This photoshop tutorial is awesome! It gives you the down and dirty tricks professional graphic designers use to Photoshop those sweet Xbox game covers we always see. This one brings Michael Jordan out of retirement in NBA LIVE 10.

Now we’re going to leave the background alone for a bit and work on Michael a little bit more.  So, duplicate (Command + J) the “MJ Photo Copy” layer (ours are named Layer 3 copy.. disregard this):

With the duplicated layer go to Filter > Blur >Motion Blur and set the blur to 96 pixels:

Now we’re going to start erasing the stadium background and creating cool effects.  Most of the brushes you use in this tutorial come from Eduardo Recife and can be downloaded here under the “goodies” section.  He has some sweeet stuff, we’ve always loved his work.

Anyways, select the Eraser tool (E) a cool brush of your choice, the stadium background layer and start erasing!

Another cool effect we want to add is a smudge effect to Michael to add even more movement to the image.  Duplicate another MJ Photo layer and start adding smudges to it with the Smudge (R) tool.  Also, feel free to create layers underneath the MJ image using different brushes and colors to create a cool effect.

Now Drag the smudge layer below the MJ photo layer and continue to add paint splatters, erase parts of the MJ motion blur layers, HAVE A LITTLE FUN WITH IT!:

Now, using the rectangle tool (U) we’re going to add some of the graphics that make it look like an XBOX game.  Draw a rectangle across the middle of the image.

Now, using the Add Anchor Point Tool (under the pen tool button) create two points by clicking in the middle top and the middle botton of the rectangle.  This will create point that we can bend down to better shape the rectangle.

Now we’ll add the text to the banner.  Here… we’ll do a few things:

• We’ll use the Arial Black Font for the text “NBA LIVE 10″
• We’ll create a new layer above this text layer and use white scratch brushes to create a distressed effect.
• And we’ll drag the NBA Logo to the left of the font

Then we’ll add the EA SPORTS logo from the files you downloaded.  To do this go to File > Place and then find the EA Sports logo you downloaded.  You’ll need to cut out the EA Sports logo because it has a white background.  To do this, follow the same steps above for how you cut out the MJ picture.

We need to add a drop shadow to the EA Sports logo so in the layers palette, select the EA Sports layer and then the little “fx” button at the bottom and select the Drop Shadow.  See images below for settings: