Integrating new text into an existing pic

[atsbayn]

Making a poster in Photoshop CS2 with a pinball machine play field as the background, and need to integrate new text into the(full color) pic, and have it look like it is part of the original. Suppose it is a matter of playing with filters and levels, but before spending oceans of time with trial and error, was wondering if anyone had any time-saving advice on doing this.

[budafist]

Get the picture looking as sharp and good as possible (lighting, saturation etc)

Make a copy of the background layer and clone/heal out any existing text.

Put your text on top of this. Now you need to make your text look like it belongs to the background. Play around with the blending mode (found on the layers palette. Multiply is a good one, but have a play with the others. Also changing the transparency % may help.