Time for the first release(s) of 2022. Affinity Publisher for Ad Creatives and Affinity Publisher for Basic Book Covers are now live.
I originally set out to write one book that would cover both ads and covers, but when I hit 100 screenshots and wasn’t even done with ads I realized it needed to be two books. I try to keep my non-fiction “bite-sized” so people can learn something valuable without it seeming so overwhelming that they just skip around and miss half of what they need to know.
Which means that it would be best if you’re interested in these books that you start with the one on ads even if your ultimate goal is to do covers. Because if you do them in that order we will slowly build your skills up with smaller projects first. Literally. The first project in the ads book is to place an existing book cover image in a picture frame. That’s it. But it uses about ten key skills that you will use over and over again after that.
What else? Generally I prefer print but on this one the ebook may be the better choice because it will give you color screenshots. You can learn what you need to learn from the print version (or else I wouldn’t have published it or would’ve bit the bullet and only done a color version), but there are times where I say, “look at this colorful image we just turned into a black and white image” and, well, in print there’s no difference, right?
The mechanics are covered in both, but the “look at those green and red lines” part is not.
And note that this is Affinity Publisher not Affinity Photo. Photo is the Photoshop equivalent of the Affinity suite of products, but I do all of my ad work and 99% of my cover work in Publisher because what I am doing is taking existing elements, like stock photos and cover images and putting them together.
If you want to do something more fancy, like using mask layers, etc. that’s best done in Photo. That is why the covers book is very clear that it’s showing you how to do basic covers. But sometimes that’s all you need and we all have to start somewhere.
So if that’s where you are on your journey and I can help you move to that next level, here you go. Enjoy.
M.L. Humphrey 