An Album-Cover

Learn how to create a very stylish album-cover!

• Step 1 Open up a document of 640x480 and add a nice cityscape with a lake or canal on the foreground;

  

• Step 2 Move it all the way up to the canvas;

  

• Step 3 Take the Single Row Maruqee-Tool and select 1 pixel of the water and stretch it. With the selection still on go to Edit>Transform>Perspective and grab either the lower left or right-anchor and move it in the oposite direction;

  

• Step 4 Duplicate the layer by pressing CTRL+J and then cut off the water on that layer. Flip it vertically and place it on the water and lower the opcaity to 12-30;

  

• Step 5 Now it's time to add your render... any choice is possible;

  

• Step 6 Resize the render to a nice position;

  

• Step 7 Then cut off everything that is in front of the buildings;

  

• Step 8 And behind the render, add a strife of lines;

  

• Step 9 Take good clouds from a stock and manipulate that into the picture by using the

• Step 10 Flatten all layers using CTRL+SHIFT+E and duplicate it by pressing CTRL+J, then bur the layer a little by doing Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and choose 4-6 and then set the Blending-Mode to overlay;

  

• Step 11 Then add a gradient-map by going to Image>Adjustments>Gradient Map.
  Then choose a gradient that goes from purple to violet to white;

  

• Step 12 Then add any text of your choice in white;

  

• Step 13 Select the text by CTRL+clicking on the layer-thumbnail and go to Select>Modify>Expand and choose 3 or 4 pixels.
  Then fill it with black;

  

• Step 14 Then add these layer-styles to the white text;

  

  

• Step 15 And add these layer-styles to the black text;

  

  

• Step 16 And it will turn out like this;

  

• Step 17 Add some nice ornaments behind the title of the album;

  

• Step 18 Don't forget the "Parental Advisory"-label and the Record-Company;

  

• Step 19 Finally add the artist, or in my case the beautifull model I used for this tutorial and you're done!