High Quality Book Covers

[Karellen]

A little over a year ago, I decided to pick up a novel to read, which was a first in almost 5 years. While scrolling through my Calibre library, I realised how messy and disorganised my library was. I had never given it the TLC it required.

So with little experience with ebooks, I decided to fix my library. It was initially challenging as there was so much to learn, but it quickly became easier.

One thing I did notice was that good quality book covers for older novels were non-existent for many books I owned. Sure, there were postage stamp size images, but these looked terrible.

As I happen to own the paper books for most of the ebooks in my library, I decided to recreate the book covers. I have recreated over 60 covers, so far. An example before and after cover is below.

What they are not: They are not pixel perfect reproductions. If you view original and recreation side by side, yes you will notice slight differences- slightly different font or colours. But if you viewed the recreated cover on its own, you should be able to say "yea, I remember that cover".

Some covers only needed minor fixes, usually to the text that uses a reflective effect which does not scan well. Others required major work.

I am happy to share my covers with anyone that wants them, and I hope others will share theirs.

I have, so far, recreated covers for the following authors:

Arthur C. Clarke
David Brin
Greg Bear
Gregory Benford
Isaac Asimov
J.K. Rowling
Jeanne DuPrau
K.W. Jeter
Mark W. Tiedemann
Michael Crichton
Neil Gaimann
Roger MacBride Allen

(@mods I hope this does not breach any forum rules?)

== Edit ==
My gallery... https://github.com/KarellenX/book-covers

[j.p.s]

Hold on. Let me see if I have this right. The e-published cover from a large publisher is a poor scan of a beat up book and your scan of a used book looks really nice?

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Hold on. Let me see if I have this right. The e-published cover from a large publisher is a poor scan of a beat up book and your scan of a used book looks really nice?

For the ebooks that I also happen to own the paper book, I want my ebook to have the same cover as the paper book.

I search online for that same cover. Usually (for older novels) the cover does not exist or it is postage stamp size.

When this happens, I scan my cover (the poor version above) then from that I use that as a template to recreate it and I end up with the nice cover.

Some of my ebooks don't have a cover, they instead have some text on a white background. I don't know why that is. (Some glitch with amazon books?)

All my covers are 1600x2560

[Sirtel]

When I have a paper book and cannot find a hi-res cover online, I've taken a photo of the paper cover and edited that. I don't have a scanner.

When I don't have a paper edition, the ebook has no cover (or it's absolutely terrible) and no cover can be found online, I've just generated the cover in Calibre.

[ZodWallop]

Very nice work.

Librarything can be a source of nice cover scans. I've gotten a couple of scans from there.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

When I have a paper book and cannot find a hi-res cover online, I've taken a photo of the paper cover and edited that. I don't have a scanner.

Google has a photo scanner app that has given me pretty good results. On your phone, search for PhotoScan by Google Photos.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Google has a photo scanner app that has given me pretty good results. On your phone, search for PhotoScan by Google Photos.

Thanks, good to know.

[Dr. Drib]

That looks great, but what I did (if I had the ebook) would just copy and paste this one:

(By the way, the artwork is copyrighted and cannot be shared. But for one's own use...)

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

(By the way, the artwork is copyrighted and cannot be shared. But for one's own use...)

Oh, ok. I was hoping it would be like movie and tv show artwork which is freely shared at sites like the two below.
https://fanart.tv/
https://www.themoviedb.org/

I won't post any of my other artwork.

A lot of my library is stub files to replicate my paper library.

Thanks

[retiredbiker]

For older books, and especially sc-fi, there are a lot of good covers at https://pulpcovers.com. A few are really, really good, and many become more than good enough for an ereader with a minor touch-up. But they are hard to find with no title/author search, for the most part.

[Colonel Cathcart]

There are high res cover images you can grab from iTunes. Use this tool:
https://bendodson.com/projects/itune...der/index.html

I just borrowed Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and to my disgust found this cover page on the book although, on libby, there is a proper cover page. I used the above tool to set things right.

[kantecty]

That looks great !! thanks

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Colonel Cathcart

There are high res cover images you can grab from iTunes. Use this tool:
https://bendodson.com/projects/itune...der/index.html

I just borrowed Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and to my disgust found this cover page on the book although, on libby, there is a proper cover page. I used the above tool to set things right.

I just use Calibre's cover downloader and I usually get the cover in a high enough resolution. It works rather well.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I just use Calibre's cover downloader and I usually get the cover in a high enough resolution. It works rather well.

I've had plenty of times when Calibre couldn't find anything hi-res. Otherwise I also use the Calibre downloader.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I've had plenty of times when Calibre couldn't find anything hi-res. Otherwise I also use the Calibre downloader.

Sometimes it's difficult to find a high enough resolution cover. But most of the time, Calibre works well.