Wallpaper Tutorial
I was asked to make a tutorial for the following wallpaper:
I made it in PS CS, and as far as I know the techniques are transferable.
1. I started off with a background colour of #F1F3F4, and to that I added this texture by Imagination which I desaturated and set to Soft Light, opacity 100.
2. Next I created a new layer and selected an area of the canvas which I then filled with a pattern and set the layer to Multiply, opacity 51. I created another new layer and again selected part of the canvas. This time I flood filled it with a solid block of colour (#D5DEDC) and reduced the opacity to 57.
3. At this point I added the large image of Fernando to the canvas. I then duplicated it three times. The bottom duplicate I set to Screen, opacity 72. The second one I set to Soft Light, opacity 53. The top duplicate was desaturated to about -80 (Adjustments > Hue/Saturation) and then set to Soft Light, opacity 71. I also added a dark Drop Shadow (Layer Style) on Multiply, opacity 51 to the bottom (normal) picture layer.
4. Below the soft light and screen layers I created a new layer and selecting the area filled by the picture of Fernando I flood filled it with the colour #14263F and set it to Exclusion, opacity 61. I added another new layer above this and using a large soft brush I painted in white over the right hand side of the picture. I set this layer to Screen, opacity 36.
5. At this point I added the small images. For them I simply kept selecting a smaller and smaller area of the image of Fernando and arranged them down the wallpaper. I made sure that the incriments were smooth. I duplicated each image three times. Two of the duplicates were set to Soft Light, opacity 100. The other duplicate was set to Screen. I set to opacity of the screen layer so that it increased as I went down the images start with 0 and ending with 20.
6. To add some extra 'interest' to the little images I created a new layer and set my fill tool to use a black to transparent gradient. I selected the area covered by the images and filled it with the gradient. I then set the layer to Saturation, opacity 100. (In the images shown I've put the gradient on top of a white background so that you can see it.)
7. Nexted I started to add the text. For this I used Century Gothic for the capitals and Violation for the rest of the text. I used a combination of layers set to the Normal, Colour Burn and Multiply blend modes with various opacities. I also gave all of the layers an Outer Glow set to either Screen or Darken. Again the opacities varied according to the layer. For the little text I used 4px Century Gothic on bold with a leading of 8px and tracking of 200.
8. I decided that the left hand side of the wallpaper looked a bit empty so I created another new layer and selected a small rectangle. I then filled it with the same pattern as I used before and set it to Multiply, opacity 49. I also selected part of the image of Fernando and added this as a new layer. I duplicated it twice setting the bottom duplicate to Screen, opacity 60 and the top one to Overlay, opacity 100.
9. Before adding some new textures I duplicated the bottom multiply texture and dragged it to the top, reducing the opacity to 7. I then added this gradient on Colour Burn, opacity 17. Followed by this texture by Hybrid Genesis set to Soft Light, opacity 100 (I created a layer mask on this layer and used a light grey brush to erase some of the effect of the top part of the texture). I created another new layer and filled it with #2B297E before setting it to Lighten, opacity 57. The final texture I added was this one by Amalgam, set to Overlay, opacity 28.
10. I added lots of brushes. I used splatter and tape brushes, plus a few squiggly brushes and each brush is on a new layer. I think most of the layers are either white or dark blue and the blend modes are either Normal or Soft Light. The brushes all came from Hybrid Genesis.
11. For the last step I created an Adjustment Layer and played around with the contrast a bit.