— AKA: HOW TO PUT A DIGITAL COVER ONTO A REAL BOOK —
I've done this tutorial before on my Instagram stories, but this is something that I think deserves its own post. This tutorial goes out to all the ebook readers who want to make their Instagram feed, "Bookstagram" worthy.
So if you don't follow my book instagram (@hiveretcafe), I have developed a sort of "signature style" for my photographs that involve harsh lighting and creating shadows. An example of which, you can see below:
My problem was this: how do I do a cover reveal on my Instagram or share an ebook that I read on my Instagram feed without ruining the theme I had going on? I remembered that I had a photoshop file that I purchased in a Black Friday bundle ages ago and tried that, but there's a colouring filter on it that really distorted the colours of the cover.
Eventually, after some experimenting with it I figured it out, and it looks pretty good, as you can see in this picture:
So here's that tutorial as to how you can do it too! :)
— TABLE OF CONTENTS —
- Materials
- STEP 1: Making the Base Prop
- STEP 2: Taking the Photo
- STEP 3: Editing Prep
- STEP 4: Editing the Image
- STEP 5: Exporting the Image
- STEP 6: Aesthetic Editing
- STEP 7: Post the Image
— MATERIALS —
This is a tutorial that requires access to a computer and editing software. The one I'm demonstrating with in this tutorial is a fairly accessible one though. I have a mobile friendly tutorial that's on my IG stories that's about 2 years old and it looks a little less neat. I also don't think the Photoshp editing app lets you do some of those things anymore. If there's a demand for a mobile friendly editing version, let me know and I'll look into it.
- one hardcover book, standard sized (preferably no embossing on the naked book and black boards)
- blank paper (I went with an A4 size paper)
- a piece of tape
- your regular bookstagram set up
- Affinity Photo (or whatever your editing software is, but I will be using Affinity Photo for this tutorial)
- the digital cover of the book you're revealing, that you've read, etc. (preferably as high resolution/large as you can find)
For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be using Affinity Photo. It's a competitor to Photoshop and I prefer to use this one mostly because I refuse to download the Adobe CC Cloud and it's way too expensive for a casual user.
Affinity offers 90 day free trials for their products, and they're a one time purchase to use the product. It's almost always half off (It's $35 CAD and I will be purchasing a license when my trial runs out). I'm also not affiliated with Affinity in any way, I just like the business model and I hope they become a real competitor for Photoshop in the future.
EDIT: Feb 2022 Affinity is no longer offering 90 day free trials and their products for half off, as it was a promotion for their product that simply lasted a long time. The product is now $75 CAD at full price, but it's still a one time purchase. The free trial is 10 days long. I still recommend the product in comparison to Photoshop which requires a monthly fee to access their product.
Another great option is the free, Photopea, which is a free online photoshop clone that can open and make PSD files! It does limit you more in creative options due to its limits with fonts, etc., however for the purposes of this tutorial, it is fully feasible to do this tutorial with Photopea. The following photo was made in Photopea using the methods from this tutorial.
I'm also using a MacBook, so the commands may look slightly different for you. The Affinity suite is also available for Ipad and I don't know what the commands are for the Ipad app. If you ever need any help on how to do something specific beyond the scope of this tutorial in regards to operating system or other editing tasks, Affinity has a great instruction book site that you can look at here — Affinity Help
— STEP 1: Making the Base Prop —
The first step is to take a hardcover book that you already own, take off the jacket and wrap a blank piece of paper around it so as to simulate a book jacket.
I chose a standard sized hardcover book (not the tall ones) with a black board on it and no hidden embossed design stamped into the board on the front.
I chose a standard sized because a regular sheet of A4 paper can wrap around it quite nicely to simulate a book jacket. There are so many hardcover books with a black board underneath that it would be able to blend into whatever cover you decide on putting on. And finally I chose one that had no embossing underneath because I was worried that the design would show up after I put the blank paper on top.
Tape down the paper to the back of the book so that the paper stays taut and fold over the excess to make a sort of flap, like you see in hardcover books with jackets. I used washi tape so that the adhesive wouldn't be too strong and damage my book or the paper. I reuse the paper because the dimensions are already in the folds and I don't have to do it again.
