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Create a new document with your required specifications.

To start this tutorial off you'll want to use some high resolution photos such as of a celebrity, etc. that will be your cover story focus. Teen magazines will often have stories of celebs or scandals, etc. with the main focus being this image. So start with this and then we can build up the rest of the magazine around it.

Once you are done with this tutorial on your own, modify it as you need to and you have a template so you can just create the latest headlines and appropriate paparazzi pictures or studio shots hot off the press for the next issue.

Drag one or two options into the appropriately sized document that your client/magazine requires with the moVe tool. Resize them down by scaling (holding shift on Ctrl T).

We want them to have that high gloss taking up most of the magazine cover' kind of feel.  The shortcut for finding the transform handles when you have entered Free transform is Ctrl 0 that's Ctrl/Cmd zero.

Here I'm going to try out using to images. Often magazines will have two celebrities that they pit against each other to create more drama. I'm just using some photos.com images from my collection.

Now go ahead and erase the unwanted pixels using whichever method you want in order to end up with just the people/celebs themselves. You want to get a good selection so then we can put a different background beneath them. Get rid of their backgrounds with tools such as the magic wand (works great on simple backgrounds), eraser, quick mask, extraction, etc.

Make sure you just have each person and none of the other pixels on each of those layers. Of course make sure you are on the appropriate layer in the layers palette. This is basic stuff you should know by now. If not then you might (be a redneck) need to find out more about the TutorialKey comprehensive Photoshop training.

Make any transform adjustments or scaling that you need to.

Now select the background layer in the layers palette by clicking on it and press new layer icon to create a new blank layer above that layer.

Now go to your gradient tool and bring up the gradient chooser drop down box and choose a gradient. Many of these gradients I created in the Madison Avenue DVD tutorials live.

Now just go ahead and swipe with the gradient tool to create a nice background. Note that it fills that invisible layer with a gradient all the way across because you have not made a selection. Also note the it is BENEATH the 2 celebrities in the layer palette order so it will show up beneath them.

Now just click on the create layer mask icon as shown.

This will add a layer mask to this gradient layer so you can 'hide' pixels (instead of erasing them). Hiding pixels will let the white layer (or whatever color you have) be shown through. The gradient tools adds nice soft blends and fades.

Choose the second option from your gradient menu as shown.

This is foreground to transparent. Make sure that your foreground color is black. Now just go ahead and swipe upward in the middle of the document to hide the bottom visibility of the gradient layer. It will create a nice blend to white.  (Do this only if you feel you need to hide some of the gradient effect.)

Now go ahead and create your magazine name title. Take your time to come up with something interesting. It's best to look at magazines to see what others are doing and then go off of that when you are stuck for ideas.

Here I'm using IMPACT font and in the text editing field, I'm right clicking and choosing Warp Text.

From the warp text menu I'm choosing bulge. This is just to create a little more 'flava' to the otherwise pretty basic text. Go ahead and do something like this.

Press OK and then to exit the text editing field you'll have to click on another tool or layer.

Now grab your rectangular marquee tool and create a rectangular selection all the way across the top of the image.

Now press the new layer icon and then choose a pinkish color from the color chooser

press OK and then Edit: Fill: Foreground color or Alt/Opt Backspace to fill the selection on the new layer

with pink.

If you've never done this before, get used to it; shape fills are used all the time in commercial design. You could also use the Shapes tool on rectangular (there are different ways to do things quite often in Photoshop).
 

Grab your type tool again and create some more text. Just click near the top (shift click to start a new text layer no matter where you want). Type something new in the editing field such as Free Posters. Highlight the text in the editing field and choose your color picker and change the color to yellow and press OK.

Note how I've created that space between the two words. You can either create a duplicate layer of the word FREE by dragging it to the new layer icon and then double clicking on the layer icon in the layers palette...

...and then entering POSTERS, going to the moVe tool and hold Shift while you drag it to the right...or you can just enter a long space in the same text editing field. This way I have separate type layers on top.

To make things a little more vibrant, go to your original title text layer and choose Stroke from the lower left pop up menu.

 Click in the color box to bring up the color picker box and drag the mouse outside of the box to get your eyedropper. Now click on the top header bar to get that exact same color, then press OK.

In this case, keep the size between 1-3 in the stroke editing properties box.

Now go ahead and add some headline text. It's ok to use the same font here. Make it that same bright yellow.

Now to add a heavy drop shadow to it as shown.

Doing this allows the yellow to stand out against ANY background and the brightness of the yellow grabs your attention at the newsstand.

Create another text layer to add another article name or question of intrigue. Make sure to use a smaller and different font. This adds balance and is natural common design sense. You don't want everything at the same size and font.
 

You can easily duplicate layer effects/styles by dragging them as shown to the bottom of another layer.

Now go ahead and create another marquee selection in the bottom left corner as shown.

Press Ctrl when you click on the new layer icon to create a blank layer below the current (top) type layer that you are on.

If you are on a different color, then switch to the eyedropper tool and click on the pink.

Now with that selection active (marching ants), press alt backspace to fill pink onto that selected area on the new blank layer. This will provide another text backdrop.

Here I'm adjusting the placement of the photos.com celeb dude. You can Ctrl click on any layer to select the topmost layer beneath the cursor without referencing the layers palette.

Now that you have the layer filled, Ctrl click on the layer icon in the layers palette. Go to view: rulers or press Ctrl R to bring up the rulers. Now drag a guideline to the exact center. Go to the ruler area on the left, click and drag a guideline. It will automatically 'snap' to the center (with snap turned on). You will feel it snap. Now you know where the center of that layer is.

