Okay! so here is the long awaited tutorial. Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while, school homework and concert rehearsals are killing me. I haven't even finished the giveaway graphics and I can't open for requests until I finish >.<

Important note:  Notice this is more of a step by step because I figured since I don't use photoshop, a step by step could be easier for anyone (that uses other editing programs) to follow. I hope you can learn something with this tutorial, it is very simple though, so maybe it's more helpful to those that just started making covers? i don't know xc

**If you recreate this cover or are inspired by the tutorial to make something please send me the link! I'd love to see it :)**

Things you need:

Background: "Peek..." by Arctic-Stok on Deviantart
Model: "Alanna 17" by faestock on Deviantart
Russian Castle: I can't find the original source for the castle, but if you search "russian castle" or "russian church" in google/deviantart it will come up
Vector frame: again, I didn't save the source of the vector frame but you can look up "swirly vector frames" and it will come up.
Font: FoglihtenNo07 Medium

  ♦♦♦  STEP 1  ♦♦♦

I personally like making the background first and then add the model, this way I can figure out the light source and where the shadows should be. So first add the snowy background and on another layer add the castle. I cut the top of the castle with the "Free Select Tool" (I think in photoshop is called Lasso tool?). And the past of the castle that is on the ground, I erease it with a soft brush, since the model will be covering most of it, I didn't put much effor into it.

Next, notice where the light source should be. It is hard to explain and I'm not that good at this, but imagine where the sun would be in the sky and try to figure out how the light would shine on the objects and where the shadows would be.  You can see from the image below, the white arrow is where the light is coming from (I made that part of the castle a bit lighter), and the dark arrow where the shadow would be (darken that part of the castle)

    ♦♦♦ STEP 2♦♦♦   

Now add the model, this is basically the same steps as the castle. Cut the edges and arrange the light and dark contrasts and add a shadow on the ground. You can make this shadow using just a soft brush on a lowered opacity layer.

♦♦♦ STEP 3 ♦♦♦

Add the textures. Here I used snow and smoke, and then added the frame.

    ♦♦♦ STEP 4 ♦♦♦   

Add a coloring or/and fix the hue/tone/whatever of the whole image. You should have something like this. Also! don't forget to add the title, Here I made something simple with a few layers of a white text. The first layer Is blurred and in "overlay mode", the second layer as well but with less opacity, the third layer of the text is just in screen mode.