There comes a time in every bookstagrammer’s life when you want to take a photo of a certain book buuuut…
You don’t actually own the book.
This is quite the problem and I’m perpetually annoyed I do not live inside a bookstore!!! But there are so many reasons why we might not own the book. You can’t afford the latest release. You’re doing a cover reveal! You only read an ebook or audiobook, not the physical. The cover you have is ripped 👀or the cover you have is a super ugly edition. You want to talk about exciting upcoming releases that aren’t even in book form yet. You just !!! need a book !!!! and you don’t have it!!!
Now there are two ways to fix this issue, for example:
(1) you become MAGIC and when you snap your fingers, books appear, and quite frankly I recommend this option with my whole soul also can you please do it for me.
(2) you edit the cover in like the clever little cheesepuff you are deep down inside.
Editing covers into your photos is actually super simple…and, yes, free.
Photoshop? We do not know her. We are going to use Pixlr. Although I do want to be upfront in that I am not perfect at this and some covers are easier to work with than others! I have started editing covers in a lot to my #bookstagram photos, because I keep reading eARCs and want to talk about the books and books prices just flew through the roof since covid-19 and I do not have fulltime work 😩 my book wishlist grows and I yet wither. SO!! Here we go!
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Also my instagram is SO CLOSE to 70,000 followers so come follow me. 🥺 I am pretty cute.
First here are some general tips to keep in mind!
- It’s easiest to edit new covers on the top of old books.
- Also try very very (very) hard to match the cover colours up. You want to edit in a red cover? Put a red book in your photo.
- My aesthetic uses lots of flowers and I actually find having a bit of flower hanging over the cover is helpful for making it look realistic. (Will demonstrate later!)
- Books standing up are easier (in my opinion) than flatlays.
- I kind of sucked at this to start but got better!!
Also shout out to @thereaderandthechef, who is not only great but gave me a lot of tips to make my edits more realistic! Truly the best. 🥺💛 Hopefully these tips help you too! (Melissa’s edits are still better though. 😙)
Step One
Go to Pixlr.com/editor. Sometimes on chrome it doesn’t work!? (You have to go find the “old” version.) But I use it on Safari with no fuss.
Open up your image of choice! I’m going to edit in two upcoming releases that I’m excited for! King of Scars is staying the same 😚bless it for being so pretty. I’ve hung my crown off it because I don’t know how to edit around crowns.
✨TIP✨ I’ve made sure you can see the page edges of Beneath the Citadel and We Hunt The Flame. This helps everything look realistic when you layer the new cover on top.
And YES I do have a lot of books but new books are what people mostly want to see and the bulk of my collection is actually old, from back when I had access to $1 library sales and publishers sent SO many books to bloggers. However I am still privileged to have the books I have, and I work hard for them!
Step Two
Download high resolution cover art! I actually DO NOT recommend getting it straight off Goodreads. It comes pretty crushed. I google the title and then look through images and find one that’s high res. Also look on publishers websites! They’ll have a good quality cover file there too.
They look so gorgeous and are coming out soon! 😍🥺 tell them to hurry up so I might hold them.
Step Three
Click Layer > open image as a layer.
Next you want to click Image > free distort.
Also I often zoom in because I have tiny weak grandma eyes and I want to see the corners. Just fiddle with the sizing in the bottom left hand corner.
Now start BENDING this photo like it is the JELLO doing a YOGA PARTY.
So cute, so flexible 🥺💛
Match it up to the cover you’re editing over the top of! Sorry We Hunt the Flame!! But you know what they say about attractive younger siblings showing you up. It’s something we all go through.
✨TIP✨ I often erase the corners (this is why it’s helpful to have the same colour cover underneath!!) so that it looks a little more realistic. Real corners aren’t so sharp.
Step Four
Go to Adjustment > brightness & contrast.
Have a fiddle around with these. Usually you want to make the cover contrast LESS. A real cover will look duller in your photo depending on light etc. Right now We Free The Stars is CRISP perfection which is too….perfect. Out with this. For this one I lowered the contrast AND brightness and thought it looked pretty good. Just mess around with this and see.
You can also work with the other options but I am both lazy and too nappish to bother understanding them.
And you’re DONE. 👀👌🏻
Step Five
We’re doing this all over again for the next cover. With ONE difference. There are some flowers overlapping the corner of the cover!!
So using the eraser, just…very gently very slowly….erase around the flower petals. This takes a lot of doing and then undoing (I use control Z to undo) to make it as accurate as possible.
Also (AGAIN) this works best if you’ve got a matching cover colour underneath. You don’t have to be too precise.
