Per request part 2

This post will cover how I did the pencil sketch photo for the layout. There are actually a few different ways to do this, in this case I chose the easiest...lol

1)first open the picture you want to apply the effect to

2) duplicate your picture.

3) In the effects palette choose photo effects (circled in red in the screen shot) then pencil sketch (indicated by the red arrow)

If you like the way it looks you can leave it at this. However, this is usually too light for me so I duplicated the pencil sketch layer, changed the blending mode to multiply then merged down. With some pictures I have done this step more than once, it just depends on the picture you are working with.

4) Now you should have your original photo, a duplicated layer and the pencil sketch layer. You can leave the pencil sketch layer as is or play around with different blending modes to get different looks. In my case I changed the blending mode to lighter color and then merged the sketch layer down to the color copy. You may want to try changing the blending mode to screen to add just a hint of color to the sketch.

5) At this point you can merge all your layers then save. (If you want to retain your original image be sure to save the file with a different name)

Hope you enjoyed my little tutorials today but mostly I hope they made sense....lol