Looks Minimal To Me: Finally! Retouched E-Wallpaper Design

This is my final end product. I changed the shade of green of the background, made the FOM building black & white, put in more pictures in the picture frame and made other minor changes. Oh ya! Added drop shadow (luminosity) to the text. Be sure to comment! I will post the tutorial steps later. ZZZ

/SFK

The making of... FOM's Open Day 2010 Wallpaper

Step 1: Creating the background

Select a lime-ish color as your background to establish the main color of the background. Then, select the Eclipse Marquee tool and make a large circle in the center. Once done, create an adjustment layer and brighten up the levels. It should look something like the left side:

Open up an image of the FOM building and use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to select the building. Once selected, move it to another canvas.

Use the eyedropper tool to select the background color from the other canvas and use the Paint Bucket tool to change the background color of your new canvas.

Now to insert some 3D text. First of all you need to type in the text. Create a new layer then merge them together. Next, go to Transform > Perspective and pull on the edges of the text to make it a bit slanting to the side. Now to the layer and press Alt to duplicate the layer. Do this multiple times, to give it a 3D shape. The more you press, the more layers it will create. Now you have 2 layers, one of your text and one of your 3D text. Right click on your text and go to Blending options. Here you can change a lot of options for your text. In the image below I have chosen the Gradient feature.

Now we want to add texture to our background. I downloaded a custom background from http://www.sxc.hu/photo/424649. Then I loaded the brush metal image to use as a texture. I rotated its position by 90 CW. Using the transform tool I flipped it horizontally. Create a layer and change its blending mode to screen. That will make the dark edges go away. After that, merge the layers and copy and paste the background into the existing project. I changed the blending mode to Darken.

To make the background even more interesting, I added a couple of brushes to it. I used some custom brushes which I downloaded from www.brusheezy.com (view image below)

Next up: Inserting MMU logo into composition

First I opened up the MMU logo in a separate file. Select area around logo and copy (Ctrl+C) into canvas. Resize as necessary. Place in manner wanted then set Blending Mode to Screen. Then insert some text at its side for more information about MMU.

Creating a custom photo album:

First to create the boxes, select the Rectangular Marquee Tool and set the feather to 0px. Set the style to Fixed size. Then set the box to a size which you require and click on the canvas. Press Alt + backspace to fill it with any color of your choice. Click Ctrl + A to select entire project and use the Align Tool to center it.

Next, create a new layer. This is for the boxes that we are going to insert inside this photo album. Select your desired size and color. With the box layer selected, align it to the left using the Align Tools above. Create a new layer for a new box. Repeat this process until you have all the boxes that you want. Use different colors to differentiate each box.

In order to make each box hold an image, we must first convert it into a Smart Object first. Right click on the layer > Convert to Smart Object. Perform this on every box that you want to hold images.

To create a drop shadow on the photo album, select the layer and go to Layer Styles > Drop Shadow. You can play around with the settings. Mine were as follows: Angle 90 deg, Uncheck Global Light, Distance 10px, Size 25px, Opacity 50%. Apply the Stroke feature to have some sort of border around it. Again, play around with the settings to suit your liking.

Press Ctrl + click, > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection on each box to give it a layer mask so the image later on will stay in the box.

To insert the image, right click on the layer box and choose Replace Content.

Transform images and make adjustments accordingly.

Previously I had inserted the text, now I want to add an outer glow to it to make it more outstanding.

I then changed the text to Fixedsys, to give it more of a digital feel because this is promoting MMU. I also changed the color of the FOM building to black & white to give a more strong juxtaposition. I also gave the background color a darker shade of green to represent money, because this is the Faculty of Management.