How to: Design a nice ebook cover with Photoshop

Posted by Jean-Baptiste Jung on Oct 30, 2008 in Web design • 49 comments

A friend of mine recently asked me some help to design a cover for his forthcomming ebook. After designing it, I decided to make a tutorial and share it with you.

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:

49 reactions

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1 - Bob on Oct 31, 2008, 1:17 am:

Awesome, you make it so much easier!
2 - J M C on Oct 31, 2008, 2:08 am:

This is amazing! Your instructions worked - first time! Thanks so much, this will add a whole new level of “professionalism” to my ebooks…
3 - Shoban on Oct 31, 2008, 5:11 am:

Thanks for the tip!!! BTW wat ebook are you planning to bring out??
4 - jbj on Oct 31, 2008, 8:38 am:

@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.
5 - Catrin W on Oct 31, 2008, 10:53 am:

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
6 - Maigret on Oct 31, 2008, 11:28 am:

Great work, you give some ideas…
7 - John Derrick on Nov 1, 2008, 9:55 am:

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.
8 - Wei Liang | ABloggerBlog on Nov 1, 2008, 1:04 pm:

Great tutorial. Seems like I could do some editing to my existing EBook cover with this. Thanks for it.

Wei Liang
9 - International Shipping on Nov 1, 2008, 2:32 pm:

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
10 - Make Money Blogging on Nov 1, 2008, 2:33 pm:

wow.. very simple steps and I believe many will find it very useful!
11 - Movie Review Blog on Nov 1, 2008, 4:46 pm:

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.
12 - iRobot on Nov 1, 2008, 10:13 pm:

Great easy tutorial - thanks!
13 - Webkinz on Nov 1, 2008, 10:58 pm:

Thanks for the tutorial and link to the cover. I couldn’t find it before and tried to draw on another ebook.
14 - rajesh on Nov 1, 2008, 11:22 pm:

seems like I could do some editing…I really appreciate u
15 - Jay on Nov 2, 2008, 12:44 am:

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.
16 - vincent on Nov 3, 2008, 12:04 pm:

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.
17 - Ajith Edassery on Nov 4, 2008, 5:06 am:

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
18 - The 'sell photos online' Dude on Nov 4, 2008, 11:10 am:

Hi,
The ecover looks great…
What about using Photoshop 3D ecover actions to make an ecover?
That’s also a good option.

Thanks…

Martin
19 - skyperecord on Nov 4, 2008, 7:39 pm:

easy tips but very get best result of Ebook cover
20 - Billy Swordman on Nov 5, 2008, 7:14 am:

This is a new knowledge for me. I didn’t know that designing ebook cover is just that easy. Thank you.
21 - Roger Hamilton on Nov 5, 2008, 3:04 pm:

Great post! The tutorial is very useful to me. Thanks for the clear instructions and information. Hope to see your new posts soon.
22 - Warren Wojnowski on Nov 6, 2008, 1:37 am:

That first template really makes the e-book cover look perfessional. And everybody loves that perfessional look, right?
23 - Website Magazine on Nov 6, 2008, 3:56 pm:

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!
24 - KRISHNA on Nov 6, 2008, 4:41 pm:

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
25 - chad on Nov 7, 2008, 6:43 am:

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?
26 - Desk Coder on Nov 7, 2008, 3:32 pm:

@chad, well, tutorial or not, it helps me out a lot. I have an eBook coming out soon, and this certainly helps!
27 - Ali Rasbany on Nov 9, 2008, 10:13 am:

awesome, simply genius will help me much. thank you
28 - Fly Fishing for Stripers on Nov 9, 2008, 7:57 pm:

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!
29 - rejidesigner on Nov 11, 2008, 5:55 am:

Its cool and quick…
Its very important to stay with minimum steps, and bring out the best - what u have done. Great!!
30 - Brandon on Nov 11, 2008, 9:48 am:

Great!! Thanks four this useful information..
31 - Carrie on Nov 14, 2008, 9:22 pm:

Wow, that’s a great looking cover. I’ll forward this to my husband, who is my graphics guy.
32 - Richard from Aussie Jobs Online on Nov 15, 2008, 2:07 am:

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!
33 - Penny Bright on Nov 17, 2008, 8:35 am:

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!
34 - Katie Weston on Nov 18, 2008, 12:17 pm:

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…
35 - Mayooresan on Nov 19, 2008, 7:48 am:

I thought I must hire a desinger to design my ebook cover! Thanks alot for this great resource
36 - Tom - Entrepreneur Interview on Nov 23, 2008, 6:57 am:

Creating ebook covers is easy when you use a tutorial like this. thanks!
37 - videos for fun on Nov 23, 2008, 1:34 pm:

Are there any ps action script for this?
38 - Blogging Guide on Nov 24, 2008, 1:49 am:

This is cool one.. My first impression you will use the action script. But i am wrong..

This is cool tutorial..
39 - Addy on Nov 30, 2008, 4:03 am:

very easy.. thanks thanks
40 - Ebook Rob on Dec 1, 2008, 5:59 pm:

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.
41 - Janet Halsketten on Dec 2, 2008, 11:09 am:

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.
42 - Raven on Dec 10, 2008, 9:00 pm:

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.)
43 - James Mann on Dec 22, 2008, 4:54 pm:

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.
44 - Security Certifications on Dec 27, 2008, 3:25 pm:

Well this has saved me a few hours messing with photoshop!
45 - Michelle on Dec 30, 2008, 8:45 pm:

Thanks so much! This is so much easier than what I was about to attempt.