How to Prepare Photos for Your Cover Art

Most of the covers we make start from a photo the artist took themselves. A studio session is not what separates a usable photo from a useless one — light, framing and a little preparation are. Here is what we ask for, and why each thing matters.

Shoot in neutral light

The light should be as flat as possible — daylight under an overcast sky is close to ideal. Indoors, find a bright room and face a window, and avoid yellow lamps. Harsh midday sun is as much of a problem as a dark room: it burns out highlights and drops hard shadows across the face. Deep shadows and rim light are things we add later, and we can only add them if they are not baked into the photo already.

Any recent phone is enough

Almost any modern phone takes a picture good enough to build a cover from. Set the camera to its highest quality format and wipe the lens — a smudged lens is the single most common cause of soft, hazy source photos. Hand the phone to someone and show them the angle you want instead of shooting a selfie at arm's length.

Think about the frame before you shoot

Decide how close you are to the camera and from what angle. Shoot full length but stand close to the frame, and if something does not fit, photograph it separately. Take far more shots than you think you need, in different poses. If the cover calls for a seated pose, sit on something and shoot that too.

The face carries the cover

People look at faces first — that is what holds a viewer in the first second. So the emotion in the photo has to match the mood of the cover. Decide what that emotion is before you start shooting, not after.

Clothes and props are hard to change later

Wardrobe is part of your image, and repainting an outfit convincingly is expensive work. If you want something specific on the cover, wear it in the photo or wear something close to it. The same goes for anything you hold: take an object of roughly the right shape into the frame and we can replace it afterwards, but there has to be something in your hand to replace.

Send originals, not screenshots

Send the original files from your camera roll by email or as uncompressed files. Photos passed through a messenger or pulled off an Instagram profile as screenshots arrive already degraded, and no amount of retouching brings that quality back.