Step Six
Admire yourself!!!
….um, I mean your work!!
If you need to make adjustments, make sure you’re in the right “layer” (look in the right hand bar to click on the layers). If you need to redo it 3989 times then go on ahead and do so. I may be known to take a photo 7 dozen times till I know it’ll edit perfectly.
Now some covers ARE hard to work with. I find covers in block colours are the best, especially if you’ve matched the book behind it. Spine art isn’t easy to find online so avoid spines. Also fiddle around with everything! You’ll discover ways to make it look more realistic the more you practise.
Before I post on instagram, I also add a filter. This definitely helps that last touch of cohesiveness. (I just use the free filters in Koloro or Lightroom.)
Before and After
I hope this has been helpful and if you have any questions, leave them in the comments!
I love this!!
Thanks I had seen the Photoshop version but was wanting to give Pixlr a shot. Just hadn’t gotten around to doing it.
I love ebooks and sometimes just want to do the same book haul posts everybody else does. Now maybe I can!
This is amazing!!! Thank you for showing us behind the curtain 🖤
This is very helpful for me because during lockdown I mainly had to take picks of ebooks. I just used my kindle and edited the covers onto the screen but I find doing it with physical books a bit tricky still.
Okay first off, 70 THOUSAND!? I cannot wrap my head around that but I am wildly impressed! This is really cool, too. I have not even thought to do such a thing, but this is very smart! Like, I’d heard of the e-reader one, but was even too lazy for that? But this actually solves a huge problem- me wanting to gush about a book without owning a physical copy of said book. So thanks! I use BeFunky, but I have the pro version and I think I can do most of the same stuff, so yay!
This is how I do mine too, mostly if it’s one I have in storage and I don’t have time to dig it out and find it 😂 The practical applications are endless.
this is amazing! i definitely struggle with not being as up to date with my purchases so i love this. i mean, i wish bookstragram was a little less snobby about it in the first place your talent! your skill! your eye for colour! i adore it
Cait slaying the bookstagram photos!! Love to see it. But also this is so great and your tips are super helpful xoxox
This is helpful! I don’t use Instagram often, but I make Pinterest pins every day. I’ve seen pins of books that aren’t out yet and wondered if it could be done without Photoshop. I don’t have Photoshop money!
OMG thank you so much for this! I love #bookstagram tutorials!!
This post is AMAZING! I wish I had known about this so much sooner. Thank you so much for writing this – I can’t wait to give this a go!
Thank you so much for this! I’m always looking for better ways to photoshop book covers on more naturally, seen as I receive a lot of E-arcs, so this is so useful 🙂
You are a master of your craft and I, a simple peasant, bow down to thee.
This is literally so helpful and I don’t even have Instagram.
I first started using Pixlr last year when I took a photography class, my sister recommended it and I liked it since it is mostly very straightforward to use.
Also, I just read A Song Below Water this month and It. Was. Amazing!
So very very good and one of my favorite reads of this year!
I saw it one of your photos above and I just had to say it , even though I now you’ve already read it. It was that good.
Omg thank you for this post!! I’ve been reading a lot of e-books in quarantine so that I can avoid people in bookshops/libraries (not that I ever interact with anyone in the first place, I’m a hermit) and it’s been annoying me to no end that I can’t take pictures of them for my blog! I fully intend to try this out immediately
This was extremely helpful! Thank you so much for this!!!
This was such a helpful tutorial! I know you’ve mentioned before that you edit unreleased book covers onto books you already owned, but it always seemed like wizardry to me! But you broke down the steps so well, and now I feel as if I could try this out myself! If our Instagram ever becomes active again, I’m definitely going to have to try my hand at editing book covers in my photos!
Thank you for sharing this, it’s really helpful. I’ve been wanting to do this since last year already, but I didn’t know how and what photo editor to use. ✨
Ahh this is so, so helpful, thank you so much for sharing this! I’ve been so curious about the process of it all and… while I haven’t been the most consistent bookstagrammer out there, I’ve been considering doing these kind of edits for the books I don’t own but want to talk about. SO THANK YOU!! 😀 <3
This sounds like a nifty solution to a problem that we all have face countless times. Thank you for being open about it, because I have always felt guilty and like a poser when I do this on Instagram.
Thank you so much for this post!! I don’t post on Ig much now (inspiration and energy does not go together well); but every time I want to try again, it gets really hard when you don’t have a lot of new books. I’m definitely going to try again with this post to help. Thank you so much for all of this!
I’ve been wanting to find a good blog post that explains how to do this. Thank you so much
I was searching for this type of post as I’m one of the book lovers. Thanks.