So you wanna make one of those snazzy grungy NR layouts, huh? Something like this?
Start with an image like this one
Fil some layers with various shades, dark blues and dark reds on exclusion, very very very light shades on color burn, some medium shades on lighten on screen. play around with the opacity, try using gradients, use large dots of color on screen or lighten. These were my colorizing layers:
and this is how my layout looks so far:
At this point I like to use a few dust and scratches textures.
any of the following textures would work fine:
Put some over the colors and some in the middle of the color layers or under the color layers. If the dust and scratches are white, try setting the layer to screen. You should also try inversing the layer {command (apple)+i on a mac and I think ctrl+i on a pc} and so that the dust and scratches are black and the background is white, then set the layer to either multiply, color burn, linear burn, overlay, or soft light.
This is how my layout looks so far:
Now use grunge brushes, spllater brushes, really any thing you want in black, and placethe layers in between some of the colorizing layers. Move them around until you find something you like. This is how it looks for me so far:
Now I like using a lot of brushes, mostly in black, but a few in white especially on top of the black brushes above the color layers, but bellow and dust and scratches that are above the color layers. Mostly set these to normal, but setting a few to overlay is fine too. Use however many or however few brushes you want. Some people likes tons of brushes, some people prefer minimalism. It's really all up to you. There is no right way to do it. This is what my layout looks like so far:
Now you can make a textarea. I usually like using the shape tool, filled whatever you want. I set it to fill 35%. Then I usually stroke 5-10px and set the stroke to overlay. Then I normally do outer glow on either White on normal or black on overlay so it's barely peeking out behind the stroke.
This is how it looks for me:
now you can take the whole thing and either merge visible or go to select, copy merged, and paste in a new window. Now sharpen once or twice, add a name or credit, and a border and you're all set. This is my finished product:
