Making of the HD Color Lines Wallpaper in photoshop

Final Results

In this tutorial I am gonna show you how to make a colorfull wallpaper. I will explain how i made V2 – Radial of the wallpapers i uploaded shortly before this post. It’s not a difficult tutorial. This will be the outcome:

Step 1; Set this thing up

Let’s start off with setting up our document. Create a new document. I used the sizes for a HD wallpaper so that’s 2560 pixels (width) by 1440 pixels (height). Resolution stays 72 dpi and color mode RBG Color and 8 bit. Of course you can change this settings for you own unique sizes and sh*t. However, it’s recommended that you change the background contents to Background Color.

Click OK and you’ll get something black.

Step 2; A bunch of lines

Ok, now that we have our background, lets start with the lines. Now we go on with the radial lines. This is very easy but takes a bit of your time, the way I do it. I haven’t checked if there is a less time-absorbing way, but if you got one please comment! Get your line tool, change the weight to 2 pixels and create a white line from the bottom to the top. You should see a line. To change the position just press V (Move Tool), then Ctrl+A (Select All) and then you should notice that in the bar where you can change the settings for your current tool (I’ll call it the Options bar from now on) the buttons on the right have become clickable. Click the second one to align the line to the bottom of your document and the 5th button to align it to the horizontal centers.

Here comes the duplicating part. Press Ctrl_J (Duplicate Layer) 7 times. Now you should have 8 layers with 1 line. click on the second layer containing a line ant press Ctrl+T (Free Transform). At the Options bar you set the reference point location to bottom center and the rotation to 2,5 (or 2.5 depending on you preferences). Apply the transformation. Now go on to the next line-layer and do the same as just before, but now add 2,5. So instead of 2,5 you rotate it with a value of 5,0. Do this again for the 3rd, 4th and 5th layer. Now merge those 5 layers and duplicate them 4 times. Just as before you press Ctrl+T on the second layer containing a line but be sure you change the reference point location to left bottom instead of center bottom.

Rotate it with a value of 12,5 and apply the transformation. Do this again with the 3rd layer, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th layer by constantly adding a value of 12,5 at the rotate part. Now merge them line layers and duplicate the result layer of the lines.

Press Ctrl+T and set the reference point location to left bottom, the width to -100%. It CAN turn out ugly at the center line; be sure to let the center line be 1 center line, not 2. So if you have to just press V (Move Tool) and push the new layer a bit to the probably right to make it look like just one line. Merge the 2 layers containing lines and now you should have something like the last image.

Step 3; Go brushing

Create a new layer, get a soft 2000 pixel (based on the 2560×1440 document size) brush and click 1 time at the center bottom.

Put the layer underneath the lines layer. Now you change the lines layer blending mode to overlay. This is to make the lines look fading away at the tops.

Now create a new layer and get a soft 1000 pixel (based on the 2560×1440 document size) brush and make a line from the previous brush down at the center bottom to the top.

Duplicate the layer 4 times. Transform the first duplicated layer by pressing Ctrl+T. Set the reference point location to center bottom and the rotate to 45. Do it again for the other layer but use there the rotate values 90, -45 and -90. You’ll think this sucks but it is just to help us with the gradient maps in the following step. TIP: it’s handy when you put the 5 layers in order of left to right for the following step.

Step 4; Adding them colors

It’s time for the colors. First click the eyes of the 5 layers you just created with the 1000 pixel brushes to make them dissapear. Insert a gradient map. Take the black to white gradient and add a color (in the gradient) at 50%. Change the middle color to red (#FF0000).

As you can see on the image above, it’s not correct that some parts arent red. I know, just don’t bother about that ‘couse I will show you how i did it. Ctrl+Click on the first brushed layer from the 5. Press Ctrl+Shift+I (Inverse Selection) and delete that on the red gradient mask.

Do this 4 more times for the other brushed soft “lines”. Use altern colors. I used the following: 1st #FF0000 2nd #FFFF00 3rd #00FF00 4th #00FFFF and 5th #FF00FF.

You should get something like the following.

Well, for now then. REMEMBER: you can alway try alternative lines, colors, add brushes. That’s what makes your own made wallpaper really own made!