[Custom Covers] Blanks, Templates - get them, share them, help to modify and create

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Sefiriot

I think it'd probably work better on a nice darker coloured leather cover, though having it as a pattern on a linen cover might be intriguing.

I've been testing using your ornament from above. If you're going to use a dark leather cover, then make a FAT BIG BOLD ornament. The one you posted earlier doesn't work on covers with a lot of structure. The lines are too thin. It does work on a linen cover though.

ETA: I'm going to be hand-drawing these things; as in pen on paper. I doubt my scanner will do SVG. >.<

You'd need a trace tool for that. Inkscape can probably do it, but not all raster programs are able to read SVG. I'd go with a very large JPG.

See below. I've bump mapped / embossed your drawing onto the brown linen cover I scanned yesterday, and applied a tiny amount of orangy highlight, by turning your ornament to black and white, then to orange, removing the part I didn't want highlighted, and then set the layer opacity to something like 5.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by MiniMouse

In Pixlr you can find effects under filters like kaleidoscope or water swirl. Try them, maybe you get some of the effects with them.

Edit:
I made some simple once to show you what pixlr can do. First I made simple black and white layers and cutted them, then I played around with the kaleidoscope effect. The 2. one is the same effect after I put the water swirl effect on.

Ooh, shiny. GIMP can't do that AFAIK, so I still have a reason to look more into Pixlr Also, search the net; many free ornaments are available

[Sefiriot]

Oh these are interesting.... Time to experiment again!

[MiniMouse]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I've been testing using your ornament from above. If you're going to use a dark leather cover, then make a FAT BIG BOLD ornament. The one you posted earlier doesn't work on covers with a lot of structure. The lines are too thin. It does work on a linen cover though.



You'd need a trace tool for that. Inkscape can probably do it, but not all raster programs are able to read SVG. I'd go with a very large JPG.

See below. I've bump mapped / embossed your drawing onto the brown linen cover I scanned yesterday, and applied a tiny amount of orangy highlight, by turning your ornament to black and white, then to orange, removing the part I didn't want highlighted, and then set the layer opacity to something like 5.

That looks great!!!! I want this, load a big one up, pleaseeeee.

I can't wait to get home and test some things (yeah, I'm still at work and probably shouldn't spent my time in the net right now). And actually I have almost no time today but I HAVE to try some things today!

MiniMouse

Edit:

I know there is more then enough stuff in the net but I'm starting to like to make it all by myself and find out how to do it. It is fun!

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by MiniMouse

That looks great!!!! I want this, load a big one up, pleaseeeee.

Can't do... didn't save that. It says "test-cover.jpg".

Ah well. I'll make you a new one and add it. Now I'm going to eat something.

[MiniMouse]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Can't do... didn't save that. It says "test-cover.jpg".

Ah well. I'll make you a new one and add it. Now I'm going to eat something.

...yeah and mybe I should work something

And thanks for doing it again, after you eat of course

[Katsunami]

Another little test. One of my books had a very low resolution cover image:

See Here

I've embossed it on one of my cardboard covers and overlaid it with black to give it an inkted look. Pity the circle of the sun/moon (whatever it is) got lost in translation. Maybe I'll try again later.

[Sefiriot]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Another little test. One of my books had a very low resolution cover image:

See Here

I've embossed it on one of my cardboard covers and overlaid it with black to give it an inkted look. Pity the circle of the sun/moon (whatever it is) got lost in translation. Maybe I'll try again later.

Oh that looks very well done. I'll have to try something along those lines myself. Now if only I could master the art of Photoshopping things from different images together-- I see people's pretty fanart and fic covers on AO3 and get jealous of their graphic skills.

[Katsunami]

In the attachment you'll find two new covers.

1. Brown linen cover, with Sefiriot's ornament braided on top.
2. One of the leather covers with the same ornament stamped and burned into it.

The second was much more difficult to do, because of the big differences in light and shadow. The darker the cover becomes, and the more color and structure a cover has, the more difficult embossing will be. Embossing (raising and lowering) relies on light and shadow. A dark cover displays no shadow, and a cover with a lot of structure prohibits thin lines to stand out.

So if you want to emboss (or bump map) ornaments into the cover, then don't make it too dark, and don't add too much colors and structures.

[Sefiriot]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

In the attachment you'll find two new covers.

1. Brown linen cover, with Sefiriot's ornament braided on top.
2. One of the leather covers with the same ornament stamped and burned into it.

The second was much more difficult to do, because of the big differences in light and shadow. The darker the cover becomes, and the more color and structure a cover has, the more difficult embossing will be. Embossing (raising and lowering) relies on light and shadow. A dark cover displays no shadow, and a cover with a lot of structure prohibits thin lines to stand out.

So if you want to emboss (or bump map) ornaments into the cover, then don't make it too dark, and don't add too much colors and structures.

That turned out much better than I expected! Wow. So Katsunami, your advice in making ornaments is basically keep it simple, bold lines-- little to no shading or at least have it pretty light and even?

[MiniMouse]

Hey,

tried your drawing to overlay in pixlr and that come out.
I had not so much time but I think it was very easy to get this first result.

I will post how I did it and the pixlr project (and the zip), then you can see for youself.

You have to wait though, I have no time right now.

