My father-in-law has written an amazing book about the possibility of pre-Captain Cook explorers, perhaps Dutch, that arrived in the estimated time frame of around 1590. I am a graphic designer and he wants me to design the cover. I have finished designing the background or scene and am ready to pop human characters in there like some Dutch sailors in a pinnace approaching a lava rock shore with a few native islanders watching them with intrigue and perplexation. My point is that this character creation thing would allow to me complete the book cover much faster and it would look way better...........also it would allow me to create a custom unique book cover design instead of borrowing or using stock photos from the internet. 

I am a veteran graphic designer with the Adobe package, but am brand spanking new to the whole 3d design thing so I have a few questions. If I have already created the background in Photoshop, is it possible to import custom 3d created characters on top of that background layer in photoshop or must you import the flat photoshop background into CC3? Would I be able to import each character into Photoshop 1 at a time or must I import them all at once? Some characters will be in a pinnace approaching the shore so they will need to be in a layer under the pertaining layer with the pinnace. I understand that these 3d characters are mainly for animation and video games, but is it ok to use them for high quality printed images such as a book cover? If this 3d character creation thing really is compatible with the Adobe package, I will be all in and purchase. Please help me learn more.

Mahalo nui loa for your time,
Ian

You can use both programs by blending them perfectly.
It's just about your ability to use the programs.
However, CC3 has an easy learning curve.
CC3 offers you export options as png, obj and fbx.

First of all, you can decide for yourself more easily by using the trial versions of the program.
I recommend you to use it by turning off the background image in CC3 project settings and exporting it transparently in png format.
I don't have much experience with the OBJ format, but it takes a long time to render the computer.

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I render out as a .png image, that way as long as my "set" doesn't have a background per-se  I'll get an transparent alpha-channel that makes compositing in Phootshop pretty easy.





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I've been combining Photoshop and 3D characters for a couple of decades now and it's pretty straightforward. Create your background (and foreground if you want to give things a little depth) in Photoshop. Create, pose, and render characters as PNG images in something like CC3, and then composite them into your final image. 

If you haven't committed to CC3 yet, I'd recommend checking out DAZ Studio as well. It's definitely not as easy to use as CC3, and maybe it's just that I've been using it since 2005, but I think it still has a slight edge when it comes to creating still images for print.  The Digital Human Shaders in CC3  tend to beat it for realism though.  I find I tend to use all three apps these days.

Here's an example movie poster image that was created with Photoshop and CC3. The backdrop and the planet were created on different layers in Photoshop, then I used CC3 to import, modify, and pose a DAZ character. Exported as a PNG, she was added as a layer in photoshop where I did a bit of image manipulation to bed her into the rest of the image. 




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Actually I did try Daz for a short time, but then tried CC3. It looks like you can give characters better details in CC so I am going to stick with this one. Thank you for the answer of exporting it as PNG. Another question I have is if it is imported into photoshop as a png, will it be low resolution or low print quality. PNG files are usually low resolution files for the internet and not for printing right? Unless there are great high resolution for printing pngs....... maybe these are?

Another question.. If I purchase CC3, will it come with a bunch of easy to download templates and pre made stuff. I could spend 50 more hours getting my characters to look like 15th century Dutch sailors and native Hawaiians, but if there is things out there that would help me create all of them much quicker... please let me know.

You can render out in up to 8192 x 8192. If you use that together with 3x3 Super-sampling you will have pretty good results.

PNGs are lossless, so you don't lose quality. For the web one usually uses JPEGs, which are lossy and therefore smaller.

I render my movies out as PNG sequences and obtain good quality.

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Jeffkirkland's cover work looks great.
Important for printing is a resolution of 300dpi.
As others have said, if you export a high resolution png, there will be no degradation unless you enlarge the character. Since the character will be large enough, on the contrary, you will reduce it, so a clearer image will be created.
Of course, no matter what picture it is, if you enlarge it, you can see blur around the edges, but these do not deteriorate the print quality. Even if you use a picture taken outside normally, the character may be slightly blurred around the edges. This is something that will only be noticed if you look very closely.

The images you normally use for printing (if it is not a scanned tiff format or a vector work) are usually in jpeg format.
As animagic said, png format offers a much higher quality image than jpeg.

You should already understand how this will more or less look on your work screen.
If you get a color output with a CMYK supported printer or Laserjet, you will have more or less an idea of the colors.

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Here are some covers I did for a writer friend of mine. Each started life in iClone and ended in Photoshop...





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WOW! 

First of all I would like to say thank you so much for everyone responding with information and tips on this here thread. As a graphic designer, I do have years of experience designing from the Adobe package so the basic requirements like needing at least 300dpi and you cannot scale up graphics.... among many others. As far as 3d creation and rendering.........absolutely no experience at all. With my experience the only time I ever used a png was to create a logo or graphic without a background for webpage. Now, thanks to you folks, I now have a much better understanding of the capabilities and usage of and for png files. This is awesome..... Oh but I do have one more question.....

So the scene will be set around the year 1590 and there are very good proposed theories of either Spanish or Dutch sailors stopping here. This is almost 200 years before Cook arrived at Kealakekua Bay. Now I can spend an extra 50 hours putting clothes on all the characters in photoshop after I imported them, but I am hoping there is a quicker way. If I purchase this CC3 software, would it come with a lot more options in terms of clothing styles... not just modern times, but ancient times as well. How about a loin cloth and shawl for a few Hawaiian warriors standing on the rocky shore with a spear...... looking at the Dutch pinnace approaching them with curious expressions? Actually I would probably use illustrator to create the clothes because the end result of vectoring would be better. Anyway it will take me much longer to design and vector a spear, loincloth, and Kihei on an ancient pacific islander than it would if there was something similar I could simply pop on them... and then alter a bit. What about face templates? Does CC3 have any pacific islander faces? I am sure I could alter an African American face to match.........and of course I could spend hours altering each face structure from scratch. I dunno is there some kind of race and ancient weapon/clothes bundle you can buy for CC3?

My last post went twice for some reason. I cannot find the delete button so I changed it to this.