The first picture I'll be using is this one. We want a big picture for the basis of the blend.

Now open up a new file. I would suggest something along the lines of 1000x1000 just so everything fits right. Add your first picture onto the document. You don't want the entire picture on the document. The top part will get cut off, but the picture looks more interesting that way.

Now we're going to blend in the other pictures. There are many ways we can blend, but the easiest by far has to be setting the picture settings to Lighten. For the lightening to work, your base picture must have a dark background, otherwise the picture you want to blend won't show! Beyonce's hair is very dark, which is great for using the lighten-blending technique. Take this picture and add it onto your document. Add your picture to the far right hand side, to the corner. Your document should look like this:

Now, set the picture setting to Lighten. You'll notice that though your picture is somewhat blended, the edges do not blend into your base picture correctly. This is where your eraser comes in handy! I usually use a big size like 200 with the hardness to 0 and erase the sharp corners. This blends in the picture well.

After you go over all the rough edges, your picture should look nicely blended. Click here to get the last picture. Add this to your document and place it accordingly:

Set that picture to Lighten aswell, and then use the eraser tool to get rid of the unblended edges. I've highlighted in pink all areas that you should erase. Make sure that you don't erase TOO much.

After I'm done, my blend now looks like this:

Now we're going to be adding on the effects. I usually use Metal CX's abstract brushes because they work wonders. You can download that pack because it's the one I'll be using for these effects. If you have any other abstract type brushes you want to use instead, go ahead.

You need to be careful you don't overdo the brushes. Avoid covering faces and/or text when adding abstract brushes. We don't want to drown the picture in abstract brushes! I usually start out using a white brush color going over some parts of the picture. It doesn't have to be perfect! The first layer I added is using a white brush with the layer setting overlay.

The next layer I added I used a black brush color, and used an overlay layer setting. It's important to keep a movement with your brushes. Add your second layer of brushes right near your first layer so it flows. Otherwise it will look like you randomly dabbed brushes wherever. This is my second layer with my black brush/overlay layer setting. Just keep going at it til you get something that you like.

All my layers consist of white and black brush colors set to overlay. It's very simple, it's just the placement of brushes that might be difficult for some. Remember that you can always erase parts of a brush that you don't want, and you can add more layers. After a few more layers this is what I got:

Now that we've finished the effects, we need to bring the entire image together. We can do this through colorization. Go to Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Selective Color and match your settings to mine:






Set this layer to Hard Light at 100% opacity.

We're almost done! Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Channel Mixer and match your settings to mine:

Now last but not least, we need to add some color to the bits of the image. It looks a bit drained! Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance and match your settings to mine:



Set this layer to Saturation at 14%.

Now is the time to go over your blend to make sure everything is right. I just noticed that I forgot to blend out a part of the smaller picture, so I'll go in with the eraser and fix that now. I highlighted in pink where I made the mistake. After you complete a blend with it's effects and coloring, you can go through and make small adjustments to make sure everything is perfect.

All you must do now is add some text and you're all done! You can check out mine by clicking here.