Creating the Image

My two major images are a DC metro ticket and a Virginia Beach shore scene filtered with a horizontal motion blur. The original size of the beach photo is smaller than the cover design, but it is used as a textured background so loss of detail isn't an issue. I had to scan the metro ticket at a high resolution to preserve its detail and clarity as the foreground image, which is twice its original size.

The metro card had little color to it ”mostly just red and white. To add some color and interest to the card, I lowered the opacity of the Metro card layer and brought the beach photo into the underlying layer. The text "Metro" was changed to "Macro" and blurred to give it the same level of focus as the rest of the card. Next , I got rid of the metro card's magnetic strip, replacing it with a red band and applying more text with masks. The Airbrush tool with custom brushes added scratches, nicks, and marks, making the card look scuffed and battered. I used Illustrator to make the various grids, copying them into Photoshop as pixels.

The next phase was to import my ticket stubs and receipts into the main design, layer by layer. I like to apply filter modes one at a time and combine each modified layer into a compound effect, although this can make for a large file. Through process of elimination , I narrowed roughly 50 layers down to around 25. In the end, I used my favorite technique: taking different color screens and running them through blending modes, separately as well as combined, to find the right look. I settled on an orange screen with an Overlay blending mode.