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 opposite 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 opacity 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 Eraser tool.

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 beautiful model I used for this tutorial and you're done!

Click to enlarge