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For this tutorial I really wanted to let everyone get an in depth look at my techniques for making a "painted" celebrity art piece. To bein, I chose my two images from a set of James Franco.,br>



I laid these images closely together on my canvas, set them to lighten, and masked away the edges. I didn't need to to this too carefully as I knew a lot of my texturing would hide the bits that I had missed.



Now, this bit is really up to the artist. I really wanted to include his initials, but that will be entirely up to you. If you choose to, I placed mine between the layers and masked away any pieces that I didn't want. I really wanted to give it some fades and allow it to better blend with the piece.



Next, I added this texture from Ugly Business. I set it to soft light, 18 % opacity, and masked a large portion of it away. I really just wanted to get some texture on the letters. I then went to Filter>Sharpen, to give the fabric a little more crispness.



Now, this piece was just a little too blah. The shadows weren't very crisp and it just didn't fit the images, so I added an Adjustment>Curves layer.
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And now for my favorite parts, the gradients! Nothing adds to a piece more then a Gradient Map. All the ones I used for this piece were from Daydreaming. All were set to soft light and varied opacities. There's no need to go into detail here as all pieces will be different.





And another texture from Ugly Business. This one has some nice shapes and shadows, so I set it on top to Soft Light, 100% opacity and masked away an bits I didn't need.



But, that just didn't add enough texture for me. The background still looked a little empty so I actually went back to my base layers and added one more texture to the very bottom of my piece. This texture, from Ugly Business as well, had some nice noise and coloring. I set it to Normal, 23% Opacity, and masked away any pieces that showed through the main images.



And with the texturing and gradients done, it's time to play with filters! My first choice is usually Filter>Artistic>Paint Daubs with the Brush Size set to 1 and the Sharpness set to 1. This adds some nice crispness without being "too much". I then really wanted some nice highlights in the piece, as well as just a tiny bit of noise, so I went to Filter>Distort>Diffuse Glow. Now, before going there make sure your color palette is set to the default Black Foreground and White Background, as this is what is used for the coloring of this filter. If those are correct move on to the filtering. For this piece I wanted very little noise, so I set the Graininess at 1. Now, be sure to use the little preview box for the next step, as depending on the coloring and brightness of your piece, it can give you too much brightness. For this piece, I only wanted the bareest of highlights so I set the glow about very low, about a 4 or 5, and I set the Clear Amount to 20. This layer I then set to 66% opacity, which balanced the brightness nicely.



Now I lost a lot of the shadow definition on his face with the last step, so I Copy Merged the entire piece into a new layer. Always do that when you are about to play with the Dodge Tool or the Burn Tool. That way if you make a mistake of the outcome isn't what you wanted you can always go back to what you had. Now, I really wanted to get his cheekbone definition back so I selected my Burn Tool and chose a soft round brush, about a 27, and set the exposure to 14%. I then went along the shadows and darkened them up, giving some nice contrast back to his face. At this point, I also wanted to add some more sharpness to his hair and eyes, so I selected the Sharpen Tool, using about a size 65 soft round brush, and 31 % Strength setting. I then sparingly gave a little more sharpness to those areas. You only need to highlight a few places to make everything stand out all the more.



And I still wanted a little more filtering, so I went to Filters>Artistic>Cutout and set the number of Layers to 8, and the Edge Simplicity to about a 3. I then masked the areas around his face and body, allowing those areas to really stand apart. And I added another Adjustment>Brightness/Contras layer, upping the contrast to a +4. From there I added my text, and presto! Your piece is complete.