A manip cover is a manipulated cover. It means multiple images manipulated so the end result appears as if they were meant to go together. When you design a manip cover your aim to make it appear seamless and pleasing to whoever sees it.

This cover is not seamless and not pleasing to the eye. It's jarring and badly done. (this is based on an actual cover I saw a designer make and deliver to a customer a while back)

Let's go over why exactly this cover isn't a good manip.

1) Proportion- If you want images to appear as if they go together then you must consider the proportions of the things you place together. The house is sitting on top of the grass, which makes it quite obvious the images were not meant to go together. The blades of grass are also enormous and the tops are abruptly cut off. 

2) Cardboard Models- Please do not ever put a drop shadow on people. It makes them look like cardboard cutouts. You'll also notice that with the drop shadow you can see every imperfection in the edges of the PNG. The couple is also offset to one side which leaves the cover unbalanced. 

3) Quality- There's a difference in the sizes and quality of the PNGs used for the cover models and they don't go together. The male is very fuzzy because the image wasn't good enough quality to make large enough to go with the female, he also looks like he's a stalker. The two don't appear like a loving couple. Try and make certain to pick PNGs that go together, don't make awkward couple pairings.

4) But it's so artistic!- The sepia colored box over the models is ridiculous. It's not artistic, it just looks awkward and leaves you wondering why it was put there.

5) Where to put it?- There's very little white space (white space is defined as the empty, open, space on the image) on the background for text. Balancing the author name on the house looks weird and it's a little difficult to read.

So let's make a better version of this cover, shall we? I use Photoshop CS6, so that's where all my examples and screen shots come from. 

These are the resource images I'll be using to make the new version of the cover.

First we create a blank canvas (wattpad cover size 512X800) and place the house image on it. The original image was not a PNG so I had to cut it out.

Next we place the image with the grass and size it so it looks appropriate with the house. The next thing I did was add a layer mask to the image, this allows you to erase things and put them back in without a whole lot of trouble. 

What I used the layer mask for was to very lightly erase some of the base of the house so it appears more as if it's sitting in the lawn instead of on top of it. I used a brush with a soft edge set to around 50% opacity. It's a very subtle difference, but one that makes the image look more realistic. You could also use a layer mask to erase the top edges of the grass image since it's sticking out above the house, but you don't need to in this case since the image of the sky can be placed on top of it and it won't show anyway. 

Next add the sky in.

Next we place the models. Don't worry about the poor guy's missing legs, I'll fix that.

I placed a dark gradient over the bottom of the cover. Not only does this hide the fact that our male model doesn't have any legs, it provides a dark canvas to place the text on so it can be easily read and eliminates the issue of where to place your text.

Next I placed the text on the cover.

Finally I added a PSD to adjust the colors a bit and this is the final cover!

One last thing before I go. Layering images and then setting them to overlay or some other 'blending' setting is NOT a manip cover. It isn't seamless and the images don't look as if they were meant to go together.

This is not a manip. It doesn't look as if the woman belong in the image, she's see through. Nothing about this cover is pleasing to the eye.

Tutorial by DarkAngelGraphics