The outcome of this tutorial:

Or if you think the red wings are distracting, here’s a version of the Arctic Monkeys Wallpaper without the red grunge wings:

We’ve resized the original images all troughout the tutorial as to not screw up the layout. You can click the images for a full sized version.

1. Start by opening a new canvas ( wallpaper sized prefered). We picked 1280 x 1024. Fill it with black ( #000000 )

2. Now get your stock image, below one is the one we’re using. If you want to use a different stock image but want to have the same effect, make sure you Desaturate the image first. To do this, go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate, or press SHIFT + CTLR + U.

Our Arctic Monkeys stock image (Resized):

3. Place it in the middle of the canvas (Make sure you keep a backup of this layer hidden underneath the rest of your layers, this will come in handy in case you make any mistakes.)

4. We used their logo from the Arctic Monkeys website.(Remember you can use any text you like).Cut out any parts you dont need. It doesn’t matter if there is still some white space left around the text, we will fix this in the next few steps.

5. We would like the text to be white. So make sure your text is desaturated (or simply black and white like ours) and select Image > Adjustments > Invert (or press CTRL + I):

Your text shold now look like this. Notice that we still have the black section around the text, we will fix this by simply changing the blending mode in the next step.

6. Select your text layer, and set its blending mode to Lighten:

This will blend the black background:

7. We’re now going to blend our stock into the background. Create a new layer, and take a white splatter brush. Brush around the right of your stock with a white color:

8. Create a new layer (make a habit of creating a new layer everytime you brush, this will give you the option to modify it more easily afterwards) and select a big brush from the set we provided above. Here’s where your creativity should come in, start brushing, and erase parts that you don’t like. Keep switching the brushes to get cool effects. The following steps are all brushing to cover and blend the stock:

9. Again create a new layer and now use black brushes, brush the bottom part blend in the stock with our current canvas. Use black to hide away parts you don’t want to be displayed. Zoom into the canvas, and erase any brushing you made over the main character in the middle to make him stand out:

10. Take a black small splatter brush and brush the left side over the far left guy.

11. Now get a white brush and brush over the top. Try switching a lot between different brushes, so people won’t be able to identify what brush you used, but will still be able to see the brush styles.

12. Brush the top some more until you are satisfied. Don’t worry if you brush over our Arctic Monkeys characters, we’re going to fix this in the next step. Notice we did most of the brushing on the right side, this was intentional so we can mirror it later:

13. In case you accidentally brushed over the characters, we will now fix it. If you made a backup of your stock like we mentionned in step 3, duplicate this and move it to the top. Erase any section that you want to be more visible.

14. We’re going to make the Arctic Monkeys text stand out a little more. Make a layer underneath the text layer, and brush with a black brush under the text to make the logo more visible:

15. We took a huge splatter brush (around size 1200) and brushed under the very first brush layer.

After you’ve done it should look like the image below. Notice how it made the black and white brushing on right side of the stock a little more viewable. Here’s an animation to show the brushing:

16. We’re going to detail the left side of the image now. Create a new layer on top, and go to Image > Apply Image. Then, select Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontally, it shold now look like this:

17. Set this flipped layers blending mode to Lighten, and erase anything that covers the Arctic Monkeys characters and the text.

18. If there are any areas that look a little rigged, create a new layer and tap with a large brush a few times to get a better flow in the image:

19. We’re nearly done brushing our image, add your last pieces of brushing before we’re going to make the finnishing touches:

20. We’re going to sharpen our image. Create a new layer, and select Image > Apply Image, and either sharpen by going to Filter > Sharpen >Sharpen, or by doing it manually with the sharpen tool. The sharpen tool is probably the best method, as you can select which areas you’d like to sharpen and which sections to leave untouched:

21. Final finnishing touches, we grabbed a splatter brush which looks like paint dripping down. We tapped this in the left side of the image. This adds some variation and gets rid of the bad symmetry in the image.

22. To edit the lighting a little, we’ve added a Curves Adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjutsment Layer > Curves). Modify the settings slightly until you’re satisfied. Here’s the setting we’ve used:

Our result at this point:

Adding Wings

We’ve added wings to the frontman in the stock, you will need Grungy Wing Brushes.

