Design Process for CD Singl Cover

I first started off by creating multiple layers consisting of 2 different custom gradient fills, a layer effect which was inner shadow by double clicking on the layer i wanted to apply the effexct to, and also I applied the 'craqueleure' effect which can be found amongst other texturizer filters.



















Next I duplicated this layer, and completely desaturated it by pressing Shift + CTRL + U before then increasing the contrast by going into Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast.

By this stage i had imorted an image of a guy doing a flip, i used the selection tool to extract him and place him on my cd cover .PSD project file. Then, i made yet another selection around him, however i was working on the layer which is the saturated, coloured, gradient fill... Then i pressed Ctrl Shift + 'i' to invert selection and i then hit delete so i was left with the coloured gradient accurately over the image of the guy doing a flip which is on a seperate layer. Next i simply changed the layer type of the coloured gradient from Normal to Linear Dodge. I then duplicated this layer, and gave it a gaussian blur with a radius of 4.8 pixels, then dropped the opacity on this layer to 33 % to achieve a glowing look. I did all of this because the band that the CD cover is for is one that stands out and i think this element of the CD cover also stands out which represents them well with the eye poppingly bright colours.

Finally, to achieve this i added a text layer mask and created a gradient fill within it, i then duplicated the layer, used gaussian blur and knocked the opacity down a little bit to make it look glowing, then i merged the two layers and added layer styled such as drop shadow, outer glow and inner shadow. after this i added a craquelur via the texturizer filter to give it texture. For the red glowing line that links the Single na,e and the picture together, i used the pen tool, selected the paint brush tool and adjusted it to the settings that i wanted, then i went back onto the pen tool, right clicked, and selected stroke path which resulted in red line with simulated pen pressure to make in thin out towards each end. finaly i added an outer glow of the colour red to the layer on which the line created by the pen tool was kept to make it seem as though it were glowing which helps it to stand out. Finally i used the polygonal lasso tool to erase parts of this line that went infront of objects where i wanted it to look as if it was going behind.