Let's talk a little about texture overlays. We call them textures but that can be anything from a light overlay, to grunge, to small pieces added to the cover. It is an image that is overlaid to enhance the design.
I've found there seems to be an abundance of designers who feel the more textures you throw on a cover the better it is. That isn't the case. You can end up throwing so much at your cover that the end result is messy and confusing. And just like a PSD coloring, they can end up hiding elements of your design. Your cover must make readers want to read your book. If your design forces them to walk away then your book will never get read. The design doesn't have to be overly complicated with a Titanic load of layers. If it's simple and pleasing then readers will want to pick up your book and read it.
These are the covers of my dystopian duality. They're minimal but they convey the dystopian feel and I've gotten a lot of compliments on these covers both from readers and other authors.
It's very clear from the images and font this is dystopian. Both are a single image simple cover design. In fact, it's the exact same image. All I did was change the color on the Liberated cover and I left the construction crane on the top of the one building.
Below is the original image, you can see it isn't even a single-color image. A thing as simple as adjusting the color can give you a dramatically different look.
If you're going to publish you'll also discover that a lot of places offer two different types of cover 'feel'. There's the standard glossy cover and then a matte cover. Matte has become very popular lately. When I first published my YA fantasy series glossy was the go-to for YA and for fantasy. Now it's all matte. Trends change and you need to stay on top of them or your book might end up being ignored.
Let's talk about those texture layers now. Most covers that contain multiple layers are manipulated covers, what most refer to as a manip cover. Its multiple layers that are manipulated together to create a final, cohesive, look.
This is the final cover we're going to talk about. I made this for Namejohn -
The specifics for this request were that there needed to be zombies in the background and Jungkook had to look beat up.
These are all the resources I used to create the cover -
This is the beginning of the cover with just the background and the pngs
In order to create the look the user wanted for the cover we need to beat up poor Jungkook. Creating a realistic-looking wound isn't easy. I couldn't do the paint effects in Photoshop CS6, which I used to create this cover (I assume if it hadn't been so wonky I could find the brushes but they never install for some reason, probably because that version is outdated and old) I used png files I found online for the wounds. Still, they needed to be blended to make them appear as realistic as possible. I even created a rip in his sleeve that showed a wound beneath.
It took several layers to create the wounds and to make them appear as realistic as possible. What you can't see is that even though some of the layers appear identical, they aren't. It sometimes takes duplicate layers of one image set to different blending modes to achieve the look you want. It would take me too long to explain what I did for each layer because this cover had so many. What works for one set may not work for another simply because of where they're being placed on the image. Colors and shadows affect how an image looks when the blending mode is changed.
I've made covers that ended up with hundreds of layers to achieve the end result I wanted. If you aren't willing to put in the work to create the end result then you shouldn't design. It can take hours or even days to create some designs. I spent a week removing the background from an image so I could create the look an author wanted for her cover. It needed to match the rest of her series and the original background wasn't working and the image was incredibly detailed.
This image shows where the setting is for the blending modes and the window that pops up with all of the different modes. There are quite a few. There are times when it's literally trial and error, setting and resetting the layer until you find a mode that works. These options help you achieve the look you want for any sort of overlay layer. Whether it's doing things like the wounds or creating a different look for your background.
On this cover, I added several grunge layers as well as a gradient to the bottom to make the images darker and give them more of a horror feel.
Then I added adjustment layers (A PSD coloring) and the text.
The final step was adding the blood to the letters. I used a clipping mask for that. We'll discuss the clipping mask a little later in the book.
There are designers who blend together several layers to create the look they want for a background. I don't often do too many blends because my blending skill as far as backgrounds go is meh.
I made this cover for clarajoel88
The background is a blend of two separate images.
The first image is the base. The second one is the one I overlaid. It's set to multiply at 50% opacity. You don't see a lot of the overlaid image but it creates a more fantasy forest look.
A design doesn't need a multitude of layers to be considered good or complete. If you've achieved the look you want then you're good no matter how many layers you end up with. If you step back and eye your cover and you need to ask yourself if there are too many layers, there just might be. Make certain you haven't tossed so much on there that things get confused and obscured. I have yet to figure out why designers on here feel the need to throw random timepiece textures on things when it has zero to do with the book they're designing the cover for. If it doesn't help convey what the story is about then it doesn't belong on your cover. Just because you think it looks cool doesn't mean it should be on there.
If you're having difficulty deciding if the end result works then get the opinions of others. Whether they're readers, other designers, or friends and family who are willing to tell you the truth when something doesn't look good. Sometimes an outside opinion can assist in nailing down the final look of a design.
I went back and forth with the design for my latest release. The original title was Dead Scared and the concept I came up with reflected a scene in the book but it wasn't working and I couldn't connect with the design. After changing it half a dozen times and showing it to several people to see what they thought, it came down to changing the title of the book. The title hadn't changed from the beginning but here I was days away from publishing and suddenly realized the title wasn't working. Once the title was changed to All in Her Head, the design came easily. Sometimes it's one small thing that can hold you back. Be open to changing things, even at the last minute.