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Book Cover Design?


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It is no problem whatsoever to download a front or back cover template from a self publisher like Lulu and create a wonderful cover using Paint.Net. All you have to do is layer on images and type in text until you arrive at the effect you want in either a front or back cover.

With Lightning Source cover templates things are much more difficult. Their templates arrive in either INDD or PDF format. You must have Paint Shop Pro to work with the first file type. Alternatively, you can use the website ZAMZAR to convert a Lightning Source PDF template to PNG format.

So now you have a three piece template, front cover, back cover, and spine, you can load into Paint.Net. That's the good part! But the hard part is, how do you add images seperately to all three elements of the template resting on your workspace in Paint.Net?

I would like to take the seperate front and back covers I designed in Paint.Net with Lulu templates and import them into the Lightning Source three piece template. How do I do that? boltbait.smile.png

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What are you using to write the rest of the book?

In any case, if you use MS Office 2007, you can install a plugin from Microsoft that will let you save PDFs. The only problem is, you can't open them - but since you have the images, you could try see if they accept a PDF created "from scratch."

The last time I used OpenOffice (I don't install Java now), it could export PDFs. I don't know whether it can open them.

Edit: I guess there's Acrobat.com as well.

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NOTE TO ALL CONCERNED:

I have not been able to find a workable tutorial dealing with the subject of creating a three piece book cover.

For the imediate future I'm going to use Paint.Net for single cover construction. And Inkscape for three piece

cover design. 10 - 4, over and out!

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  • 4 weeks later...

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