MiniMouse

Edit: The second one is with an unsharp mask filter added.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Sefiriot

That turned out much better than I expected! Wow. So Katsunami, your advice in making ornaments is basically keep it simple, bold lines-- little to no shading or at least have it pretty light and even?

The ornament will need to be converted to black and white or more accurately, grayscale. The darker the color, the stronger the embossing will be. If you want an ornament that really stands out, make it all black on a white background, using no greys. Bump mapping and embossing (an emboss is actually a basic bump map) relies in light and shadow, nothing more. White and black is of course the biggest contrast you can achieve, and thus the embossing will be strongest.

As I posted earlier: Imagine that you have a piece of leather, and a huge stamp. This stamp doesn't have ink on it, but it has an image carved on top of it. Then you smash the stamp down into the leather. If you do it on the front, you'll get a recessed image. If you do it on the back, you get a raised image.

This is what bump mapping / embossing basically does. It raises or lowers part of the image (cover) based on a greyscale stamp (ornament). Because it is just raised or lowered, there is no color used to display the ornament; only light and shadow.

So, if your ornament has a lot of very thin lines, there won't be much to lower or raise; there won't be much light or shadow, maybe only a few (or even one) pixel wide. All of that detail will get lost in a small cover after resizing. If you have a very dark cover, you won't see anything: compare, you can't throw a shadow on a black wall either. If you have a cover with a lot of colors and structures, you won't see anything either, because the light and shadows are getting dispersed.

So in short, yes: don't make ornaments TOO detailed and stick to black and white, and when putting them onto covers, use a cover that is not too dark, and does not have too much structure or too much color.

You see I keep saying "not too much": obviously, you can have detail in the ornament, you can have structure or color in the cover, but don't overdo anything.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

In the attachment you'll find two new covers.

1. Brown linen cover, with Sefiriot's ornament braided on top.
2. One of the leather covers with the same ornament stamped and burned into it.

The second was much more difficult to do, because of the big differences in light and shadow. The darker the cover becomes, and the more color and structure a cover has, the more difficult embossing will be. Embossing (raising and lowering) relies on light and shadow. A dark cover displays no shadow, and a cover with a lot of structure prohibits thin lines to stand out.

So if you want to emboss (or bump map) ornaments into the cover, then don't make it too dark, and don't add too much colors and structures.

I am envious of all you folk with real artistic skill.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by MiniMouse

tried your drawing to overlay in pixlr and that come out.
I had not so much time but I think it was very easy to get this first result.

Intriguing. Your workflow yields a completely different effect compared to mine

Originally Posted by theducks

I am envious of all you folk with real artistic skill.

I've been editing picutures using Photoshop for about 10 years, and have switched to GIMP a year ago. (I am slowly starting to detest Adobe more and more, mostly because of its subscription-only business model for the latest versions of their software.)

If you know the software's basics, then this is not really "artistic skill": I just suddenly remembered the terms, such as Emboss, Bump Map, Directional Light, and so on, and looked up some tutorials on how to apply that stuff. Don't ask me to create stuff from scratch using paper and pencil because I'll fail horribly.

Would it be appreciated if I created a bump map/emboss tutorial (using GIMP) with regard to these covers? And if I do, should I put it in a different thread?

===

One more: a leather cover, posted earlier in this thread, with a free ornament grabbed from the internet. After embossing it, I've actually used the embossing stamp image to add a highlight to the ornament. (Compare it as if you would fill an imprinted image with paint, on a real leather cover.)

Of course I can churn out a gazillion different covers now, but I really don't want to. Does someone have a request, like: "I'd like this ornament I found there added to that cover, in this or that way"? Maybe I could try it.

[Sefiriot]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Intriguing. Your workflow yields a completely different effect compared to mine



I've been editing picutures using Photoshop for about 10 years, and have switched to GIMP a year ago. (I am slowly starting to detest Adobe more and more, mostly because of its subscription-only business model for the latest versions of their software.)

If you know the software's basics, then this is not really "artistic skill": I just suddenly remembered the terms, such as Emboss, Bump Map, Directional Light, and so on, and looked up some tutorials on how to apply that stuff. Don't ask me to create stuff from scratch using paper and pencil because I'll fail horribly.

Would it be appreciated if I created a bump map/emboss tutorial (using GIMP) with regard to these covers? And if I do, should I put it in a different thread?

===

One more: a leather cover, posted earlier in this thread, with a free ornament grabbed from the internet. After embossing it, I've actually used the embossing stamp image to add a highlight to the ornament. (Compare it as if you would fill an imprinted image with paint, on a real leather cover.)

Of course I can churn out a gazillion different covers now, but I really don't want to. Does someone have a request, like: "I'd like this ornament I found there added to that cover, in this or that way"? Maybe I could try it.

Thanks for the advice. That earlier drawing wasn't actually meant as a book ornament, more as an abstract mandala, thus the colourful looks. Zentangle patterns traditionally rely on fine details and shading for their beauty: it'll be a challenge to port it over into making these ornaments! That said, since Zentangles are usually more or less all black and white (with some grey shading thrown in occasionally) getting the embossed look to work with covers will probably be easier.

A tutorial for GIMP would be great. I've tried GIMP before, and basically can do some very basic things by the dint of much trial and error. Photoshop eludes me.

@MiniMouse: No hurry, upload/post when you can. I'll be out of town for most of this weekend, so I won't be able to do much anyway. I MIGHT start drafting a new ornament/cover however.