Photoshop - playing with images

I'm going to play arround with a photo, which I want to include on my MySpace profile.

The original image I took was in the Royal London, of a group of students enjoying a pre-lecture pint...

The first thing I want to do, is get rid of the background, so I use the magic erraser for the most part of it, and zoom in to quite a deep zoom and go round the edges with the eraser tool.

Being colourblind, I find it difficult to differentiate between red and brown, so I've givem some of the people in it a hair cut.

Please excuse the kitchen curtain that the second person is waring as a shirt.

I decide that the first person in the photograph is too far away, makeing the image wide, so using the magnetic lasso tool, i select arround him, and then move him closer to the others.

Next, I want to give them a nice gradient background, so I create a new layer, and then using the gradient tool, fill the entire layer with the effect, and finally placing the layer at the very back of the image.

I now want to add some descriptive text in the background, so using the text tool, I write some text and position the text later infront of the background layer, but behind the photo layer.

Now, I rotate the text, so it looks more appealing...

Now, to make the text stand out more, I add a 5pixel white outline, known as a stroke in Photoshop...

In attempt to hide the hard edges from the original photo, I give the people a white glow, using the blending options.

Now I reposition the original image and the text...

And then I crop the image...

I decide that I'm not happy with the current background selection, so I use the gradient tool again to recolour the background later...

Now, not happy with the hand jesture the second person is displaying, I decide to add a book, so it looks like he's reading it. I find an image of a book that I want, and cut arround it using the magic eraser and then going round it at a close level of zoom with the normal eraser tool.

I also use the magnetic lasso tools to go round his hand, and create a copy of it on a new later at the front, so the hand becomes infront of the book, but the rest of the image stays behind the book.

I also resize and skew the image of the book to fit in with my image.

Finally, I want an embossing effect on the text, so I use the blending tools agian to ajust the bevel effects.

I've finally reduced the size of the image, so it's a smaller file-size and fits neatly in to the MySpace profile...

Now that I'm happy with this image, I'm going to upload it to flickr and insert it on to my MySpace profile...