Romantic Novel Cover

When Cheryl moved to the big city, boosting her career wasn’t her only fantasy. Now she must choose between wealth and lust… 

Our protagonist is a beautiful blonde from a set of stock photos that can be found here.

Download the larger file, then open it in Photoshop and have a look at thistutorial for some advice on how to cut her out.

Now that she is isolated from the original background go Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast and bring the contrast up to +20.

We want to give our leading lady an elegant painted look, like you would see on some older book covers.

Go to Filter> Filter Gallery…

Choose Paint Daubs from the Artistic folder, and change the settings to those shown in the example above.

When you have finished press OK, and now your lady will have a subtle painted look.

Next we need our dream man, he can be found in a set here.

Download the larger size file and open it in Photoshop, and cut him out.

As before, increase the Contrast to +20, and also increase Brightness to +20 this time.

Now open the Filter Gallery again, and choose Paint Daubs. This time the Brush size has been decreased by one because it is a smaller sized image.

Dreamy. Now you can minimize this window, we’ll come back to it later.

Our background image is the charming city of London, which can be downloaded here.

Increase the Brightness to +20 and the Contrast to +10.

Again, use the Paint Daubs filter, this time increasing the brush size to 20 because it is a much larger image than the previous two.

You can minimize this window for now.

Open a new Photoshop document with the dimensions set to 827px x 1280px.

Use the Rectangle Tool to draw a blue rectangle in the top half of the document.

Rasterize your rectangle layer by right-clicking on it in the layers panel, and choosing Rasterize Layer.

Now go Edit>Transform>Warp.

Click in the centre or the bottom edge of the rectangle and push upwards to create a curve.

Tap Enter when you’ve finished.

Double-click on the rectangle layer to bring up it’s Layer Style box.

Select Stroke and enter the settings shown above. This will create a thick white border around your rectangle.

Now you can start to place the images that you created earlier.

Start with the London background, Go Select>Select All, then Edit>Copy.

Then go back to your cover document and go Edit>Paste.

Next select your lady and paste her into your document.

We want to give her a white glow, so double-click on her layer and choose Outer Glow in the Layer Style box.

Then enter the settings above.

And lastly, paste in your dreamy businessman.

Now select the Pen Tool, and draw a shape like the one above by creating a series of points.

You can use the Direct Selection Tool to reposition the points if necessary.

With your shape created, left click on it and select Make Selection.

Click OK.

Now that it is selected, you can use the Paint Bucket Tool to fill your shape with a darker blue colour.

Copy and Paste your shape and fill it with a lighter blue, then use the Transform tools to re-shape both shapes, as shown above.

Next use the Rounded Rectangle Tool to create a white rectangle.

Add a smaller rectangle on top…

…and use the Transform>Perspective tool to widen it’s base.

In your layers panel select both these layers by holding shift, then right-click on them and choose Merge Layers.

Now that they have merged into one layer, right-click on the layer to bring up the Layer Style box and add the Stroke settings shown above.

Here is the Mills and Boon rose.

Right-click to save it, then place it in the centre of your shape.

For the Mills and Boon Text, create two text boxes either side of the rose using the Text Tool.

Use the text settings shown above.

Next we will add the ‘ROMANCE’ text on top of the lighter blue rectangle.

Create a text box and use these settings.

And for the book title ‘Big City Dream’, create a text box below the rectangle and use these settings.

Finally for our author ‘Jessica Steele’, use these settings.

Finally use the Line Tool, which can be found on the same button as the Rectangle Tool, and draw two horizontal lines either side of the ‘ROMANCE’ text.

If necessary it can be resized using the transform tools.

Here is the final book cover.

Thanks for reading, leave comments below