Yea I totally get what your saying, and I get pretty absent minded and forget that these are not quite common terms.
The stock, meaning the image that you have added (sometimes called render), would be master cheifs' head. And by blended I mean there theres a flow to the signature. Meaning that there's consistent lighting (if you look at master cheif's head, its clear that the light is shining on the back of his helmet), and a general consistency between the image and the signature itself.

I'm totally down for learning photoshop your way. Matter of fact thats how I did it. I think I used maybe 2 tutorials total, and learned mostly from exploring photoshop. So I encourage you to do the same. Just keep working at it. One day it just kindof "clicks" and then you find your own style.