Destroyed City, Free Forum Signature

I created this custom forum signature for someone in the game torn. They requested a signature that was "slightly dark, slightly destructive... of a destroyed street scene or city scape". They also request it be 400 to 450 px by 100 to 150 px.

I started by putting together the background. The background of this signature is actually composed of 5 different images. After I pieced together the background I altered the colors and luminosity of the individual layers until they all flowed together. Next I duplicated the furthest back layer with the clouds (twice) and moved to the top/front. I removed the foreground in both layers and cleared away much of what was covering the building in one layer, using it only to create a heavy smoke/fog effect in certain areas of the image. Finally I added the text, duplicated it, change the duplicate to white, filled in most of the transparency in the white duplicate and blurred it to separate the black text from the dark image.