The Cover Project
General Category => Feedback => Topic started by: roddSoulSilver on September 09, 2023, 06:19:45 PM
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Hi, I love the cover project and I have contributred often here. I'm looking to improve my covers, I would like to have some feedback of some of my rejected covers.
here are some examples:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/bv7e5l917450x/PS1+DVD
What do you think about it?
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First let me say that it is good that you are reaching out in order to improve your work. It shows that you are interested in improving your skills.
Creating covers can sometimes be a lot of work and frustration, but I personally find it very rewarding that people enjoy the work that is created and I hope you will too.
Lets start with Captain Commando.
Front: The front of the cover looks a bit washed. The title is shinny and the rest of the cover looks more plain. Try using some color balance to make them a bit more vibrant. I like to add a bit more color to the covers I make because you loose some of it when you print them onto paper.
Back: The resolution on the back of the cover is too low. You want to make sure the text is readable and the game screens are defined. Below is a comparison of your cover and one I made for Persona 2 back in 2008.
You can see that in my cover the Kanji is 100% readable, even in smaller fonts. Also look at the different image quality between the game screens and the PS logos.
(https://i.imgur.com/28DAZ8i.jpg)
Now for Sheep Raider
Front: The front cover has a lot pixilation and blurring when you zoom in to as little as 200% (see image below). The most common reasons for this to happen is
- You used a smaller picture and stretcher it to fit or used a picture that was already stretcher by someone else..
- You are not saving the JPG in the highest quality setting.
Considering that some parts of the cover don't show this, I am going to guess that it is first reason.
(https://i.imgur.com/qLb3ntE.jpg)
Back:
- The back is stretcher too much vertically and has lots of pixilation. PS1 covers don't lend themselves too well to DVD cases. The backs are squared while the DVD case is rectangular. In many cases you can not used the stock cover and actually have to create a completely custom rear or crop part of the cover out.
As examples of things that I have created: For custom, look at any of my Resident Evil covers and for cropped, look at my Parasite Eve cover. Compare those to actual PS1 rear covers for those games and you will see that while different, the cover follows the spirit of the original. - You need to clean the covers before you use them. This means to sharpen or soften if needed, adjust color if needed and most important, remove imperfections. If you are using Photoshop, try the "Spot Healing Tool" or you might even need to use the "Clone Stamp Tool" to clone healthier parts of the cover over to the damaged and dirty ones.
The image below shows some of the dirty spots on your cover. Cleaning these is even more important on darker colors as they are more noticeable.
(https://i.imgur.com/LbsKus9.jpg)
Last but not least Medievel
Back: Pretty much the same as the other covers (Stretcher Image and Blurriness)
Front: You have the right idea here in that you created a custom front to make your cover, However...... The image you selected is too blurry. If I where to guess either you or the source of the image applied too much surface blur to a low quality image in order to correct the lose of quality.
Do a little homework and try to find the best possible image to use. Sometimes it can take a long time to find something usable and sometimes you get lucky and find something fast. I did a super quick search using Google Advance Image Search and I found a WAY better image than the one you used (see image below).
If you can not find something that good, save your work and move on to another cover. You can come back to this one at a later date and finish it once you find more usable art.
I have covers that took over a year to make. Sometimes because then needed to be completely rebuilt or sometimes because I had not found the right raw images to use.
(https://i.imgur.com/tiaNVZ2.jpg)
I hope this helps you and best of luck.
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As VT said, stretching a back cover looks awful. Usuall when doing a cd -> dvd case size conversion, the back cover needs to be recreated. Ie: use the original as a guide (unstretched), but all texts retyped, maybe extra screenshots added, logos removed from original, or sourced elsewhere. Honestly CD -> DVD can be one of the trickiest places to start if you want to do it properly.
I am honestly not sure how your medieval cover got passed, as I would have rejected it for the stretching, spelling mistakes (Sony cUmputer), pixelation, and low quality source material.
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I tried to improve it again
what do you think now?
https://www.mediafire.com/view/weyhcf50cnuq8x5/Medievil_%2528PS1_USA%2529.jpg/file
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I tried to improve it again
what do you think now?
https://www.mediafire.com/view/weyhcf50cnuq8x5/Medievil_%2528PS1_USA%2529.jpg/file
It’s better, but the back still looks stretched and the text is pretty low res, the colour for the logo on the back is different to the front and spine, spine logo looks low res and stretched…….
Don’t mean to be discouraging, and I’m sure it’s good enough for some to use - making high quality means starting off with a great scan. Low res in, means low res out regardless of what after processing you do to the image.