Merchandizing experts saw a long time ago that packages matter. When you sell an e-book or a piece of software, you should obtain a nice package for it. As the product is virtual, so is the package. There are 3 available ways to produce a virtual cover:

- Asking someone to do it for you

- Grasping the nuts and bolts of Photoshop

- Employing some fancy dedicated software

If you have a a company that can do it for you, the job will not be hard. If the specialist knows something about 3D, they will want some compensation. Every product box or ebook cover will round up to $150. Employing Photoshop is fine if you know how to make the program do what you want from it. Sure, the work will necessitate obtaining some action scripts that could raise your expenses by another hundred. And do not forget the cost of Photoshop, of course, which is about $700. The third choice is to go for the specialized boxshot software. It is good to know that the supply of such solutions is competitive with the price range of $15-100. There is clearly plenty room for your taste. Actually, you may come across three types of software solutions:

Fixed templates, no free rotation

3D with polygonal rendering

3D with ray tracing

Going with the first option, you make sure that software box and ebook covers will be okay, but there will surely be certain limitations. Introducing big changes will not come easy to the software box or ebook cover. The second option gives you more settings, but the simplified model produces unnatural shadows. You will not require a specialist to notice that the images look weak. The third method does not have any drawbacks. For each pixel the software calculates millions of rays, determines shadows, glitter and other fx stuff. The resulting image will look very impressive. If you want to have more options and quality, you should employ the 3rd type of software box. A great example of such a program is Box Shot 3D. At 40 euros the program is extremely affordable. It will assist you in making excellent pictures of your books and software, member cards and more. There are a couple of pictures below of ebook covers and software boxes.

It would be quite a bit of work to achieve the same level of graphic detail in Photoshop unless you have acquired some additional scripts. And not many such offerings would allow you to create anything of the same quality. The room for creativity is almost absolute, modify what you want. No software box or e-book cover should be produced without Box Shot 3D. It will give your product a very cool wrapping. And excellent packages will easily double sales. I am certain that Box Shot 3D is the optimal solution for you.