Book cover creating; Photoshop.

 I am going to create a book cover using a Photoshop. I will show the process here and my design decisions. 

I began with creating a canvas in a Photoshop. I did this by opening new file from the top menu. Next I chose from the dialog box a canvas in a size of A4, I decided to use white background, the resolution is 300 pixels/inch. Then I clicked create and this is what I got.

To choose a background photograph, I went on unsplash and choose three pictures of the jungle, downloaded them to the computer. I then opened them in a photoshop by clicking open and choosing them from the download file. I chose the below picture as it goes with the theme of my stories the best.

This is going to be the background picture for a cover of a children's story, I chose to manipulate the saturation of the colors, to make them slightly brighter. To do that I went in Image - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation in a top menu and this is the window that popped out. Then I have used the zips to change the colors in the photograph, when I was happy with the result I pressed ok.

I then went to select from the top menu, edit and copy and then went to my original canvas to click on edit and paste. Image was pasted onto my background but it was in a larger format, I had to use my move tool and next transform controls on the lower top menu to be able to shrink the image to the desired size of the canvas. This is the outcome of the action.

Next I have clicked on a T button on the left hand menu to be able to add the text to my cover. Then I clicked on the canvas and changed the text to my book title, below I have added another text field with my surname. Next I started looking for a right font, I decided to choose German Sans MS as I think it goes with a children book genre. I clicked on the text menu to change the color and I chose off white for both, both letters are in size of 60 px. At the end I have changed the layer opacity for my surname to 95% as I wanted it to blend a bit with the background. 

Next I saved the file as psd, then clicked on save as and chose jpg from the dropped down menu. Saved the work on desktop as a cover. Below you can see the outcome. When I look at it now I see that letters could be moved slightly closer to the middle of the page.