Disclaimer for Windows users: The cmd key on the Mac is the same than the Ctrl key on a PC keyboard.
Getting the template
While I was looking for some info about designing an ebook cover, I stumbled upon a very nice blank ebook cover template, that you can use to create your very own ebook cover. Download it here.
Cover design
Now open Photoshop, and create your cover image. You can use the cover01_blank.psd template to make it fit our final work size.
Assembling the template
Once you have your cover ready, merge all layers (Layer → Flatten image) and open the cover01.psd template, which already contain the shape of our ebook cover.
Drag and drop your cover to the template. To modify the cover size, adjust its opacity to 60% (So you can see throught) and press Cmd+T to resize it while holding the shift key down:
In order to finish our ebook cover, we need to distort the cover to make it fit the template shape. To do so, select Edit → Transform → Distort.
Don’t forget to set the opacity to 100% when you finished resizing, and now let’s have a look at the awesome ebook cover we have:
My name is Jean-Baptiste Jung and I'm the man behind Cats Who Code. I started to use the Internet back in 1998 and started to create websites three years laters in 2001.
62 Comments
Awesome, you make it so much easier!
This is amazing! Your instructions worked – first time! Thanks so much, this will add a whole new level of “professionalism” to my ebooks…
Thanks for the tip!!! BTW wat ebook are you planning to bring out??
@Shoban: I was planning to release a “How to start your blog efficiently” ebook, but I got too much things to do right now, so maybe later
I already wrote something like 10/15 pages btw.
I was always wondering how do they make it. And i though it was something very difficult
, but now i see that it could be made very easy. Thanks, now i can design ebook cover by myself
Great work, you give some ideas…
Wow, that is super easy to do.
I use a pluggin for Photoshop and while it’s easy to use, it has at least a dozen steps.
I’ll have to give this a try.
Great tutorial. Seems like I could do some editing to my existing EBook cover with this. Thanks for it.
Wei Liang
This is a brilliant article. Thank you for the great advice and also the free template. I am gonna post this link on a few sites I post on as I think people will find it useful. I hope thats ok. Thanks again for the detailed instructions and template.
thanks again
Gerard
wow.. very simple steps and I believe many will find it very useful!
I really appreciate your effort in posting this. it does helps me a lot and the instructions are pretty clear and it really works for me.. thank you.
Great easy tutorial – thanks!
Thanks for the tutorial and link to the cover. I couldn’t find it before and tried to draw on another ebook.
seems like I could do some editing…I really appreciate u
Great article, your final result looks awesome – & you make it look so simple!
If anyone’s looking for more templates, or software that converts your 2d ebook cover designs into like a professional product shot, here’s one I 100% recommend. ( http://www.ecoversuiteelite.com ).
It’s pretty cool ebook cover software that makes creating really pro ebook covers waaaay faster than modelling by hand!
Thanks again for the great resources (i.e the blank psd file) – they’ll definately come in handy.
Very nice tutorial. I was almost thinking of hiring someone to create a cover for me but this tutorials makes it easy for me to make one myself.
Man… exactly what I have been looking for. My first eBook is shaping up and I was wondering what to do with the cover. People were quoting $75 and 100 for a cover…
I might use Paint Shop Pro but the steps you explained holds good… Stumbling the post right away!
Cheers,
Ajith
Hi,
The ecover looks great…
What about using Photoshop 3D ecover actions to make an ecover?
That’s also a good option.
Thanks…
Martin
easy tips but very get best result of Ebook cover
This is a new knowledge for me. I didn’t know that designing ebook cover is just that easy. Thank you.
Great post! The tutorial is very useful to me. Thanks for the clear instructions and information. Hope to see your new posts soon.
That first template really makes the e-book cover look perfessional. And everybody loves that perfessional look, right?
This is incredibly helpful – thanks so much. It worked perfectly. I’ve trying to figure out how to do that for years to no avail. Your insights are most appreciated!
Hi Guys,
This is the best ecover design that I have experienced till now. I downloaded it & will be using it since I am a newbie in Adobe photoshop stuff,
Thanks again for this master piece art,
Regards,
Krishna
what are you all talking about…this isn’t a tutorial at all. It one step showing the distort tool but the title says it’s a tutorial on designing an ebook cover?
