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walkthrough: light bursting wallpaper
the promised walkthrough for this wall
1152x864 | 1024x768 | 800x600
I started with a 1152x864 sized empty Photoshop document and filled it with a black and white gradient.
then I duplicated this layer and used Filter - Render - Difference Clouds several times on it (I think about four to six works best here). I set this layer to Soft Light.
I added this picture of Ryan Reynolds (yeah, keep making fun of me, I still think he's hot) that subtle__sarcasm kindly linked me to to distract me...
as you can see I placed it on the upper right resized it and made a layer mask to erase some of the background of the pic. I didn't work very detailed as you can see. As I knew I was going for the overlighted dark/light thing it wasn't necessary.
I duplicated the Ryan layer twice.
The original one, I set on blending mode Hardlight,
the first copy on Screen and lowered the opacity to 50%,
and the second copy was desaturated, set on Softlight with an opacity of 30%.
the transition from the pic to the background on the bottom looked weird and I needed the pic a bit darker so that it stood out more against the lighting effects to come. Therefore I painted a gray blurb (roughly in the size of Ryan) on a new layer right under the Ryan layers but on top of the cloudy background layer, set it on multiply and applied a Filter - Blur - Radial Blur: Zoom of 100% on it.
so far my Layer palette looked like this
I started with the lighting effects for the wall. Underneath the Ryan layers but on top of the gray blurb layer I added a new layer and painted with a 3 pt hard round brush tip some white light bursts, well sort of, they will look more like light bursts as soon as the filters are applied on *g*
I applied Filter - Distort - Wave with the Default settings.
Then I repeated this filter (ctrl+F) but this time I faded it (ctrl+shift+F) with an opacity of 50 % and the blending mode Screen.
I repeated this once more (Filter and Fading).
then I blurred the layer.
First with a Filter - Blur - Radial Blur: Zoom of 100%, the center of the blur somewhere to the right.
after that with a Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur of a 2 pt Radius.
Finally I lowered the opacity of this layer to 40%
with the same technique but in black I shaded some parts towards the bottom of the pic on a new layer. but this time I didn't lower the opacity in the end and I blurred it a bit more.
and more light bursting. on a new layer of course (still underneath the Ryan layers). and back at white again.
a slightly different technique though...
I used the Spatter 59 pt default brush tip and enlargened it to 130 pt. I lowered the opacity of the brush to 50 % and painted the light burst.
again my beloved Radial blur filter, this time Zoom at 50%.
and finally the Filter - Distort - Ripple. twice.
I decided to go for a little bit of kitsch and added stardust. yup. on a new layer I painted some random white dots. as I'm lazy as hell I only adjusted a normal brush tip to do the work for me. I chose the Soft Round 13 pt tip and changed the settings in the Brushes palette a bit.
the settings I tend to use for things like that:
Brush Tip - Spacing: around 150-250%
Shape Dynamics - Size Jitter: between 70-100%
Scattering - Scatter: Both axes 500-1000%
after I painted the stardust I used a - guess what - Radial Blur: Zoom at 50% and faded the effect to 30% opacity.
I made the Ryan layers visible again and decided that the white light bursts were definitely too high, so I moved them more to the bottom of the pic.
I duplicated the first Ryan layer (the one on Hardlight mode). as I was going for a little less red here, I used the Hue/saturation (ctrl+U) on the very first Ryan layer and changed the Hue to +133. then I applied the layer mask (right click on the layer mask in the layer palette), so that the following Radial Blur: Zoom at 100 % wasn't cut off by the mask. finally I lowered the opacity of this layer to 30%.
and that's what the Layers Palette looks like at this step
I duplicated the rippled light burst layer and moved it on top of all layers. then I transformed it (ctrl+T) until I was satisfied with the shape of the burst.
I duplicated the very first background layer (the b/w gradient) and moved it on top of all the other layers, set it on Multiply and erased the middle part of the layer with a layer mask.
I made an adjustment layer (Hue/Saturation) and lowered the Saturation to -60.
on top of all I created another b/w gradient (diagonal, left upper corner to lower right corner) and set it to Soft Light.
I've added another Adjustment Layer, this time Color Balance with these settings:
Midtones: +18, -6, +24
Highlights: 0, -4, -94
and another Color Balance Adjustment Layer.
Midtones: +100, +29, +58
Highlights: 0, 0, -82
and another one, but Hue/Saturation again: with the Hue set to -24
the last step was (and I totally skip the boring text part here...):
I made a new layer on top of all and merge-copy-pasted (ctrl+shift+alt+E) everything.
I applied the Filter - Sharpen - Sharpen and faded it to 50% with Multiply mode.
