First Tutorial :)

I've been a lurker here for a while, figured it was time I tried writing my own tutorial ^_^

So here goes my first one ever, hope you like it :D

Create this: 

Start with your base. Mine is this:

Sharpen it once (or more times, depending on how large the image is. It will look way oversharpened, but that's ok cause when you shrink it, it looks fine), then shrink and move it to some interesting place on your background. If it's still too blurry sharpen it again; you want the edges to look clear, and it's ok if the skin still looks slightly oversharpened. Next take the blur tool at 50%, pick a small soft brush, and blur the skin (make sure to avoid eyes, noses, and mouths). This is easier to do if you set the image at 600% or so. Now you have a nice, clear image to work with:

Next, duplicate the layer twice. Desaturate the top layer and set it to soft light. Set the middle layer to screen. The bottom layer should still be your original image.

Now, that looks washed out to me, so I played around with the levels (ctrl-L) on the bottom layer. The settings I used were 0 - 0.63 - 255 on top and 0 - 202 on bottom - again, use whatever settings make your image look better.

Next I put a new layer underneath the soft light one, flooded it with #07003C, and set it to exclusion.

Now it gets a little tricky. I linked all three images of Natalie together, and then moved them left so I could see the other part of her face. If you have the image in the exact spot you want it, count pixels as you move it so you can put it back; if it doesn't matter exactly where it goes don't bother. Now, once you can see the other part of her face, create a new layer and press ctrl-alt-shift-E. This makes a copy of the image. Now move the three bases back to where they were.

 (copy)

Next I sharpened the copy layer once, then shrunk it to about 80%. Then I erased parts of it until I had a small rectangle that showed a different part of her face than the base does. Position it wherever you want.

Next I used the rectangle tool to make a white bar underneath the new cropped image. I also created a rectangle directly underneath the cropped image to give it a white border, so it stands out more.

Her face still wasn't standing out quite enough on the cropped image, so I duplicated the layer and set the top one to soft light.

Next I added one of inxsomniax 's light texture on top of all the layers.

Set to screen and moved around a bit, we get this:

I erased the edges and anything on her face that looked too bright, and got this:

And last, I added text. Font for "N A T A L I E" is New Romantics size 18, and the two tiny text lines are Arial Black size 2.5.

And that's it!

I hope this was helpful, please leave me feedback as to how I can make it better! Enough pictures, clear enough, too confusing? Another one? Please tell me :D