How to optimise your eBook cover for black and white E Ink kindle eBook readers


This is a follow-up to the last post which was about the size an eBook cover should be.  I'll quickly outline how to optimise a colour eBook cover so that it looks good when viewed on E Ink devices and on colour devices.

As discussed previously, currently an eBook cover should tick all the following boxes:

  • 600 x 800 pixel size
  • title, author readable at small sizes 
  • colour looks good for pc & tablet viewing
  • also looks good on E Ink devices in grayscale

The last point is really important and means that you need to create your eBook cover to work both in colour and in grayscale.

Here's a quick tip using photoshop to quickly flick back and forth between grayscale and colour so that you can make it look good in both.

Firstly scale your image to the correct size (600x800) then in the layers panel add a new adjustment layer by clicking on the little circle icon (Step 1 in the graphic).  Choose the Black and White adjustment layer (Step 2) - and just go with the default filter .
Make sure your adjustment layer is the very top layer.  Now you can turn it on and off (using the layer eye icon) to see how it looks in grayscale (Step 3.)

If it doesn't look good you can now start playing around with the contrast of the image for example:

  • add a brightness/contrast adjustment layer (under the BW adjustment layer)
  • use the dodge and burn tools
  • the unsharp mask filter may also help define edges better.  
  • maybe you'll have to change the colour of your text to make it standout in grayscale

The good thing is that you can make changes and quickly see if it works in colour AND black and white until you have a nicely optimised image.
When you're happy just "save for web and devices" as an optimised jpg making sure the adjustment layer is turned OFF so that you get a colour jpg.

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