Ever since the 'Custom Cover Art' threads started little over a decade ago, I've always wanted to throw my lot in and see what I could do.
Since I've been having difficulty looking around, I was curious if anyone had any suggestions on what apps I should use and the best place to learn certain techniques.
Don't know if this is adequate enough or if there are alternatives that are better suited for creating art that's around here. Not looking to redraw the whole art piece from scratch, just tinkering with stuff to enhance it. Like steffromuk with his work. Here's a pic I did just now.
What do you think? What's the best place to start off and learn this stuff? Any recommendations?
Gimp is a good Photoshop/Photoshop Elements alternative and is FREE. https://www.gimp.org/
I'm sure there's a few other photo editing programs out there. Most do the same things.
No matter what program you use, I strongly suggest you pick up text manuals (The Dummies Books are great) for these programs and learn the basics. I would also suggest you learn basic composition and design. Also look for professional examples of the techniques you're trying to produce.
The example above, the bevel and emboss should be sharper and not so blurred out.
Most of the fan art you see are designers "pushing pixels". Simply taking existing photographic elements and combining/altering them with artistic tools and filters.
1. Affinity Photo, a robust, inexpensive (no subscription) Photoshop analog (I'll also occasionally employ its companion, Affinity Designer, for the occasional vector workarounds).
2. Pixelmator Classic*, because there are certain operations I can accomplish quicker and more simply than Affinity, and then just dropped into my Affinity document.
Both apps can utilize Photoshop brushes.
* I also have an early version of Pixelmator Pro, but almost never have a need to use it.
Ok. After a few weeks of fiddling around with both Illustrator and Photoshop, I was able to churn up this piece. This one was inspired by steffromuk's work on a Star Trek V cover he did for me a while back.
