Tutorial

My first tutorial, so be gentle! Hopefully it's helpful to someone out there. :) Will be making this banner.

I picked out the images I wanted to use in the banner. (Screencap Paradise or Freezeframe Network are great places to find quality screencaps) Position them as you want on the banner, the click the 'add vector mask' in the layers palette.

Click on the gradient button (black & white gradient) and click on your picture. Erase whatever part of the picture you don't want to show.

Once you get the images how you want, go to 'Layers-Flatten Image'. I usually blue the edges of each picture a little (blur tool-strength 50%). And I love the smart blur tool, so I go to Filter-Blur-Smart Blur. Radius around 9, then I go to Edit-Fade Smart Blur and turn it to around 50% or so. Now it's time to do coloring!

As of now, my banner looks like this;

Right click the image and select 'Duplicate layer'. Set to 'Soft Light'.

Right click the soft light layer and duplicate again. Go to Image-Adjustment-Hue/Saturation. Set Saturation around 30-50 (or whatever you want). Set layer to Screen.

Add a new layer;

Flood fill with a light blue; (I used #99DDFF) and set to Color Burn.

Duplicate your color burn layer.

It still looks kinda plain to me, so I go searching for a pretty texture to add to it. I found a great one at Immortal Memories. I added it between Layer 1 and Layer 2 and postitioned it how I liked.

And that's it! The final product;

Then you can add brushes and text and whatnot. Again, hope that was a little bit helpful to someone!