Introduction



Introduction

This reflective report will critically justify and evaluate the planning, photographs, equipments and software material used to create the digital book cover. The cover has the title: The Fast and Furious Bikes, and sub-heading: Tested and trusted. The main book will shed lights about those grits, technology and the people behind the thousands of famous motorbikes produced by Suzuki over the many decades. The book itself, when finished, will provide a visual guide to more than 800 Suzuki bikes, from the iconic Boulevard M50 to VL 1500 Intruder LC / Boulevard C90 and the early years of Suzuki superbikes and follow their domination right up to the 21st century. As a Suzuki bike fan myself, l hope this digital book cover will lure the next generation of Suzuki bikers to read the final book. The original artwork for the front cover included a photograph of Suzuki bike shot in Middlesex University, (Hendon campus) using Panasonic Lumix FS35 camera. My friend, owner of the bike, allowed the image to be used. The cover also has a spine with padding for holding a sample publisher logo, author name, and title. I have also identified some cameras and software (in the next section of this report) that would help the editing. There is a reflective conclusion and lessons learned at the end of this report.

Evaluation and Justifications

- Software tools

I gave careful thought to both MS Word 2007 and Photoshop CS6 software programs for the editing. These programs can be used together – Photoshop CS6 for creating the Artwork and then converting it to a PDF document using MS Word. Using both tools will allow me to achieve the cover design results that l want to. I edited images on Photoshop CS6 and Word helps me add text and padding- saving a lot of time. Word can even convert the Photoshop CS6 file into different formats that l want for the cover. Haven said that, there exist a number of different online software programs that can also automate the same task – some do it for free and others seek a reasonable fee. Sites like or , will create a digital book cover for as little as £5. And yes, there is no design skills required. You just choose existing artwork template, set page layout or upload your images, give the layouts, titles, sub headings, author and publisher names and logos, and the rest is rocket science perform by the software. There is even free stand alone software such as my eCover Maker or My eBook Maker which can also make digital book covers seem pretty easy. However, l have achieved my cover design with MS Word 2007 and Photoshop CS6 and did not regret using the tool except for its costs and computer memory needs which might discourage those with little financial investments to worry.

- Preparing the cover image in Photoshop

First thing foremost was to draw a front cover sample on paper and then scan and copy this draft design into Photoshop. Moving forward unto the editing, l used Level tools to polish the photographs taken. The final image selected needed a little bit brushing up, so l lightened up the photograph with Photoshop Levels tool (from Image > Adjustments > Levels) by directing the black and white input sliders straight to the middle of the histogram. Haven unlocked the Background layer in the Layers Palette; I set image background to 100% grey and the layout to 70% white to make a surreal look. Some broken lines in the layout delayed me a lot of times due to the use of Magic Wand tool.

- Camera

The two cameras selected for producing the vital photographs needed for the digital book cover design are (i) iPhone 4s Camera (ii) Panasonic Lumix FS35. I have these camera devices available now for use. In the table below, I have put them into the scrutiny line to find the best camera for the job using Ruggles (2012) digital camera testing criteria - which is, Image quality: 40% , Ease of use: 30% , Monitor: 10% , Flash : 10% , and Movie quality: 10%. Although, Ruggles (2012) testing method were used to compare 147 digital cameras (excluding iPhone 4s Camera), this test will use the same scoring method, but this time around my comparison will only concentrate only on iPhone 4s Camera and Panasonic Lumix FS35. The study l have undertaken suggest IPhone 4s camera trails the Panasonic Lumix FS35 by 20% on Image quality when compared together. This is mainly due to Panasonic Lumix FS35 bigger 16.6 Megapixel camera resolution compared with iPhone 4s having just 8-megapixel. IPhone 4s Camera is Easy to use with very attractive camera buttons, this was not the same case for its rival, and for example Panasonic Lumix FS35 will not give you a Wide Angle turn-around or even a View Finder.

Both camera monitors and Movie qualities are commendable. Flash support in iPhone 4s is possible only via a Micro-SIM whilst the Panasonic Lumix FS35 provides an extension for a 70 MB Flash Memory Capacity. For the total Weighted Score, Panasonic Lumix FS35 won the test at 68% against iPhone 4s‘s 63%. As the score line suggest, it is obvious that my choice of camera will be Panasonic Lumix FS35. Moreover every good digital camera out there can do the job.

Self Reflection

As a first time user of Photoshop, I was able to design a digital book cover, which contains both the front cover and the spine with the help of the software tools. After setting all the margins using the ruler tool, through the edit menu drop down, I selected an option fill which permits me to choose the combination of colour i want as the background colour of my book cover, I chose blue colour for the background, because it’s going to fit with the cover image, the front cover colour was also blue but slightly differ from the background colour and the spine. I then use USB cable and transfer the image from the camera into my computer and save it on the desktop screen of the computer, a layer was created in Photoshop editor where the image is going to be placed. I imported the image by selecting on the file menu bar and clicked on the drop down option place. The image was successfully place in Photoshop. I used the move tool and resize the image to a suitable size that fit the front cover of the book.

I chose a font type of (Arial rounded bold) with the size (24) and colour to be white for the theme, my reason for choosing this font colour is because it’s going to Perfectly fit the book cover and the colour combination of blue and white matches.

The tool I find most difficult to work with is the quick selection tool, because it involves a lot of editing after selecting the image, so I was unable to work perfectly with the tool, and that made me not to remove the image from its original background and placed it in another background that will make it look much better.

Throughout this design exercise, l was able to develop a solid foundation in graphics design, mainly in Photoshop CS6 and also in MS Word 2007. The design tools in Photoshop were extremely daunting for a first time user, but as l proceeded further and learned basic skills on the software using the help menu and YouTube tutorial videos, l was able to grabs some of these difficult tools, particularly the Rectangular Marquee, Rulers, Crop tool and Layering. At the end, l managed to complete the front cover and spine design. Just in time!

Bibliography

✓ Ruggles. C. (2012). Compact digital camera reviews. Available: . Last accessed 28th Oct 2012.

✓ Hill, S. (2012). iPhone 5 vs. iPhone 4S: Our in-depth comparison. Available: . Last accessed 20th Aug 2010.

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