The taste, fashion & style of crime book cover designs are different in various cultures.  One style that I personally like is to use on photographs are Corel PHOTO-PAINT Merge Modes, together with Lens Objects. In this tutorial I will be using two photos that were taken on a bright sunny day in a forest and at a friend’s summer house with a typical garden.

1. First open the photo of the trees in the forest.
2. Add Tone Curve & Contrast enhancement Lens objects. Make it dark and with a high contrast.
3. Now import the photo of the garden.
4. Cut off the lower part using a Mask tool. Use the Delete key to remove the unwanted area.
5. Add the Merge Mode > If Darker. 
6. Use the Paint tool and paint a color. I used a strong yellow & orange color.
7. I then added an additional Merge Mode > Color Dodge.
8. And finally I added the Soft Light Merge Mode, to smooth a few parts here and there.
9. If this was an actual book cover, I would then bring the image into CorelDRAW to finish off the work and then send it to the client.

 Tip provided by Stefan Lindblad, CorelDRAW Master, Illustrator, Graphic Designer & Artist.