start on the words.

Insert a text box and type out your title.

Step Seventeen

Now pick out a font that you like/fits with the theme of the novel.

I’ve chosen Carbon Type for this one.

Step Eighteen

Resize the text.

I’ve gone for 47 on here.

Step Nineteen

Move it around and position the title where you want it.

Step Twenty

Now it’s time for your name.

Insert another text box and type that in.

Step Twenty-one

Head back over and pick out the font you want for your name. I’ve gone for the same font I used earlier.

Step Twenty-two

Resize and position.

Step Twenty-three

Now drag your mouse and select everything.

Step Twenty-four

Right click and group them together.

Step Twenty-five

Right click again and save the whole thing as a picture.

And that’s pretty much it. You might need to do a little cropping

or adjusting around the edges, but essentially you’re finished.

So there you have it. A brand new, shiny cover. This tutorial was

for making one like mine, but you can totally use the same skills

to make one for whatever story you’re writing (as long as you

want to use layering or whatever).

Let me know if you guys have any questions or anything and I’d

be more than happy to give you the answer if I know it.

Remember, all of this is just stuff I’ve picked up from messing

around on PowerPoint.

Most of the time I have no idea what I’m doing.