put both the background and renders on seperate layers.. and make the backhgrounds fill about 90% and the opacity 85% and u should have a good fade..

It's simple.

They had a stock render of the four or five "people". To make the background they took the gradient tool and filled the canvas. They enlarged (via transform -> free transform) a copy of their render to the width and height they wanted. They applied a black and white filter to the image and lowered the overall opacity of the render copy to about 80%.

Voila.

okie dokie art-e-chokie

the image in the background is the same image that is the main picture

to get that , go to background layer ( should be blank when u first go to it ) put ur main pic in there , size it up to where u think it looks nice , depending on what prgram ur useing , either desatureate it , or make it b/w and then create another layer ( on top of ur background layer ) and paste in ur pic and size it smaller then ur background image , keep the colors ur want but make sure it blends a lil