The bad news is, I hate how it looks. I don't like how the cover image is laid out. I don't really care for the orange (it looks better in PDF than in print). And for some reason, the font is weird in that some letters kind of get squished together. Looking at the PDF and comparing them, it doesn't do that in the PDF, so it has to be an issue with the printing process. Which is disappointing.
That being said, the book is readable, and it looks really nice. So, I'm going to re-do the cover. I've enlarged the logo and the text, and shrunk the image of the heroes a bit. It all fits much more nicely now, with much less negative space. But, I'm not sure what to do about the background color.
I originally went with the orange as an homage to the original Campaign Book in the TSR boxed set. But, the reds in the logo and image kind of "blend" too much with it. I experimented with a few other shades in Photoshop, including just a basic gray. Some of them are ok, I suppose. But right now I am seriously considering either basic white or black. Thoughts?
Not sure what to do about the text inside.
Did you remember to make sure the fonts were embedded? I think it comes back with an error if you don't so that probably isn't the issue. It's really weird that the font got squished. What font/size were you using?
ReplyDeleteAs for the colors, were you working in CMYK instead of RGB? I accidentally sent in a cover file in RGB for one of my issues (#5) of the Frontier Explorer and they came back wrong (everything was darker than it should have been) as things don't exactly translate properly. When I save the file with the correct CMYK color profile, everything looks good.
I'm using Adobe Pro (perk of work), and it has the option to "Optimize for web" and I'm wondering if that affects things. As for the colors, I'll have to check. I thought for sure I did CMYK, but the darkened colors you describe seem to contradict that. I'll have to give it a look-see once I finalize the new layout. Thanks for the advice!
DeleteOh, I'm using Century Gothic 11 for the font. I looked at other fonts, but it will require a LOT of editing to make things fit right.
DeleteI use Photoshop (also perk from work) for my covers and created a color profile that matches what RPGNow's POD printer wants that I use when working on the cover. I'm not sure if it translates over to Acrobat or not. And the truth is, I don't remember how I set it up 3 years ago so I'd have to figure it all out again, although I could send you the color profile file as I did figure out where it was stored and transferred it when my computer crashed and I had to reinstall everything.
ReplyDelete