How to Make a Wallpaper in Photoshop

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Zach Katagiri, graphic designer, in New York City, and today we are talking about photoshop. In this video, I'm going to show you how to use photoshop to make a desktop wallpaper. Because Ryan Gosling, is my sisters' current celebrity pick, I'm going to do mine about him. Obviously, there are many ways to make a desktop wallpaper. This is just one, but I'm hoping you can use this to learn a few tricks, to use on your own ideas. So, the first thing you want to do is create a document that is the right size. You want the resolution to be the same as your screen. Color, wallpaper, and I'm going to make mine 1280 x 1024. Click ok, and we've got your document. So, now the first thing I'm going is, decide what background color I want. Lets make this kind of a tanish color. Yea, something like that. Click ck, and I'm going to use the paint bucket tool to make this entire layer that color. Now, I'm going to create two more layers on top of that. New layer, and in the first layer, I'm going to use the rectangular marque to select part of it. And I'm going to use the gradient tool, to create a gradient within that rectangular marque. I'm going to make mine, dark red, to dark red. 100% opacity to 0% opacity, so that it will fade from a dark red to nothing, and you can see the color that's underneath. So, I'll click ok, and I'll make my first gradient here. Now I'm going to go to edit, transform, and I'm going to add a warp. The kind of warp, is a flag, and I'm just going to change the bend to 35%. Hit enter, to get out of transform, and deselect. Now, I"m going to go to top layer, and I'm going to do this one more time, but a little more bigger. Again, use my gradient tool, I'm going to keep the same preset, and do one more gradient. Now, I'll go to transform, and also do a warp, and do a flag. And this time, I'm going to make it go the opposite direction, by putting a negative sign in front of the thirty-five. Again I'll hit return, to get out of transform, and I"m going to click away. Now I"m going to add some styles to the layers. In my top layer, I'm going to go to layer, layer styles, and I'm going to add an inner glow. I'm going to use screen mode, bring down the opacity to around forty, softer, throw the choke up. Now, I'll make it a little bit bigger, click ck. Now I'm going to blur it, by going to filter, blur, and I'm going to add a 7pixel, gaussin blur, click ck. It just kind of fuzzied the edges a little bit. I'm going to go to my other layer, that's on top of that. I"m going to go to, filter, sketch, and half-tone pattern, click ck. Now i"m going to move that layer down a little bit. Also, I'm going to go up and open a file, of Ryan Gosling, and go to open, alright. And I"m going to select him. Notice I cut out the back ground with the eraser tool, and I"m going to past him, in between my two layers. Now I"m going to make the opacity 70%, and I"m going to create two duplicates of this layer. In the middle copy of this layer, I'm going to apply another gaussin blur, and I'm going to make it 12 pixels. And on the bottom layer, I'm going to go to layer, style, and add an outer glow. And lets go with a 40% opacity, and we''ll make the size two hundred and fifty, and click ck. Now you have added a glow, to Ryan Gosling."