Hello, all! Some of you have been wondering how I make my banners, so I thought that I’d make a tutorial showing you how I do it. I take no credit whatsoever for the whole glowy thing and the extensive use of Lighten; I stole the blur/soft light from Aramel and the Lighten from Skittehbeeh.
This will work for those who don’t have Selective Coloring because, well, I don’t have it yet, either. 
Here goes!
I started out using these two images.
Elena
Damon
I brought the images into my 600x200 banner, but first I reversed the Elena image. Then I did the basic resizing thing. I positioned the images, put the Elena one on top, and set it to Lighten. Then I used the brush tool (colored black) to fill in the rest of the space that the Damon image didn’t. Elena’s shoulder looked really awkward, so I erased it and used the brush tool (colored black) to get rid of any light colors on both images that messed up the blending.
I merged the two layers together. To start the coloring work, I added a blank layer, filled it with a dark blue (#040223), and set it to Lighten. Then I went to Color Curves and adjusted it a bit to bring out some more of the light colors. I then went to Levels and enhanced the light colors a little. I brought in THIS texture, Gaussian Blurred the life out of it, and set it to Lighten. I went back to Color Curves to darken it a bit and take away some of the color.
Next I did the text. The small text is in capital Microsoft Himalaya, and the large font is Jey. I merged everything together, duplicated the layer, set it to 1.8 Gaussian Blur, and finally set the duplicated layer to soft light. I went back to Color Curves to lighten up the darkness of the duplicated layer. Then I brought in THIS texture, Gaussian Blurred the life out of it, set it to Lighten, and adjusted it with Color Curves.
I wanted more blue, so I brought in another dark blue layer and set it to Lighten. After adjusting the Color Curves yet again, I added a light yellow border, and that’s it!
I chose really dark and yellow-ish images to work with, but this is the formula I use with most of my banners. This banner didn’t work too well, but this is what I’ve been doing for my request thread.
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I can’t describe how helpful it’s been. So I’ve spent the last few days experimenting, using all these tips and tricks, and here’s the banner I’m most proud of! Pan, I hope you don’t mind I used A-Rose for this. =)
I absolutely love what you've done with them. I'm just so stunned that you all like my work enough to follow my tutorial. I still feel like a newbie. 
It's awesome 
