Dust Jacket Templates
Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 8:55 pm
With all of the jacket designs popping up, many of them varying widely in sizes, I decided that we needed a template either to base your designs on, or check that they are right.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b6j7bkrt4pfimm6/gIdHa9Py0R
Now, to explain how to use them:
The Green is the spine: Put the spine here and do not overlap into the red or your spine will wrap around onto the cover.
The Blue is the cover: Put the cover image on the blue and red. The cover goes from the white edge to the white edge with only the spine covering it.
The Red is the room left to bend: Make this a part of the cover image as stated above. This is purely to ensure the liner notes do not curl onto your cover.
The White is where your liner notes go. You can extend this area or contract it as you see fit. Do not make the liners long enough to cover your entire inside cover, but other than that, this part is completely up to you.
This is a PDF, so if you open it in certain programs it will ask what size you want to import as. This is 9.25"x21" at 300dpi for every file. Changing this will mess with the ability to use this reliably as a template. The DPI can be raised if the dimensions in inches are left as is, though unless your images are all above 300dpi, I don't recommend it.
The files are already in CMYK, but I know Photoshop defaults to converting this to RGB when importing a PDF. Leave this in CMYK for your work and final copies and be sure to save the image as a TIF or PDF to ensure it is lossless and does not lose color quality when sent to the printer.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b6j7bkrt4pfimm6/gIdHa9Py0R
Now, to explain how to use them:
The Green is the spine: Put the spine here and do not overlap into the red or your spine will wrap around onto the cover.
The Blue is the cover: Put the cover image on the blue and red. The cover goes from the white edge to the white edge with only the spine covering it.
The Red is the room left to bend: Make this a part of the cover image as stated above. This is purely to ensure the liner notes do not curl onto your cover.
The White is where your liner notes go. You can extend this area or contract it as you see fit. Do not make the liners long enough to cover your entire inside cover, but other than that, this part is completely up to you.
This is a PDF, so if you open it in certain programs it will ask what size you want to import as. This is 9.25"x21" at 300dpi for every file. Changing this will mess with the ability to use this reliably as a template. The DPI can be raised if the dimensions in inches are left as is, though unless your images are all above 300dpi, I don't recommend it.
The files are already in CMYK, but I know Photoshop defaults to converting this to RGB when importing a PDF. Leave this in CMYK for your work and final copies and be sure to save the image as a TIF or PDF to ensure it is lossless and does not lose color quality when sent to the printer.