— STEP 2: Taking the Photo —
Now with this book that you've wrapped, take a picture of it as you would in your normal set up for a bookstagram picture. Whether that be with props or in my case, a scant amount of props and an emphasis on the dramatic lighting.
Some tips on taking the picture:
- It's best to take a picture of the book face on, where the cover would be and the least spine showing as possible
- this is because we don't know what the spine looks like generally or finding the spine asset is harder than the cover, so you can't really edit it in.
- you can have something covering a part of the cover, like holding the book, but definitely be prepared to do some extra editing
Here's an example of a picture that I took in preparation for this purpose. This is the one I'll be using to demonstrate on in this tutorial.
I'll also be doing an example with a version where part of the cover is obstructed like where I'm holding the book, as you can see in the following photo. I'll also be using this exact one in the tutorial as well.
— STEP 3: Editing Prep —
So now you have your photos that you like for the post with whatever props you'd like, and you have your digital cover! For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be using the digital cover for A Far Wilder Magic by Alison Saft, which has a fairly busy background as an example.
I did make a video compliment to this tutorial, in case you didn't really want to read this through, and you can also see my process in editing the photos myself.
For the Photoshop users, I'm sorry I can't provide much more detail. I don't own photoshop anymore. I'm assuming you can do the same sort of editing trick by going to Edit --> Transform --> Warp and moving the mesh around. I used to do the "Shift + Left click" after hitting Free Transform to move around the image, but I think the mesh warping is much more effective.
Assuming you've downloaded Affinity Photo or opened your editing program of choice, load your photo of choice into the program.
You can go to File --> Open and then open your photo of choice, then you can go to File --> Place and choose the book cover. The cursor will change and let you place the book cover onto the canvas.
This is what it should look like after resizing the cover to roughly be the same size as the book in the photo
The next part is to right click on the layer in the layers panel and click the rasterise button. This is to transform the layer type from "image" to "pixel" and allow us to do more with the information in the layer.
— STEP 4: Editing the Image —
Next, we will begin warping the cover image. To do so, we'll be using the Mesh Warp Tool, you'll find near the bottom of the toolbar on the left hand side.
The selected tool is what the Mesh Warp tool looks like.
Next, lower the opacity of the cover layer in the layer panel on the right hand side, so that we can see the book in the image underneath.
The goal is to move the corners of the book cover to line up with the corners of the book in the image. If your book is crooked in the photo like mine, don't worry too much if the edges look warped like in the image below. We'll be fixing that part next.
When you click on one of the vertices or corners of the book image, you'll notice that there are two arms attached to that point. Those arms will help you adjust the curvature of the edges of that image. Move them back and forth and experiment with moving them until the edges of the book cover line up with the blank cover of the book. Don't worry if the edges of the cover go over the book. As long as it's not too far, when zoomed out, it will hardly be noticable. If you make a mistake with the warping, that's okay! Just hit Ctrl/Cmd+Z and undo it.
Here's what the cover looks like after fixing up the warped edges.
There's a bit of a problem due to the way that the paper is warped in my photo, but it's easy to fix! The warping of the paper jacket means that the cover isn't exactly a perfect square. It's a bit hard to see even in the circle because of my shadow heavy photography style, but it's there! The next example of editing will have clearer photos, and you can see it here -- (jump to another warp point example)
To fix this, we'll be adding anothe warp point to the image so that we can adjust the warp more specifically than just the four corners of the image.
To add a new warp point, double click on the border of the cover image that lines up with the peak of the warped area. I like to do this so that the slopes will be easy to adjust with the arms. If a circle shows up first, that's okay, just click again. If you mess up where you'd like to place it, hit Ctrl/Cmd + Z.
Adjust the arms for the new warp point so that they line up with the edges of the paper and cover the white. Double check so that all of the warp points are where they should be and that the edges line up. Zoomed out, this is what the mesh of the book cover looks like for my image.
Now here comes the magical part, to make the cover really look like a part of the image. Change the opacity of the cover layer back to 100%. Then, in the drop down menu next to it, change the layer mode to Multiply.
And you're done with the editing! I'll be showing how to edit a book photo where part of it is obstructed next, but you can skip to the next step to see how to export the image. (Jump to Exporting)
— STEP 4.5: Editing an Obstructed Book Cover —
As you saw earlier in Step 2, one of my examples is an image where I'm holding the book and my thumb obstructs a part of the paper where the cover goes. In this part, I'll be showing how I edit the cover onto this one and also show a clearer image of what I meant earlier when I said that there was a warp in the paper of the "jacket".
