Yeah, you can do that with Fireworks. :smile;

Broadly, here are some general suggestions. If they're too vague, ask a
specific question, okay?

First, get stuff ready to work on. Open up a Fireworks document that's a
pretty good size. Get some images you like. and plop them in. They'll each be a
bitmap object whose visibility you can turn on and off by clicking on the eye
symbol. It's handy to turn them all off except the one you're working on. You
can double-click on "Bitmap" to rename an object and that can help you keep
track of them.

It's nice to cut away what you don't need. You can use the magic wand, the
rectangular or oval selection tool, or the lasso selection tool to select bits
you don't want, then press your Delete key. Keep on getting rid of what you
don't want till you're fairly happy.

You can resize the images to the same size: select each one, then go to Modify
> Transform > Numeric Transform, then Resize, and enter your dimensions.

Click on an image with the selection tool to move it around. To change which
ones are in front, drag the object up or down in the Layers palette on the
lower right.

For the background, it looks like the images are grayscale. Go to Filters >
Adjust Color > Hue/Saturation... and set Saturation to 0. Or at least way down.

Now...to get that overlapping effect, you can experiment with a couple of
things. On the on the Layers palette, you can change the opacity (look for the
checkerboard symbol and "100" and set that to a smaller number) or the
blending mode (look for "Normal" and try some of the other options in the
drop-down, like "Multiply").

For that all-over color, add a rectangle object that's the size you want for
your banner and set the opacity very low.

There are quite a few ways to get interesting edge effects. One way is to add
a rectangle with no fill and a stroke. To do this, add another rectangle and
select it. In the Color mixer, click on the color block next to the paint
bucket and click the red circle with the line through it. Click on the color
block next to the pencil and choose a color. In the Properties inspector,
there's a section for strokes. It probably has "1-Pixel Hard" in a drop down
box. Experiment with the width (probably 1 in the text box to the left of that)
as well as the strokes available to you in the drop down box.

The example has some colored text over the background images, but behind the
foreground images. Add that next and set its opacity low. Add your foreground
images. Add your foreground text. In Fireworks, the drop shadow is under the
Property Inspector palette's "Filters;" selection.

If you want to add another object, later, you can move it backwards (or
forwardwards) by dragging its object in the Layers palette. If you're not sure
if you like something, just click the eye symbol next to it to set it invisible.

Save your work often. I like to make a new version at least once a day and put
the date on the end so if I mess up, I've only lost a few hour's work. For
example, banner-5-12.png, banner-5-13.png, etc.

If you have questions about anything specific, then just ask. Specific
questions are sometimes easier to answer.

Good luck!