Generate Book Covers

[oldbwl]

I did look for this, but my search revealed nothing (probably my fault again!).

I use the Generate Book Cover whenever I cannot find the original to Download.

With "Generate", I like the way the title is added and the graphic displays well on my PRS-300, in-fact much better than most other covers I download.

But I would like a variety if possible?

I know I can browse to any graphic of my choosing, but that wont show the title etc

If it is not possible to implement a variety of images to choose from, is the standard 'Generate' version manually substitutable with others? if so, what dimensions format etc?

Thanks in any event, I find the program as it stands quite invaluable.

[oldbwl]

Hmm, just had a look in the directory, is it book.svg by any chance?

[kovidgoyal]

the relevant image is library.png and look in the customizing calibre section of the user manual to learn how to replace calibre default images with your own.

[oldbwl]

Thanks to you for that, will do straight away.

Has anyone else got some images they have already done they would like to share?

Edit:
Done, it was really easy, the size of the original library.png is 554 x 499 so here is the image I used for testing.

Image

Thanks for the help on this.

[Gary_M_Mugford]

I've had very good luck sussing out covers at FantasticFiction.

But there's no covers for short stories, nor for articles that I download from the internet. What I did was take the base graphic Kovid provides and modifed it by super-imposing "SHORT STORY" over the blue book at the end and saving it to a different name than library.png. For articles, I did the same overlying the thinner, taller second from the left book. THEN, I further modified each graphic to show a small genre symbol in the upper right hand area of the graphic, using SF for science fiction, SP for sports, BR for bridge, C for computer, etc. Different colours too. I assembled all these libraryXXX.png's in the same folder as the original graphic and saved a copy of it to libraryORGINAL.png. Then I wrote a bunch of little batch files (just change the XXX and do a Save File As to a different bat file and you will be done in a minute or less. Lastly, I created a menu of those batchfiles in a folder on my task bar's quick launch. While I have a book open in the editor, I can now click on the folder button in my taskbar and then the batch file and have a very genre specific book cover. While I simply did variations on Kovid's default image, there is no reason why you couldn't do highly individualized versions for each genre or literary division. The batch file is:
c:
cd \Program Files\Calibre2\resources\images
delete library.png
copy librarySP.png library.png

Now, all of this presupposes a Windows installation (XP in my case). Security concerns might require some adaption for Windows 7 and the inevitable UAC interference. Also, the Linux and Mac versions of calibre will require different commands, although the theory should still work.

GM

[oldbwl]

That was great info GM, I was already working down those lines. Any chance you could post those graphics here, could save me time as I was already doing something similar.

[Gary_M_Mugford]

Originally Posted by oldbwl

That was great info GM, I was already working down those lines. Any chance you could post those graphics here, could save me time as I was already doing something similar.

Some of my personal use mods have used images downloaded from the internet. I'd rather get the goahead from Kovid to post my images before doing so. I respect his stance on intellectual property and will await his goahead for those. BUT, for the ones that strictly use his original and naught else but a font or two, here are some of those.

NOTE: Please remember, I never claimed to be an artist [G].

GM

[kovidgoyal]

Always better to post only images that you are sure you have the rights to. That way you can cause no trouble for mobileread.com

[oldbwl]

Thanks GM, good stuff, and Kovid's comments are correct too. My image comes from a stock library with an unrestricted licence for use.