Album Art Tips
Software
The Gimp is a free software image editor which rivals Photoshop. Download the Windows installer at http://www.gimp.org/windows/; if you're on Linux it should come pre-installed or be in your distribution's repositories.
Creating Album Art
New Document
- begin by making a new document
- choose a suitable resolution (no lower than 72dpi (screen resolution) up to 600dpi would give very high print quality but larger file size)
- CD artwork should be square and 12 cm x 12 cm (4.75 inches x 4.75 inches)
Finding content
- anything from a photo of your band, a colour, or an abstract image
- text, it is often useful to declare the artist name, album name or style on the cover, this is all down to the style you choose though so is often not included
- the creative commons logo or some other graphic
- placing the word triplexity or tryad on your album sleeve will increase downloads (i'm joking of course)
Editing
most software gives you the facility of 'layers' kind of like having all the separate elements on sheets of transparent paper where you can move bits independently or move them on top of one another. It is very useful as editing one layer does not damage another. Working at a high resolution then reducing it once done often hides little glitches.
Outputting
- save your final version as a native format eg PSD for photoshop so that you can come back to edit it once you realise its rubbish.
- 'save as' or 'export' the image as a PNG or JPG
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