Hi Ewers,

I thought you might want to hear from someone who designs book covers for a living, so I'm putting my two cents in.

1. Might I suggest a more conventional aspect ratio for your cover? Your cover is square, which is more like an audiobook cover than a standard book cover. If you're going to be self-publishing this to Kindle, I would recommend a 6 x 8 aspect ratio to better fit the Kindle screen.

2. Your objective is achieved somewhat — a person might say, "Is that a picture of a woman floating in space?" Actually, a person might be more likely to say, "What the...?" because they likely won't be as specific about what they're seeing; it's a little hard to tell what's going on in the image at first glance. If that's your objective, then it's mission accomplished.

That said, I don't think that's what your objective should be. I think a woman floating in space would be mystery enough for the viewer to wonder what the story is about, so the image should be much clearer than the filtered version. A casual browser of books won't be curious enough to wonder what the image is to give the cover more than half a second before moving on.

1. Whatever it is you do to the image for the cover design, never, never let the title and author name be swallowed up in the art like that. The text needs to be readable, not lost and hard to decipher. Here's a good test of whether your book cover works — grab a bunch of cover images from other books, and put your cover image in among them. How does your cover hold up compared to the others? Does it stand out? Does your eye immediately go to it in a positive way or to another book?

That's my two cents. Hope it helps. :)

Me, I like changing the color mode to LAB, and then I select the Lightness channel and discard the others.

Attached Link: Abaddon Font @ Dafont.com

I seem to remember seeing that effect in a plug-in gallery, but I couldn't find it in the KPT Collection, Flaming Pear, or Alien Skin. I'm almost sure it's a plug-in, though...

You're welcome! :)

If you had that in a bigger size, you might be able to find out on this site:

http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

 Wacom, Wacom, Wacom. I can't recommend it enough. :)

 After posting to this thread yesterday, I got my latest Macworld in the mail -- the CS4 reviews were in it and confirms that certain plug-ins were left out. They, too, mentioned that the plug-ins could be found on the CD, as downloads, or from older versions.

Whew! That's a relief, as I use Extract a lot in my work.

 They're not in CS4? Could they simply be hidden in another menu or tool?

 Have you made sure your font is in a size small enough? If it's too big, and the text box is too small, you won't see the text show up. Same goes for line height.

Attached Link: http://www.aprilgem.com/log/?p=199

I don't really see the point of conflating copyright issues with current economic and political issues unless you simply just don't have any other good arguments. I think most people would agree with you that it's because of big companies' influence that we still use energy hogging cars instead of cleaner, more efficient trams, but how does that all relate to copyright? Very little.

Though you didn't really bring it up, I will grant you that many copyright laws are what they are now mostly because a big company like Disney wants to keep Mickey Mouse from falling into the public domain, but jeez, admit that it helps the little guy, too. It is not all one big conspiracy theory with the corporations waiting to jump on every little guy's endeavor.

There's a movie coming out soon about some guy who invented the windshield wipers. True story. The big car companies stole his idea, and he had to fight to get his due. Patents, trademarks, and copyrights are available to everyone. It's just that big companies are savvier at using them than most individuals are. That's why it pays to have a healthy respect and knowledge of them.

So, instead of railing at big companies for using the laws to their advantage and encouraging everyone not to honor those same laws simply because they protect those companies, why not educate people on using the laws to their advantage as well?

Take your Joe working at Marvel, for instance. When he signs on to work for them, he SIGNS a contract saying that his artwork is work-for-hire, thus the rights belong to THEM. After all, he is creating artwork that uses characters created by someone else. Stan Lee, for instance. How do you think Stan and Marvel would feel if Joe created spreads with their characters and started selling them on his own for his own benefit? Dude. If Joe is all gung-ho about owning his own work and profiting only himself, maybe he should create his own characters, come up with his own comic book series, get it published on his own, and make his living THAT way. There is no one stopping him from doing that, after all, but he chooses to work at Marvel because they already have a following, a consumer base -- they pay for the Marvel name and not some knock off.

But if working for The Man really bothers Joe all that much, the copyright laws protect him just as much as they protect Marvel. He can always refuse to sign that work-for-hire contract and set out on his own and create Joe Comics. And so long as his characters are his own, original, and not something created work-for-hire for some other company, it's his and his alone. He can sign on other artists to do work-for-hire art for HIM, and he can benefit off THEM if he so wishes.

See? Outside The Matrix was just another matrix. You don't have to break all the laws of the universe to get around it. You just have to find ways to use what's there to your advantage.

Quote - Usually when your trademarked product name is put to common usage to describe things or even altered into a verb form, believe it or not - that's a good thing. It tends to mean that you're at the top of your game for some reason, and therefore fairly common. And this familiarity is what makes the name ubiquitous in terms of usage.

I agree that it tends to mean that you're at the top, but I disagree that it's usually a good thing. Just ask the people who used to work at the companies who made the products mentioned earlier. Once those companies lost sales to competitors and once people forgot that the words they were using were brand names, those companies were on the way to extinction and later ceased to exist.

Just imagine. Let's say I need to make a correction on a term paper, and having seen people use a bottle of white fluid on something like this and calling it "Wite-Out" I think, I need some white-out. I ask you to buy me some, and you (thinking of white-out as a generic term) get me, oh, maybe PaperMate correction fluid or PaperMate LiquidPaper. Who loses out in a situation like this? Wite-Out®, the company that makes Wite-Out® brand correction fluid. They lose a sale. They lose brand recognition. They slowly lose their means of existing.

Heck, people have been using "white-out" as a generic for correction fluid for so long, I'll bet most people didn't even know that Wite-Out® was a brand name.

And that, to Wite-Out, is NOT a good thing.

Quote - I knows..;)

LOL, well I figured you already knew, you having worked for the competitor. But I thought I'd add my two cents in case anyone wondered why IBM would correct you on the usage of Xerox/photocopy. :)

Quote - Actually, I worked at IBM (as a temp) for a while, and they were the ones who would snap 'Photocopy!' every time I said Xerox...;)

There are two sides to everything.

Competitors don't want you to say "Xerox" instead of "photocopy" because if people are in the market for a photocopier, they might just go out and buy a Xerox copier without even thinking about the competition.

Xerox doesn't want you to say "Xerox" instead of "photocopy" because if people are in the market for a photocopier and they think "Xerox" is just another word for "photocopier", they might look at all the competitors' products and not even realize there's a Xerox company that makes photocopiers, too! Like all those times you might ask someone to buy you some Kleenex, and they go out and buy you the cheapest facial tissue on the market, the kind that's rough and gives you a red nose when you blow, because they think Kleenex is just another word for facial tissue.