Layout Tutorial #01

A step by step guide for you

I was asked to make a tutorial on how to make THIS header which I used for my LJ. So here we go, I hope you find it useful. =] I'm using PSP9 but it's probably fully translatable to PS.

I don't have the original file with the steps in from when I made the Jason Statham header so I'm gonna have to improvise a little. I'm gonna be using a picture of the late, great Heath Ledger for this tutorial. You can obviously use whatever picture you like. We're going from: (Click them for big-ness).
to
The picture was from SweetAndTalented.

The Steps

Part One

01. Choose your image, it doesn't have to amazing quality by the way. Then crop it to about 700x300 pixels.
02. Desaturate it. (Is that a word??) I mean make it black and white. Mines like this so far:

Mine was a little dark, so I duplicated the base and set it to screen at 25%, then duplicated the base again, brought it to the top and set it at soft light 50% and merged it all. You don't have to do this, depends what image your using and how you like it.

Now leave your image to the side, you don't need it for now. (I renamed mine "Heath Base" so it's easier to explain). Now moving on...

Part Two

Now I'm going to make the actual base which will give the Heath Base that messed up effect.

03. Create a new 700x300 pixel canvas.
04. Paste THIS texture by Sanami276 @ deviantART onto the canvas. Name it "Texture 01" or something.
05. Paste THIS texture by Sanami276 @ deviantART on top of Texture 01 and set it to Darken 100%. (You can move it around to however you like because the whole texture won't fit the canvas). Name it "Texture 02" to avoid confusion through the rest of this tut.
06. Duplicate Texture 02 and flip it horizontally.
07. Merge all those textures together and flip it vertically to get something like this:

Name it "Merged Textures".
08. Desaturate THIS texture by Sanami276 @ deviantART (make it black and white). Rotate it so the black strip at the bottom is straight and not slanted.
09. Duplicate it and set it to screen a few times so the grey-ish parts aren't to dark. Then merge it. You should have a texture looking kind of like this now:

10. Paste that texture on top of the texture we called "Merged Textures" in step #7. Set it to Burn 85%. You should have something like this:

Name it "Base".

Part Three

Now it's just putting it together...

11. Paste your image ("Heath Base" in this case) on top of your "Base" from step #10. Set it to Darken 100%.
12. Then just add brushes and any text you want and you're done!

This is how mine turned out: