Cover Studio

The Cover Studio is a canvas cover designer. You source or upload an image, layer your title, author name, and any other text over it, arrange everything with alignment guides, and export a finished cover. The result attaches to a piece or series as its cover. It is a paid Pro tool; your free Pro trial does not include it.

There is no AI in this tool and no generated artwork. You compose the cover yourself from real images and type.

The studio works on any screen. On a laptop or large tablet the tools sit in a panel along the side. On a phone the canvas fills the screen and the tools move to a bar across the bottom. Tap Layers, Text, Image, Shape, or Backdrop and that panel slides up over the canvas. Tap the same tab again to slide it back down. The plus button adds text, a shape, or an image. Tap an object on the canvas to select it, and its panel opens on its own. Drag to move a layer, pinch to zoom the canvas. Undo, redo, the format picker, and the safe-area guides stay in the top bar; save, export, “Use as cover”, and My covers sit behind the menu button in the corner.

Where you start one

A few doors lead to the same designer:

• From the editor: open the tools panel while writing and pick Cover Studio. The piece you are in becomes the cover’s home.
• From Manage: each piece in your notebook has a Cover action in its row that opens the studio for that piece.
• From the cover settings: wherever you set a piece’s book cover or a series cover (the cover section in a piece’s settings, or the series edit form), there is a “Design a cover” link next to Upload. It opens the studio for that piece or series.

You can also open it on its own from the tools list, design a cover unattached, and choose which piece or series to save it to from the “Use as cover” button inside the studio. Your covers (both the ones saved to a piece and the unattached drafts) live under Images → Book covers in your notebook.

When you design a cover for a piece or series and export it, that cover becomes the piece’s book cover automatically. It shows up everywhere the cover shows: the reading page, the feed, and the Library grid. It also travels into the piece’s own downloads: export the manuscript as EPUB, Word, or PDF from the editor and the cover leads the file. Re-export after an edit and the displayed cover updates.

Sourcing an image

Image search draws from three open-access collections, each strong in a different area:

• The Met for fine art, illustration, and decorative arts: literary, romance, historical, gothic.
• Smithsonian for natural history, Americana, and air and space artifacts: nonfiction, memoir, adventure.
• Cleveland Museum of Art for painting, drawing, and works on paper across centuries and cultures.

Pick one collection from the Search source menu, or search all of them at once. When your piece has a writing type set, the sources that suit that genre are highlighted as a starting suggestion, not a limit. You can always search any source for anything.

You can also upload your own image (JPEG, PNG, or WebP, up to 10 MB) for contemporary photography the collections do not cover. Uploads are paid Pro only. Art you bring into a cover (and the finished book cover itself) is hosted free and does not count against your 500 MB image storage, the library described in Images on Inkbreaker.

Why these collections, and what you can do with the result

Every image in search is released under CC0, the clearest public-domain dedication there is. The museum waives all copyright, so the cover you export carries no license conditions, no attribution requirement, and no restrictions on use. You can sell the book, list it on any storefront, and print it, with nothing owed to anyone. We filter each collection to its CC0 items and check the license on every result, which is why these museums were chosen over stock photo services and over collections whose terms would follow the exported file into places we cannot see.

Source badges (“Met”, “Cleveland”, and so on) appear on each result so you know where an image comes from. They are there to orient you, not because any credit is required.

Building the cover

Pick a format first. The presets cover the common cases:

• Book cover (1600 x 2400) is the default. It is a true 2:3 portrait, so it shows on Inkbreaker exactly as you design it, with no cropping. Use this one when the cover is for a piece or series on Inkbreaker.
• Standard ebook (1600 x 2560) for Amazon KDP and most storefronts.
• Large print (2400 x 3600) for KDP large print and IngramSpark.
• Square (3000 x 3000) for short story collections.
• Wide / social (3000 x 1688) for a Facebook or X header.
• Custom for anything else.

The format also decides where a finished cover lands on a piece. A portrait format (Book cover, ebook, large print) becomes the piece’s book cover. A Wide / social design becomes the piece’s header banner instead. Series have a single 2:3 cover, so any design saved to a series becomes its cover.

From there you work in layers: the background image, optional texture or shape bands, and your text. Each text layer has its own font, weight, size, spacing, color, and position. The font picker is a search box: type a few letters to filter, and every option previews in its own typeface so you see the type before you pick it. Fonts are grouped by mood (dark, fantasy, romance, sci-fi, literary, nonfiction, poetry, display, and handwritten) so you can match the type to the book. Every font is free for commercial use with no attribution, so anything you set on a cover is yours to sell. Drag to position, use the “Position on canvas” buttons in each layer’s panel to snap things straight, and toggle the safe-area guides to keep titles clear of the edges.

Your work saves on its own as you go. Close the designer and your layout is waiting when you come back.

Reuse a cover you have already made

The My covers button in the top bar opens every cover you have made, each marked with the book it belongs to or as an unattached draft. Two things you can do with one of them, without leaving the studio:

• Open switches the studio over to that cover so you can keep working on it. Your edits change that cover and the book it sits on, not the one you started from.
• Copy into this cover brings that design into the cover you are making now, for the book you have open. It is one undoable step, so you can change your mind. When the older cover is a different shape than the one you are working on, its art reflows to fit.

Copy into this cover is the quick way to start a new book’s cover from one you already like: copy it in, then change the title and swap the art. Open is for jumping straight to another cover to edit it.

Exporting

Export produces three files at once:

• A full-resolution PNG for print-on-demand.
• A JPEG at quality 90 for ebook storefronts.
• A smaller web JPEG for the cover as it shows on Inkbreaker.

You can keep working while the export runs. When it finishes, the download links appear, and you can have all three files emailed to your account address, which is the easy path on a phone.

Attaching the cover

If you started from a piece or series, the cover attaches to it on save. If you started the designer on its own, use “Use as cover” to pick a piece or series, or keep it unattached for later. Your covers, both the ones saved to a piece and the unattached drafts, wait under Images → Book covers in your notebook. Open one back up to keep editing it, save it to a piece or series, or delete it.

The Book covers filter holds two related things. The editable design opens back into the Cover Studio so you can keep working on it. The flat exported image is the one that shows on your piece and travels into your EPUB, Word, and PDF downloads. Deleting a cover you no longer want clears it from the list, and detaches it from its piece if it was attached. Book covers and their source art are free and do not count against your 500 MB image storage, the library described in Images on Inkbreaker.

When a piece or series already has a cover, saving a new one asks before it replaces the old design, and the previous design moves to trash where it can be recovered (30 days on free, 90 on paid Pro), the same recovery window described in Saving and recovering your work.