CD Cover Design Process

 The program I used to make my CD cover is GIMP 2.8 (GNU Image Manipulation Program)

Before creating the canvas for the CD cover the dimensions needed to be considered. Here It shows the dimensions of a CD cover in inches but this can easily be converted into pixels or centimeters.
The canvas must also be at at least 300dpi and RGB colour.

First I created a 4.75" x 4.75" inches and bucket filled it with a dark grey colour.

 Next I opened the photo I wanted to use for my background, on a new layer. To make the white areas transparent I colored to alpha those areas using a tool in gimp.

After doing that I created a colour gradient of 6 colours on another layer and rearranged it under the now transparent photo.

 Now I added the 'splatters' on a nes layer with a pre-set brush in white ink. To make the splatters appear to blend with the background and have some transparancy I used the 'overlay' mode in the layer settings.

I then continued to add the text in my preferred font and the other decorations.