Resizing an image for KDP Book Cover

[robyn_5755]

I had someone design a book cover in Photoshop for KDP.  The book is now larger than expected and the cover is not wide enough.  Ive tried changing the image/canvas size but the image seems to be embedded somehow.  I can change the size but there is a white line on both ends.  How do i resize the image to bleed off the page?  Im on a Mac and am very much a novice of Photoshop and have been trying various things and nothing has worked.  Help!

[ExUSA]

The original artist should have the files and be able to resize the cover. You may or may not be able to do so, depending on how the file was created. Increasing the canvas size just adds padding on the edges.

Photoshop (mostly) uses pixels to store visual information. Pixels are tiny rectangles (usually square) of varying color and tone. To enlarge an image, you must either add new pixels or use Photoshop's enlarging functions where the application interpolates new pixels that should match the older, smaller image. That works well sometimes and poorly other times.

A book cover would more often be created in Illustrator or InDesign, where scaling for a new layout is often easier and higher-quality.

[Bojan Živković]

As previously mentioned, try reaching out to the artist to update the design to match the new cover dimensions. Otherwise, it's challenging to provide advice on your own since we have no idea how complex the design is. From what I can gather, it's only the width that needs to be updated, this may be easy or very difficult, depending on the design. In some cases, you can utilize automated options in the latest versions of Photoshop: select the empty area and ensure that a small portion of the selection touches the design, then use the Generate feature.