It might be tempting to throw everything onto the canvas and be done as quickly as you can. There are times a graphic can take hours or even days to craft. The details are sometimes what will take the cover over the top and make it a cover people will oooh and ahhh over. That one final detail might be the one that makes it more realistic to a reader and makes them decide to read your book.

So let's go over some of those small details.

This is the beginnings of the cover, it isn't complete but this will give you an idea of how the details make the difference.

Here's all the resources that went into putting it together: 

If you want an authentic looking scene then you have to put in the work to make it real. Since this image was going for a creepy feel it made sense to add grunge layers to most everything. The tv, the wall, the baseboard, the screen, all of them needed to look aged and neglected. 

This is the original background I began with. I liked the look of the neglected room. It didn't quite work. In order to make the TV the focal point of the cover it had to be large, which made the window look ridiculous. Everything was out of proportion.

To combat the problem, I added a plain wallpaper over the wall in the image. The wallpaper allows you to make the TV bigger so it's more the focus of the cover. Because this wallpaper didn't originally go with the image it looks slightly awkward where it meets the floor and in most homes this isn't what the base of your wall looks like. Most homes have baseboards where the floor and wall meet to make things look finished and complete, so it makes sense to add a baseboard into the image. 

Now the wall background is more complete. We need to do a little work on things to give it all that neglected, old look that will convey the horror theme.

I added 2 grunge layers to the wall and cracks to the baseboard. 

Our large TV looks better without the window behind it. Now, let's make it fit in with the rest of our horror house.

I added a couple of layers of grunge to the TV (using the clipping mask technique). I also added in the TV screen. While the empty, destroyed room now looks like the backdrop for a horror movie, the TV isn't quite there yet. 

I added two dirt layers over the entire screen and then the one that goes around the edges. We're getting close to that horror look, but I think wee need a little something more.

I added in the static image and the shadow person. We now have our horror imagery for the cover. We're done, right? 

While you might be tempted to stop here and add your title and author info, there's still a couple of things we can add to make it more realistic. You'll notice how bright the floor is under the TV. There's no shadow from the set. So, let's add one! 

This will be different than adding a shadow as I showed you in the chapter titled Shadow Me. The reason this is different is because the shadow will go directly under the TV and not fall behind it, so the technique I showed you in Shadow me won't work. What I did to create the shadows in this image was add a new empty layer to my file.

Then I painted on the layer. I set my brush opacity to around 50% with the color on black, used one of the soft brushes, and painted on the empty layer. The reason I did it on a separate layer was because if I messed it up I could delete it and start over (or add a layer mask and erase and repaint it). If you paint on your background layer and mess up you may not be able to fix it. Doing it on a separate layer allows you more freedom in what you can do. You can adjust the layer, fade it or set it to different blending effect to get it just the way you want it. 

I added a second empty layer and then added some more shadows to the wall as well.

You can see the added details make the image more realistic. It's the small things that can make the difference in the end.

You can see it took a lot of layers to put this together and we don't even have text on it or a PSD. The bottom couple layers aren't in the image, I couldn't fit it all in to take the screenshot.

Take your time and consider everything when putting your images together because each detail can make things even better. Not all additions will work and you might end up deleting something, but if you don't try it then you'll never know how good your final image can be.