Creating a cover for a book

[psphufi]

Hello all,

I want to create a complete cover for a book: Front, spine text, back, in DIN A5 format, as shown in the screenshot. I have done this in Open Office Writer, but I am missing other design options, which I could certainly do better with PSP: Background, image on the title page, background image on the back page and more.

I would also like to save this cover as a template for other books.

How do I proceed to realise such a cover in PSP? I could not find a tutorial anywhere.

Thank you very much for your help!

[LeviFiction]

Is this for a publisher or something you're doing on your own? If it's for a publisher they usually have some sort of base document to help. Especially when putting in guides for bleed and placement.

Creating an image the exact size you need, is easy. PSP comes with presets for A5. And if you want to create your own size preset you can. According to this article the proper pixel size for A5 (21,0 x 14,8) at a traditional 118 PPC (pixels per cm) is 2480 x 1748 pixels. https://thecolor.blog/size-a5/

To create a new image at the size you want File -> New and choose the preset or set the values mentioned above. You can now create layers, copy and paste images, and move things around however you want. Just like always. Not sure what else to tell you. "How do I make a book cover" is very generic.

What sort of tutorial or information are you looking for?

If you want to make use of guides I can offer some information on that.
1) Open the image you want to edit
2) View -> Rulers
3) If the ruler isn't in the proper units then set the default units in File -> Preferences -> General Program Preferences -> Units. You can choose between Pixels (default), Inches, and Centimeters.
4) To add a guide you need to click on a ruler and pull in the proper direction as listed below.

• A) Horizontal Guide - Click on the top ruler, drag down
• B) Vertical Guide - Click on the left ruler, drag to the right

5) To place a ruler in an exact location double click on the blue marker on the ruler to bring up the guide properties which includes location (in the default units you selected previously) and the color of the guide.
6) You can turn on Snapping to guides to assist in positioning items. View -> Snap to Guides.

[psphufi]

Thank you for your effort! I didn't know a lot of this and will keep it in mind.
However, I got the tip that something like this can be done much better with a design software and downloaded Scribus.

Many greetings

[LeviFiction]

Yes indeed. Scribus is my favorite of the free options for design but also Inkscape, OpenOffice or Libre Office Draw, Microsoft Publisher, Affinity Publisher. For anyone else looking. They all can do it to various levels. Especially for anything that needs paragraphs and text alignment. PSP's text is too basic. And it's not an illustration/design software only has some basic illustration/design features.

[Jean-Luc]

The following tutorial is for GIMP.
It explains what to do, step by step, with an illustration for each step.
All are easily doable with PaintShop Pro:
http://12on14.us/free/covers_pt1_071917_locked.pdf

[psphufi]

The cover templates on https://bookow.com/resources.php are unfortunately not suitable for me because the printer's specifications are not accepted: These figures were calculated with bleed, fret thickness (B) and paper thickness: 310 mm * 216 mm = 12.205" * 8.5039". So although this looks really easy with GIMP, I can't use these templates, not even for Office.

It's not exactly easy with Scribus, so I want to try it manually with Open Office Writer.

I can then design the background and cover images with PSP.

Cover sizes.jpg

[psphufi]

Postscript:
I have found out that it is very easy with Scribus, even without a cover template! That's why I'm sticking with it.

Thanks to all of you!