@chad, well, tutorial or not, it helps me out a lot. I have an eBook coming out soon, and this certainly helps!
awesome, simply genius will help me much. thank you
Cool!
I’ve got an ebook in the works on fly fishing for stripers (a personal passion) and this is going to be very valuable!
Its cool and quick…
Its very important to stay with minimum steps, and bring out the best – what u have done. Great!!
Great!! Thanks four this useful information..
Wow, that’s a great looking cover. I’ll forward this to my husband, who is my graphics guy.
The more I read your blog, the more I’m blown away by how many helpful hints I’m finding… and they’re helpful hints that I’m actually *interested* in! Thanks for putting all this out there!
I thought I must hire a designer to make a nice ebook cover. Now I know how to make it myself. This is an awesome secret for me. Thanks!
Thanks – that just saved me $69 on getting mine done! I’ve downloaded the template and I just need to think of what to put on the cover now…
I thought I must hire a desinger to design my ebook cover! Thanks alot for this great resource
Creating ebook covers is easy when you use a tutorial like this. thanks!
Are there any ps action script for this?
This is cool one.. My first impression you will use the action script. But i am wrong..
This is cool tutorial..
very easy.. thanks thanks
Although it is very easy to do that but thanks for sharing resources. I think it saves a lot of time if we did get some such resources without much effort. It is the bright side of blogging and I do blogging for the same reason.
Wow that’s a really cool and easy way to design e-book covers. I’ve ever thought, that making e-book covers is much harder, but it seems that I was wrong. Thnx for this great post. Enjoyed reading it.
Thanks so much for the template!! I am only used to working with photoshop to edit images. Do you have any links to easy instructions on how to create a cover with layers? I am looking through the HELP section right now and it’s not extremely helpful. (That is, how to add a photo image to a layer.)
I love Photoshop and have been using for years. Mac has had the power to run Photoshop forever but not so for the PCs. I used to spend a lot of time doing things as my computer slowed the more involved my images got but I still loved it.
I would hear people saying Photoshop was too hard to learn but I would just tell them it all starts with learning the toolbar and taking one small step at a time. After they create their first image most are hooked on Photoshop as well.
Well this has saved me a few hours messing with photoshop!
Thanks so much! This is so much easier than what I was about to attempt.
I just actually installed Photoshop along with Premier Pro. Although I will probably learn Premier Pro first it certainly helps to read all I can about Photoshop as well!
Very handy tutorial, thanks! Gonna go fire up photoshop right now
Cool stuff, Photoshop is a wonderful program though almost everything by Adobe is!
What a huge time saver. Thank you very much.
Hey Jean,
Very cool stuff you’ve got here!… Great resource!
Ovi Dogar
AbsoluteCovers.com
Excellent ideas, resources, and descriptions. Good tutorial. Thanks.
So easy ! So fast ! THANKS a lot for this tuto
Best regards. Thomas
This is amazing! Thanks so much!
Very simple yet very effective tutorial.
Wishing you all the best!
Sincerely,
Kazooli
Thanks so much for this easy tutorial. I’ve created a couple of ebooks for users of WordPress and have been trying to figure out how to do exactly this for the page they’re linked from.
Having the Photoshop file you linked to as a basis also made all the difference.
Your technique was simple to follow and produced excellent results.
What if I don’t have a cmd key on my computer since I don’t have a mac? How would I resize the image to fit the book cover template if I don’t have the computer key?
Nevermind, I figured it out. I thought it was the windows key but it turned out to be the Ctrl key on my keypad. Thank you for the great guide, it was a huge help!
It is difficult for me!!! I could not do this on picasa i don’t know why but i could not create a cover for my ebook!! any other ideas please?
Thank you
Dona
Hey Jean-Baptiste, nice step-by-step tutorial and the end results looks pretty good. Thanks for sharing.
This is by far the best instruction I have found… everyone else makes it seem so complicated. So thank you!
Hi!.. May i know if you do have templates for spiral notebook? thanks!
This will make my the task of designing a ebook cover so much easier this time. Just what I like a nice simple and easy to follow tutorial that works the way it is meant too.
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