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Creating a Contemporary Christmas Wallpaper

By: Christopher Heiss
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
Text: Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size | Print Print Article | Share: Delicious Digg StumbleUpon Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Only Twenty-three days til Christmas. I am so excited. So today I decided to make a new Christmas or for you PC people, A holiday Wallpaper. This one was design for my office desktop so the dimensions are 1680×1050.

To begin open a new document the size of your monitor. Fill the document with black then add a gradient overlay. Set the start color to #2e0000 and the end color to #921c1a.

Make a new layer. Creat a new bubble brush like we made in a previous tutorial. Only set the bubble size to 125 px. Then using the pen tool and make a horizontal line across the center of the document. This will serve as our guide for most of our layer for this piece. Select your bubble brush and set these brush dynamics. Select Shape Dynamics and set the Size Jitter to 100%. Then select Scattering and set the Scatter to 600%. Finally select Other Dynamics and set Opacity Jitter to 50%. Change the foreground color to White. Reselect your pen tool. Then right click and select stroke path. Make sure brush is selected and simulate presure is not hit OK. Next go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur set the radius to 3.0 and hit OK. Set the layer to Soft Light.

Using the same technique as you used to create the large bubbles make a 45×45 pixel star. Make a new layer. Select Shape Dynamics and set the Size Jitter to 100% and set the angle jitter to 100%. Then select Scattering and set the Scatter to 1000% and set the count to 4. Finally select Other Dynamics and set Opacity Jitter to 50%. Change the foreground color to White.Then stroke your path. Next go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur set the radius to 5.0 and hit OK. Set the layer to Overlay.

Make a new layer. Follow the same steps like before on the large round bubbles. Set the size of the bubble brush to 15 pixels. Set the Gaussian Blur to 2.0 and hit OK. then using the move tool move the small bubbles to the bottom edge of the other bubbles. Then hit CTRL+J to duplicate the layer and move the new layer to the top edge. Then hit CTRL+E to merge the layers. Finally set the layer to Soft Light.

Make a new layer. Reselect your round bubble brush and set the size to 175 pixels.Select Shape Dynamics and set the Size Jitter to 100%. Then select Scattering and set the Scatter to 1000%. Finally select Other Dynamics and set Opacity Jitter to 50%. Change the foreground color to White. Reselect your pen tool. Then right click and select stroke path. Make sure brush is selected and simulate presure is not hit OK. Next go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur set the radius to 5.0 and hit OK. Set the layer to Soft Light.

Select your bubble brush and set these brush dynamics. Select Shape Dynamics and set the Size Jitter to 100%. Then select Scattering and set the Scatter to 600%. Finally select Other Dynamics and set Opacity Jitter to 50%. Change the foreground color to White. Reselect your pen tool. Then right click and select stroke path. Make sure brush is selected and simulate presure is not hit OK. Next go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur set the radius to 2.0 and hit OK. Set the layer to Normal.

Highlight all the bubble layers and right click and choose duplicate layers. Then with all the copies selected hit CRTL+E to merge them. Next go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Set the angle to 45&deg and the distance to 452 and hit OK. Now move this layer just above the gradient layer. Finally set the layer fill to 60% and the blend to Color Dodge.

Now we are going to Download two photoshop brush sets. Star brushes by =Moondustdreams and Starry Night 2 Brush Set by ~anodyne-stock. Once you have those select “Star 5″. Make a new layer. Then add a few varied sizes throughout to your liking. Set the layer fill to 50%.

Make a new layer. Then select the “stars03″ brush and set the size to 10 pixels. Select Shape Dynamics and set the Size Jitter to 100%. Then select Scattering and set the Scatter to 1000%. Finally select Other Dynamics and set Opacity Jitter to 50%. Change the foreground color to White. Reselect your pen tool. Then right click and select stroke path. Make sure brush is selected and simulate presure is not hit OK. Next go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur set the radius to 2.0 and hit OK. Set the layer to Normal.

Make a new layer. This time set the star size to 15 pixels and follow the steps like before. Next go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur set the radius to 4.0 and hit OK. Set the layer to Normal.

Make a new layer and set the brush size to 70 pixels. Select Shape Dynamics and set the Size Jitter to 100% and the angle jitter to 100%. Then select Scattering and set the Scatter to 1000%. Finally select Other Dynamics and set Opacity Jitter to 50%. Change the foreground color to White. Reselect your pen tool. Then right click and select stroke path. Make sure brush is selected and simulate presure is not hit OK. Next go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur set the radius to 2.0 and hit OK. Set the layer to Normal.

Now Grab your Text tool and choose “Bickham Script Pro” as your font, set the size to 250px and the tracking to -25. The Type out “Happy Holidays” and then center it in our document.

Now grab “Star 4″ and make a new layer. Then hit [ key to shrink the bursh set the center of the brush over the dot of the i in holiday and add. Set the Layer to Overlay.

Next grabe “Star 9″ and follow the same steps. Set this layer to normal.

Then CTRL+Click the text layer and Shift+CTRL+Click the two star layers to make a selection. Make a new layer under the text layer and fill the selection with #650303. Finally add a 3.0 Gaussian Blur.

This Portion is Totally Optional: Download Asset01(Lady) and/or Asset02(Guy) Open them in photoshop and remove their backgrounds. Then place them in our wallpaper on the right hand side. Scale the Asset you decided to use to your liking. Then CRTL+Click the Asset layer to make a select of your cut out. Next go to Select > Modify > Contract and set it to 2 pixels and hit OK. Lastly go to Select > Modify > Feather and feather the selection 1 – 2 pixels and hit OK.

And Your done. What did you come up with? Send me a link and I will post it here.

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