How to Make a Book Graphic from your Book Cover

Suppose you wrote a digital book or just didn't want to wait for the print version proof to arrive, and you wanted a nice graphic that would instantly tell your website visitors that you were sharing a book. That's what this tutorial is about. You already have a great book cover, done neatly in a rectangle so you can send it to the printer/publisher, but you'd like to turn that into a picture of a book.

Requirements

Basic Photoshop Skills
Finished Cover Graphic

How To

Take a Picture of a Book.

Find a book that looks neatly "used". Set it on a plain, contrasting background, at an angle you want your final image. Take a picture.

This does not have to be a high-quality picture. Use your cell phone if you like. It's most important to make the background a different color/brightness so it can be easily removed.

Remove the Book's Background.

Open the photo in Photoshop.
Unlock the 'Background' layer by double-clicking the word "Background" and clicking "OK". If you do not see the Layers panel, choose "Window | Layers" from the pulldown menus. If you get a layer-styles window instead of a 'New Layer' dialog, cancel that and make sure you are double-clicking the word 'Background'.

Use the Magic Wand to select the background. You may have to change the 'Tolerance' up or down and play with the add-to-selection and subtract-from-selection to get it right.

Press the Delete Key. The background will turn into a checker-pattern indicating it is transparent.

Original book with transparent background

Press CMD+D (Mac) or CTRL+D (Windows) to deselect the area.

Optional: Resize the Graphic.

Use 'Image | Image Size' from the pulldown menus to make the book the size you want your final graphic to be. This is the only time I will ever say it is "OK to Scale Larger". Don't worry if it gets grainy; it is all going to be covered anyway.

400-600 pixels wide is good for web graphics. You'll need '300 pixels times the number of inches' wide for printable graphics. If you are unsure, go with the print size and resize a copy smaller for the web; you can always go smaller, but you cannot increase the size without losing quality.

Scale the Canvas Larger.

This will give you some room to work. Use 'Image | Canvas Size' from the pulldown menus. 300-400% is usually good.

Import your cover graphic.

Leave your new graphic open. (It's a good time to save it.)
Open your finished book cover graphic.
Use CMD+A (Mac) or CTRL+A (Windows) to select the entire graphic.
Use CMD+C (Mac) or CTRL+C (Windows) to copy it.
Change back to your new book graphic, and use CMD+V (Mac) or CTRL+V (Windows) to paste it. It will likely be way too big (print version), but that's OK.

Zoom out until you would normally see the entire graphic.

Use CMD+T (Mac) or CTRL+T (Windows) to transform the new book graphic layer.
Keep the Shift key pressed and drag the corners in to resize without changing the proportions.

Click the check mark at the top to commit the transform.
Zoom back in.
Close your own book's artwork file. You don't need it anymore.

Put the front cover, spine, and back cover on their own layers.

Use the rectangle select tool to select the front cover. You can use 'Select | Transform Selection' from the pulldown menus to get it exact.

Use CMD+X (Mac) or CTRL+X (Windows) to cut it.
Use CMD+V (Mac) or CTRL+V (Windows) to paste it. It will put the cover on its own layer.

Change back to the layer with your back cover and spine by clicking on it in the layer window.
Repeat select, cut, paste for the back cover. That will leave the spine on its own layer, too.

Position the front cover. (It's a good time to save a copy of your file as a backup.)

Select the front cover layer by clicking on it in the layer window.
Use CMD+T (Mac) or CTRL+T (Windows) to transform the cover.
Position the top left corner of the cover on the book's top left corner.
Scale the cover down to approximately the same size. Do not worry about proportions.