Elements of the Front Cover - Claw Marks + Charred Page

Although my latest design was more in line with my moodboard, I decided to use the ancient tome idea as this is closer to a traditional RPG, which is the focus of my project. I also believe that by using this design I will be able to demonstrate a lot more techniques.       

One element of my front cover is a torn, burnt edge of a page as I believe this will create interest as to how this happened. I started by obtaining a piece of parchment with scrawled scripture on it.

Original

         I cropped the excess paper around the edge as I wanted some of the writing to be obscured by the burn, I did this using the crop tool. I followed by using the polygonal lasso tool to create a uneven edge that looked torn and battered, I then smoothed out the edges that were too jagged using the smooth tool (in refine edge) and then created a new layer mask. Using a charcoal brush with the layer mask, I drew around the edge of the parchment to roughen the edges, then used a heavy smear wax brush to draw around the edges using colour #211a0a, this resulted in the edges looked burnt and charred. After duplicating the layer, I applied a Gaussian blur (filter - blur - Gaussian) and selected the darker colour blending mode. Finally, I downloaded a grungemap from cgtextures.com, set the opacity to 27% (this number allowed the effect to be seen but not be too overpowering) and selected the subtract blending mode before placing this above the other layers. 

Due to the amount of changes I was making and sometimes I had to step back a lot but PS's default value wasn't enough. I changed the history states to 100 by going to edit - preferences - general, clicking on performance and changing history states to 100. 

Also, I had to convert some of the images to 8 bit as that is the format I was using. I did this by selecting the image I wanted to convert, clicking image - mode and the bits I wanted to use.

End result

Another element of my front cover is some claw marks, again causing intrigue as to what caused them and why. After attempting to make my own brush, I decided to look for a template online. I managed to find a claw mark effect and removed it's inner shadow leaving just the outline. I copied this onto my front cover and drew on the front cover layer mask, removing the leather layer revealing the above parchment, therefore making it look as if the book has been scratched through revealing the page beneath. I need to find a way of making the grey overlap look like torn leather although I am still trialing a couple of scratch effects and my own brush creation, once this has been done I will compare which looks best and achieves the desired result.

- http://www.cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=45589

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo0eqCEFCl4

- http://www.tutorial9.net/tutorials/photoshop-tutorials/create-burnt-parchment-from-scratch/

- http://www.photoshopgurus.com/forum/graphic-design-showroom/29678-ripped-metal-%7C-photoshop-psd-file-free-download.html