Its an EXTREME amount of work. Which is why it took me so long to finish. I use a combination of techniques to accomplish it. First I start off by making a copy of the original image. NEVER make changes to the original. Then I move on to isolating the player from the background using masks. Masks are a non-destructive method of "erasing" the pixels. Then I use the healing and clone stamp tools to remove the logos and unwanted blemishes. From there I use adjustment layers to do most of the color changes. Again all of that, aside from the cloning and healing, are non-destructive. The original image is still there buried at the bottom.
For the logos and the numbers I actually used Illustrator to recreate them and then imported them into Photoshop. This way they aren't super pixalated. Illustrator is what you call a vector program and Photoshop is a raster program. Vector images are created using mathematical formulas so that they can be resized to whatever size format you need and not lose resolution. Raster images are created using pixels which can distort if you make them too large or too small.
So over all there is probably about, oh I don't know, 8 plus hours of work into just the uniform change. And that doesn't include the wallpaper. And my total layer count is 57 with 13 groups. Check out my Deviant Page (I linked it in the first post) to get an idea of the steps. If you want to learn more I highly suggest you checkout Phlearn, Blue Lightning TV and Photoshop Training Channel on YouTube. They are great videos on how to use Photoshop.