I used the Sharpen filter again and faded it to 40% with Screen mode.
tada. finished.
ps: you can download the psd here. it's zipped and around 8 MB big.
as this took longer than expected to write down, feedback would be very appreciated :)
1152x864 | 1024x768 | 800x600
I started with a 1152x864 sized empty Photoshop document and filled it with a black and white gradient.
then I duplicated this layer and used Filter - Render - Difference Clouds several times on it (I think about four to six works best here). I set this layer to Soft Light.
I added this picture of Ryan Reynolds (yeah, keep making fun of me, I still think he's hot) that subtle__sarcasm kindly linked me to to distract me...
as you can see I placed it on the upper right resized it and made a layer mask to erase some of the background of the pic. I didn't work very detailed as you can see. As I knew I was going for the overlighted dark/light thing it wasn't necessary.
I duplicated the Ryan layer twice.
The original one, I set on blending mode Hardlight,
the first copy on Screen and lowered the opacity to 50%,
and the second copy was desaturated, set on Softlight with an opacity of 30%.
the transition from the pic to the background on the bottom looked weird and I needed the pic a bit darker so that it stood out more against the lighting effects to come. Therefore I painted a gray blurb (roughly in the size of Ryan) on a new layer right under the Ryan layers but on top of the cloudy background layer, set it on multiply and applied a Filter - Blur - Radial Blur: Zoom of 100% on it.
so far my Layer palette looked like this
I started with the lighting effects for the wall. Underneath the Ryan layers but on top of the gray blurb layer I added a new layer and painted with a 3 pt hard round brush tip some white light bursts, well sort of, they will look more like light bursts as soon as the filters are applied on *g*
I applied Filter - Distort - Wave with the Default settings.
Then I repeated this filter (ctrl+F) but this time I faded it (ctrl+shift+F) with an opacity of 50 % and the blending mode Screen.
I repeated this once more (Filter and Fading).
then I blurred the layer.
First with a Filter - Blur - Radial Blur: Zoom of 100%, the center of the blur somewhere to the right.
after that with a Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur of a 2 pt Radius.
Finally I lowered the opacity of this layer to 40%
with the same technique but in black I shaded some parts towards the bottom of the pic on a new layer. but this time I didn't lower the opacity in the end and I blurred it a bit more.
and more light bursting. on a new layer of course (still underneath the Ryan layers). and back at white again.
a slightly different technique though...
I used the Spatter 59 pt default brush tip and enlargened it to 130 pt. I lowered the opacity of the brush to 50 % and painted the light burst.
again my beloved Radial blur filter, this time Zoom at 50%.
and finally the Filter - Distort - Ripple. twice.
I decided to go for a little bit of kitsch and added stardust. yup. on a new layer I painted some random white dots. as I'm lazy as hell I only adjusted a normal brush tip to do the work for me. I chose the Soft Round 13 pt tip and changed the settings in the Brushes palette a bit.
the settings I tend to use for things like that:
Brush Tip - Spacing: around 150-250%
Shape Dynamics - Size Jitter: between 70-100%
Scattering - Scatter: Both axes 500-1000%
after I painted the stardust I used a - guess what - Radial Blur: Zoom at 50% and faded the effect to 30% opacity.
I made the Ryan layers visible again and decided that the white light bursts were definitely too high, so I moved them more to the bottom of the pic.
I duplicated the first Ryan layer (the one on Hardlight mode). as I was going for a little less red here, I used the Hue/saturation (ctrl+U) on the very first Ryan layer and changed the Hue to +133. then I applied the layer mask (right click on the layer mask in the layer palette), so that the following Radial Blur: Zoom at 100 % wasn't cut off by the mask. finally I lowered the opacity of this layer to 30%.
and that's what the Layers Palette looks like at this step
I duplicated the rippled light burst layer and moved it on top of all layers. then I transformed it (ctrl+T) until I was satisfied with the shape of the burst.
I duplicated the very first background layer (the b/w gradient) and moved it on top of all the other layers, set it on Multiply and erased the middle part of the layer with a layer mask.
I made an adjustment layer (Hue/Saturation) and lowered the Saturation to -60.
on top of all I created another b/w gradient (diagonal, left upper corner to lower right corner) and set it to Soft Light.
I've added another Adjustment Layer, this time Color Balance with these settings:
Midtones: +18, -6, +24
Highlights: 0, -4, -94
and another Color Balance Adjustment Layer.
Midtones: +100, +29, +58
Highlights: 0, 0, -82
and another one, but Hue/Saturation again: with the Hue set to -24
the last step was (and I totally skip the boring text part here...):
I made a new layer on top of all and merge-copy-pasted (ctrl+shift+alt+E) everything.
I applied the Filter - Sharpen - Sharpen and faded it to 50% with Multiply mode.
I used the Sharpen filter again and faded it to 40% with Screen mode.
tada. finished.
ps: you can download the psd here. it's zipped and around 8 MB big.
as this took longer than expected to write down, feedback would be very appreciated :)