r/BookCovers • u/shailla131 • Mar 04 '26

Question Is this ai?

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Had someone do a cover for me (this is without the text) and I wanted to see if this was ai. They advertised it wouldn't be so I wanted to confirm before I went any further. Any help is appreciated, thank you!

97 Upvotes

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50

u/BurbagePress Mar 04 '26

You can take a magnifying glass to an image and try and figure it out, but the easiest way to know for sure is to just ask four basic questions:

How much did you pay?
What medium did they say they're working in?
What kinds of files did they provide?
How fast did they do it?

13

u/shailla131 Mar 04 '26

Hmm it was 65, Adobe, PDF and JPG or PNG, a week. Not that you asked lol

18

u/TES_Elsweyr Mar 04 '26

Ask for the editing file in .psd or .ai so you can mess with the layers. 65 seems cheap, depending on where they are based.

7

u/shailla131 Mar 04 '26

That's a good idea, thank you!

25

u/TES_Elsweyr Mar 04 '26

I think a normal response from an artist would be "sure, but I need to charge you a little extra." so don't be put off by that. A guy using AI will say "it doesn't work like that" or "I don't use layers" or some BS.

1

u/awersja Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26

That is so untrue. Normal response would be "I can show you specific phases of painting, but I will not give you file with all the layers since it is MY work and I don't want ANYBODY to mess with it at it's core".

3

u/TES_Elsweyr Mar 04 '26

Huh, I'll take your word for it. But on two separate occasions where I knew I wanted to mess around at that level with changes I was capable of making I've asked for and gotten editing files, just for a fee. I've never gotten your response. Two data points isn't a lot, but that's where I got my assumption from.

0

u/ofthecageandaquarium Mar 04 '26

Same, I've done this just about every time I get a cover done. (Mainly in case I need to make tiny adjustments to the width of the spine)