Edit the cover image the same as in the previous steps. Use mesh warp and get the edges of the cover image to line up as well as possible with the edges of the book in the image.
Here's what I meant earlier in the tutorial as to a warp in the book "jacket" cover.
Like we did before, I put my warp point on the mesh that lines up roughly with the peak of the warp to make sure that the resulting curves will be easy to manipulate and line up with the edges of the "jacket". To do so, double click on the mesh to add the warp point.
Then, drag the warp point up to the peak of the bend in the "jacket" and line it up. Then you can use the arms to make sure that the bend of the cover image of the book jacket, as you can see in the following picture.
After you've made sure that the edges have lined up, follow the same process as earlier and adjust the opacity back to 100% and change the layer mode to multiply. As you can see in the image below, the cover is superimposed onto my thumb and of course that makes it unrealistic. We'll be fixing that part next.
To fix this, we'll be deleting part of the cover that the object/finger obstructs. To do so, we can use the eraser tool, or if you're an expert, the pen tool. For this tutorial, we'll be using the Erase Brush tool.
One of the cool things about the eraser brush tool in Affinity Photo is that it gives a sort of preview as to what will be revealed. As such, it's quite easy to make sure that your eraser brush lines up with what you want to reveal. The image on the left below is meant to sort of mimic the way the eraser tool looks, but the tool UI didn't transer to the screen capture D: The image on the right shows my finished erasing process. You don't need to be too neat with the edges as long as it's not too jagged. When zoomed out, you hardly notice.
And you're done!! Onwards to the next step, Exporting!
— STEP 5: Exporting the Image —
Hitting Ctrl/Cmd + S in Affinity Photo will prompt you to save the file as an .afphoto file which is a file format proprietary to Affinity Photo. In order to obtain an image file like a JPG or PNG, we'll have to export the image. You can still save the file as an .afphoto file as a project file so you can go back and make tweaks to it if you so desire.
To export, go to File --> Export as is shown in the image below.
once you've hit the Export button, a window will pop up that looks like the one shown below. You can see the different file types that you can export the image as, as well as the dimensions. I like to save my images as a PNG file in the picture's original size. Once you've finalized the dimensions and file type that you would like, a window should pop up prompting you to choose the location for your file to save. Save it where you'd like.
And we're done this editing portion!!! Here's what my edited images look like!
— STEP 6: Aesthetic Editing —
So now you have the base photo with the cover digitally superimposed onto a real book photo that you took. Now you can export the edited image to wherever it is that you edit your photos for the aesthetics. I have a macbook so I airdrop the finished photos to my phone and edit the photo in VSCO because I like their filters. If you don't have airdrop, you can always transfer the image to your phone through a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive.
Here are what my finished images look like after I've given them a pass through VSCO with my favourite "golden hour" editing style at the moment. One of the reasons why I mentioned earlier that it's okay not to be too neat with the edges is because as long as you don't go too far, it's quite unnoticable zoomed out and also editing with filters hides it and blends it in. Instagram also compresses your image quality as well.
— STEP 7: Post on Instagram (or Wherever You Want) —
So now you're done with the whole process. The last step is to post it wherever you plan on posting it, whether it be accompaniment to a review or something else!
If you've read this far into the tutorial and made it to the end, thank you for sticking around to read it all the way through!
I hope this tutorial helped you out. I've shared this technique with a couple friends, but I really thought that this would help a lot of the bookstagrammers/book influencers that read a lot of ebooks or to help them do cover reveals and stuff like it helped me. I originally had come up with this technique in 2019 when I had a lot of reveals to do. I had meant to post a full blog post on it earlier, but I'm kind of glad it took me a while because I don't think the tutorial would have been nearly as good. Sorry I don't have anything for the video people/booktok-ers.
I downloaded and learned how to use OBS and edited the video to make the tutorial video up above. It definitely would have been better if I had learned to use DaVinci Resolve instead of using iMovie to edit, but also when I looked at previews of the panels for DaVinci Resolve, my head started to spin LOL.
Once again, thank you so much for reading this tutorial and I hope you enjoy, and share it with people you think might like this tutorial! :)
Happy reading and Happy Editing!
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