Happy Friday, dear friends! Today, I’m super excited to bring to you some of my bookstagram tips and tricks. I’ve been meaning to do a quick little post on some of the things I’ve learned about bookstagram during my time on the platform, and finally sat down to write this post! In all honesty, this post is inspired by a conversation in one of my bookstagram group chats (hello, bookstagram eye doctors), where my dear friend Stef realized that I photoshop the covers of my books sometimes!
I’ve always found Instagram to be an interesting form of social media. I’m not particularly active on my personal Instagram anymore (there’s a longer conversation about how people use Instagram, curated feeds, what’s real vs. what’s fake) but surprisingly enough I’ve kept up with bookstagram over the last year and a half. I wrote a post last October reflecting on my one year of Bookstagram, and shared a few things I’ve learned there, but I wanted to do a longer post today! I compiled some questions through Twitter/Instagram/Discord, and then have some other tips of my own, so as always, grab a cup of tea and get cozy!
Q: How do you have so many books to have content to post?
This is a really good question! Actually, Mary wrote a wonderful post on Bookish Consumerism a while back! While I do own a fair amount of books, I actually have a couple secrets about how I have “so much content” to post!
- I don’t buy all my books! I’m very lucky that I get gifted books every once in a while, whether from friends, giveaways, or from publishers. I also utilize BookishFirst! BookishFirst is a site where you can read snippets of upcoming books early (like a chapter or three) and leave your first impressions! You can then be entered into a raffle for a finished copy if you so choose, or use the points you get for each first impression “review” to redeem a finished copy! They have new books weekly as well! I’ve gotten a handful of books from them, but have since paused using BookishFirst to catch up on my current reads. If you click on this link to join, you’ll get some points to get you started!
- I will also say that the library is a great resource! I haven’t really utilized my library as much as I want to, aside from checking out eBooks and Audiobooks, but once I read more of my physical TBR, I do want to start checking out physical books from them again!
- The most important one — I photoshop. That’s right, friends! A lot of the content on @cossettereads is a sham! I photoshop different covers onto books I currently own for the feed! I’ll include a tutorial for how I photoshop covers at the very end of this post!
Q: What apps do you use to edit?
I personally am a Lightroom fan! The mobile version is free, and I highly recommend it. It’s not as overwhelming as the desktop app, and I found it pretty easy to pick up! I also use presets, which I believe is a Lightroom only thing? I’m not entirely sure if you can use presets elsewhere. There are a lot of presets floating around on the internet — including free ones.
I mentioned this in a previous post, but I’m a huge fan of the app Preview. I find it really helpful in terms of planning my posts, and also just making sure that my grid is consistently colored/that everything matches. I don’t do a very good job of this, but you can also write out your captions in advance there, schedule reminders for when to post, and even save groups of hashtags!
I also recently got an iPad, and so I’ve been dabbling with Procreate! This is a paid app, but I think it’s worth the investment. I personally wouldn’t get Procreate just for bookstagram, but since I wanted to start learning how to draw digitally, I figured I could use it for bookstagram too! I know people who add doodles and things in PicsArt, or even in Photoshop, but that just isn’t my style — maybe someday!
Q: How do you take your photos?
I normally use my iPhone to take photos! I try to use portrait mode whenever possible as well. If for some reason portrait mode isn’t focusing on the thing I want it to, I’ll take it as a regular photo, and then use Photoshop to blur the background, sharpen the object, and just mess around with coloring that way.
Q: How often do you take photos?
I try to take photos once a week, on Sundays, but that doesn’t always work! Sometimes, if I’m inspired — or if I’ve just gotten book mail — I’ll take some photos during my lunch break at work (since I work from home most of the time now). I’ve found that it’s easier to just take a batch of photos at once, so I always have content to post. Now, drafting captions — and finding the motivation to post — is a whole different story.
Q: Do you have any resources/suggestions for free/low cost photo editing software?
In addition to Lightroom and Preview, I’d also recommend Photopea! It’s essentially similar to Photoshop, and can be downloaded or used in a web browser. It does take some time to get used to, as does any application, but I think it’s a really helpful one to use!
Another one that I think everyone knows about by now, but one that I have to recommend is Canva! It’s so easy to use, and I think you can also use it to edit photos — although I haven’t tried doing that before. I personally prefer the web version, but I know some people who swear by the app.
Q: How do you edit book covers onto photos?
I tend to photoshop covers on books I already own if I’m reading the eBook, or if I’ve gotten the ARC. I just feel like it looks nicer that way! I normally use a preset in Lightroom, but when I’m photoshopping covers onto physical books, I’ll save the preset for the very last step. Personally, I think it would be easiest to just use a naked book, or a book that has a pretty minimal cover, but it doesn’t really affect anything!
For the purpose of this post, we’ll be editing this photo of Alone with You in the Ether.
As you can see, this book cover will be pretty easy to switch out — there’s nothing placed over it — or under it, and there’s nothing I really have to be wary of. If it was a photo like this one for example, it’d be a little trickier, since there’s two books, and one is laid over the other.
You’ll first want to open your image in your photo editing app of choice! Mine is Photoshop, but there are many others out there that’ll do the trick.
Let’s say that we want to edit Book of Night by Holly Black over this book. What you’ll then want to do is go to Google Images, and find a high quality version of the book cover. Like this one, for example:
Now that we’ve got our book cover, we’ve pretty much got everything we need. Go ahead and paste it as a separate layer of your original image, and then resize it! What I personally like to do is then use the free transform option! The shortcut is Command + T on Mac, and I believe Ctrl + T on Windows? It should bring up this toolbar.
We’ve gotten it to a pretty similar size, but as you can see (by the circles), there’s some touch ups that still need to be done! There’s a couple ways you can handle this, but I’ll just share two with you today:
Option 1: Going back to the transform toolbar, click on the warp button! Your image will then turn into a grid, and you can warp it to fit the original picture better.
Option 2: Alternatively, another way to have this book fit is by using a layer mask! I personally prefer this method, because I’m a big clipping mask fan first and a human being second. If you don’t know much about clipping masks, this site explains it pretty well. This is another explanation of how I do things! This method’s a little trickier than the first option.
I’m a big fan of labeling my layers, as you can see in the photo below. While you’re on the original image layer, use any selection tool of your choice to select the book. I personally prefer quick selection tool, but sometimes I’ll use the magnetic lasso tool if it’s being stubborn.
Once selected, the border will turn into this dash pattern!
You’ll then want to go to a separate layer (this is very, very important), and then using the paint bucket tool, fill in the selection. I personally would go for something that’s a different color from the original book!
As you can see, I’ve chosen the color pink!
What you then want to do is select the layer that the book cover is on, and then hold down Option on Mac, Alt on Windows. Place your cursor over the line between the two layers, and your cursor will become a little arrow next to a square. Your image will then turn into something along these lines!
All that’s left is to then resize, and clean it up a little!
The way I clean things up is by using the magnetic lasso tool and deleting, or I’ll just go in with the eraser tool and really clean things up slowly. It just depends on how much work needs to be done, and my laziness!
And there you have it! Some of my bookstagram tips & tricks! I hope these were helpful for you, and if you have any questions, feel free to comment/message me!
