Left Turn With Cover Art!

If you read my post titled Cover Wars in publishing, you’ll understand what I’ve been through with this book cover! Bless God I believe my ongoing battle with Cover Art is over! I got some great encouragement here on Author Media Social, and some really helpful advice.

I tried to get Canva’s AI to continue my son-in-law’s ebook cover onto a back cover and blend them together. Each time it made a pass it got better. I kept telling it not to change anything on the original cover but the edge for blending into the spine and back cover. The last pass, everything looked good, almost…

Brian and Antonia’s faces were suddenly a mess this pass. I know now to refresh by starting a new convo with the AI now and then. Lesson learned. It asked me if I wanted it to redo the cover, and I said yes. I mean, why not?

The new cover below is basically what it came up with, with a lot of work and tweaking on my end in my Pixelmator Pro program. Brian got a new head, as the AI made him too young looking and Celtic instead of Jewish. I loved the image of Brian that Thomas’s cover generator made. So, I cut out the head (it was a bloodless operation) used background remover, put it where the old head was, and asked the AI to make it one with the other artwork and blend it with the body.

It did that, and did it well. There were issues with his hands (as usual) and Antonia’s facial feature were a little off. I used paint in PixelmatorPro and sharpened up both Brian and Antonia’s features. I did more work refining Brian’s hands and made the one strumming and his wrist bigger.

The divider bar was one bar on top of another, because the AI provided one and I didn’t like it! I couldn’t do anything with it so I just plopped the one I wanted right on top of it! Lol! I fixed it by creating a new layer and continuing the shadowy tree trunks and trees right over the ugly divider bar, and got the one I wanted in place without the old one sticking out all over! I also got a suggestion that the lettering on the back was hard to read at the top on the back cover. I created another layer under the text and painted transparent green to match the forest under the type at that point to fix that issue.
Phew! Here’s the finished cover! After all this up and down, trials and work, I feel like I should have posted this in Celebrations!