In this tutorial, we're going to go from this:
to this:


The above blend was a base I made for an add effects challenge that's located here. The images were taken from photographer Mike Ruiz and it's featuring Tyra banks. I picked these particular pictures and base because they the pictures full up all spaces and they're great for coloring.

However, please do use different images than mine. I have some similar pictures to those that you can blend and use.

1. Open a new photoshop canvas (File > New). Blend your images like I have mine blended. Duplicate your base. Apply a surface blur to your first copy by going to Filter > Blur > Surface Blur. Radius: 5 Pixels and Threshold: 15 levels. Sharpen the 2nd copy of your blend. Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen. If you're base looks like it doesn't need sharpening than don't sharpen it. Sharpen to the point where you get a little bit of crispness on the images. Do not overdoe it. Set the 2nd layer on [b]Softlight 100%. If you don't have Soft Light, Overlay should work as well.
Mine

2. Selective Coloring (SC) time.

• First SC layer: Reds: -48, 0, -8, 0 Yellows: +4, -31,-81,0
• Second SC layer: Reds: -16, 0, +21, 0 Yellows: +13, -18,-52,0 Cyans: -100,0,+100,0 Neutrals: +11, -7, -9, 0
• Third SC layer: Reds: -46, 0, +21, 0 Yellows: 0,0,-29,-38
• Fourth SC layer: Yellows: 0, 0, -93, +21
• Add solid color of #c7c67c
• Fifth SC layer: Reds: -100, 0, +100, 0 Yellows: -10,0,-100,0 Greens: -100,0,-100,0
• Sixth SC layer: Neutrals: 0, 0, +6, 0
• Seventh SC layer: Neutrals: 0, 0, +6, 0
• Eight SC layer: Neutrals: 0, 0, +6, 0
• Eight SC layer: Neutrals: 0, 0, +6, 0

3. Merge all the selective layers and the images together. Mine

4. Take this background and put it behind your base. Duplicate that background and set the second layer on Color Burn. Mine.

5. Take your base and set it on Hard Mix 40%. Mine. If you don't have Hard Mix, apply a Exclusion. If you do set it on Exclusion, make sure it's at 40%.

6. Take this background again and put it on top of your last layer (the one that had the Hard Mix). Mine.

7. Duplicate your blend base and bring it to the top. This is what my layers palette looks like.

8. Using the rectangle marquee tool cut out a portion of your blend.Then using the rectangle tool, make white boxes that border the image you just out. Randomly place your cut out. Mine.

9. Take this background again and layer it on top. Using the Magic Wand Tool select the white rectangles, then click on the gray background- this will alow you to cut out the gray background rectangles the same shape as the white ones. Like this.

10. Move the gray rectangles down a little or up. Which ever way you want. Mine.

11. Now we're going to add a little text. Using the font Niagara Solid (this & this), write whatever you want. Then add a Drop Shadow. I wrote 'queen' using size 60pt. To do that, select your text in the layers palette, click on the f and select 'Drop Shadow.' (image). Insert these values.

12. Using the font 'Times New Roman,' I wrote 'of the woods' and 'do you dare unleash my'. Sizes 24pt and 14 pt. The spacing between the letters of these should be 200(Window > Paragraph- Av= <-->)I'm applying the same drop shadoow over to to these two texts as well. To do that, right click on your text in the layers palette and click Copy Layer Style. Then right click on the text you want to add the drop shadow to, then click 'Paste Layer Style.'

13. To write 'wrath,' I used the font OCR A Std. It's a preset that should be in your font list. If you don't have it, you can download it here. I applied the same drop shadow as the other ones on this one as well.

14. Take this image, resize it, crop it and duplicate it. Or you can just use mine if you want. To delete the white portions in the stock, I used the magic wand tool. The stock was taken from SXC.HU.