There's several things you can do now. But I'm going to go ahead and with the guideline still there grab my subtract from selection (in the options bar) rectangular marquee tool and drag from the guideline out to one side to subtract half of the selection (on the right side). Now that the left side is still selected which is what I wanted, I'm just going to choose a different color such as blue.  Now Alt Backspace to fill this selection with blue.
 

Note that I am choosing to fill on the same layer; just be aware of this. You might want to go ahead and just create a new blank layer to fill the blue onto so you can have more flexibility later.

Now find another image which you want to bring in, something that focuses on a person for this people teenie mag. Make a selection with your marquee tool to close in on the area you want, switch to the moVe tool and drag within that selection to bring it over into the .psd file.

Now you can go ahead and scale it down some more (you know how).

Get it so that it is close enough to fit within and on top of the pink area.

Now grab your 'm' marquee tool and create a selection so that all areas of the new layer have some space around them.
You might have to drag another guideline down this time from the top so you can leave a little extra space at the bottom. This helps get a selection where you want it to.

Once you have the selection where you want it to, just click on the layer mask icon. 

You can see it in the layer mask icon in the palette.

and it will automatically hide any other pixels outside of the selection.

Since this is a magazine, we want to have a nice balance of vector (shapes mostly as text backdrops), images, and appropriate typography.  Add some more supplementary text that is small in size to put next to your new images on the bottom.

 Here I'm grabbing another image to put on top of the blue backdrop by first making a selection to crop the area that i want and moving it in.

Hmm...this looks good enough to make the cover shot itself..

For now though I'm scaling it down and then using the same technique to create a selection around the area that I want to keep and then clicking on the layer mask icon to hide the rest of the pixels.

Create some more supplementary text and choose one of the colors we're already using or keep it white. Having these different solid color backgrounds help the text to stand out more by itself b/c we're not going for beauty here (that's for the cover shots), but the publisher wants to get these magazines off of the shelves (always keep this in mind when designing in this genre).

Go ahead and apply a rotation under Edit: Transform menu on one of the text layers. This creates more visual variety. Always think of little things like this to spice it up b/c often you'll be working off of the same template.

Now grab your circular marquee tool.
 

 

Hold down shift while click dragging to get a perfect circle. Now right click and choose Make Work Path.

What I'm going to do only works with Photoshop CS.

In Photoshop CS you can now type on or in a work path. Now that the circular selection is a work path, grab your type tool and place it over the path and click to enter path/text editing. This is a great feature that is obviously very practical.

I'm going to type in the on-cover price.

You will see this all the time on many magazines. Especially on these youth market magazines they'll often add backdrop colors (gee, pink and blue...)..it depends on your market (and season). Obviously you don't want the price TOO large unless it's Free.
 

Use your character palette with leading and kerning to get the type to fit just right. This may take a few minutes but it's worth it to get that built-in professional look. I go over the Character palette in depth in the Madison Avenue advertising design tutorials.

Go to the Paths palette and make the circle a selection again by right clicking as shown and choosing Make Selection.

Now create a blank layer and fill it with yellow. The path is still there if you ever need it but now we hav a yellow circle backdrop layer for the price tag.
 

When you are done getting the cover price tag built within the path field and happy, go ahead and rotate the text editing field to that it points in as shown.

Now go ahead with the rectangular marquee tool and create another selection so that it overlaps with the top bar as shown.

Now just create a new blank layer and fill it with the exact same color as the top pinkbar fill. This in effect, is creating an extension of the backdrop. Make sure that this fill layer is beneath the price layers.

Go ahead and grab another great picture for your magazine's target market. Bring that in and scale it down.

Place it so it's around the same size as that color fill and on top of it. One thing that you can do is (making sure that it is RIGHT on top of it in the layers palette) create a clipping group/mask by going to the layer menu as shown.

This will place that layer 'within' the pink fill layer. Now you can move or continue transforming the new layer to just where you want it.
 

To get rid of the extra pixels create a selection again so that just the edges of the pink are showing equidistantally (is that a word') and click on the new layer mask icon.  Here I've control clicked on the layer but you'll want to manually use the marquee tool (guidelines help again) to get the selection where you want it with a little pink on all sides showing.

Go ahead and create a smaller text layer as shown; something such as HOT to put in between that space we left (you could have done this earlier too).and go ahead and rotate it. This little technique is done all the time but it is catchy and appealing (or appalling if you don't like the magazine).

Go ahead and create some layer sets if you want and drag appropriate layers into them for organizational purposes. This is by clicking on the folder icon in the middle bottom of the layers palette. Here I'm hiding all of the layers in the set by hiding the layer set.

Let's bring back that image I brought in earlier because I though that would make a great cover shot.

Our demographics for this magazine isn't motherhood or home owners. Remember you want to follow the techniques and principles that are prevalent throughout that industry; these are what clients are looking to pay you for as long as you can do it in an innovative way. Be open to designing in different styles and genres and making yourself versatile while building your portfolio. Show them what you can do.
 

Here I'm going to bring that drop shadow down that I dragged (drug?) to the new text layer. Look at your design and just keep eyeballing things to see what else isn't just right and go ahead and move things around, rotate, scale, change colors, etc. until you get them where you feel it is just right.

This text...

...was getting kind of busy being stuck over here so I moved it over and entered to make it into two different lines to 'wrap' it around the other headline.

As a magazine or commercial graphic designer, get very comfortable with using the Character palette. And have a great font collection! It's your ally also.  You should end up with something like this.