23. Select a wing brush that you like, and set the color to red (or whatever color you prefer). Change the size of the brush to match the stock, and tap once to create a wing. Do not make the second wing yet, we will duplicate the first one after adding some depth into the wing:

24. Now we will shade the wing to look more realistic, a 3D look. Select the Burn or Dodge tool, and start editing your wing. Our result (more detail in the next step) :

Zoom into the wing, burn the middle part of the wing with burn tool, and set the midtones with exposure around 30%. Then grab your dodge tool which is set to highlights at 10-20% ratio and dodge the upper part of the wing and the left ends of the feathers, (all of this is done with a soft brush, change the size while doing so, dodge first with a 30 sized soft brush and the lower it to around 10 and give the tiny details

Here are some close ups of the wing

25. Select the wing layer, and right click > Duplicate Layer. Now select Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontally, and move it to the other side of the main Arctic Monkeys character:

This brings us to our final result, we hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions, feel free to ask these in the comments.

• Creating and enhancing the Explosion
• Adding Lighting into the canvas
• Fixing / Removing errors or bad looking sections

We will start with a Resistance 2 wallpaper found on Gamewallpapers. I’ve added a few animated .GIF files to illustrate some steps.

Please do not copy or redistribute this tutorial whatsoever.

The outcome of this tutorial:

This is the wallpaper (resized to 65%) that we will be starting with. Notice how this wallpaper already has a bright light source:

Creating and enhancing an explosion:

1. First, select your brush tool, and grab a soft brush. We’re going to use the orange color #F67228 to create the base of the explosion.

2. Start brushing all around the area where you would like the explosion to happen. This looks best when it’s around a bright light source. Don’t worry if you brush over any of the characters on the foreground or other details, we will repair this later.

3. Create a new Layer. Grab a lighter orange color, we used #FFC06E, to brush inside of the base explosion we’ve created in step 2. Make sure you brushing makes sense, brush outwards into the direction of the explosion.

4. Create another new layer. Now use a white brush with a smaller size to brush near the core of your explosion. Once again, brush outwards out of the explosion:

5. create a new layer, grab a darker color orange, and brush a little at the end of the flames. The color we’ve used was #DE5B1F”

6. We’re going to blend these flames into eachother using the smudge tool and a chalk brush. I’ve used the default Photoshop brush set, so you should normallyhave these Chalk brushes. Select the Smudge Tool:

Then click onto the brushes, and select a Chalk Brush (or atleast I believe it’s a chalk brush):

7. Create a new layer, and Apply the image (Image > Apply Image). Now, start smudging the canvas to create an exploding effect. Try using the directions of an explosion like I’ve done:

Our result of the smudging (don’t worry if you still see all of the brushing at this point, we’re going to fix this in the following steps):

8. Now grab the Clone Stamp Tool,

and hold ALT to define a source point. Select a point in the center if your lightsource with some detail:

9. Now start tapping a few times on top of the flames. Define a new source point every so often to create some different detail:

The outcome of our clone stamp tooling at this point:

10. Grab the Smudge tool again with the same Chalk brush, and start smudging into the flames:

our outcome:

11. Now, make a new layer, and apply the image (Image > Apply Image). Set this layers blending mode to Multiply, and reduce the opacity to reduce its strength slightly. We’ve set it to 54%:

Outcome of setting the layer to multiply:

12. We’re going to use Layer Masks to only show a small section of the Multiply layer (If you want a more detailed explanation on layer masks, check out this tutorial). While you have the multiply layer selected, go to Layer > Layer Mask > and select Hide All.

13. Click on th elayer mask in your layer panel, and use a white brush to brush slightly into the explosion. This will reveal the layer we’ve just hidden:

Shown below is the selection of the parts where we’ve brushed to enhance the explosions color:

14. We’re going to fix the section inside the explosion which looks kind of odd at this point. Smudging this a little will fix this. Here’s an animation to illustrate what we’ve changed:

15. Time to fix the characters on the foreground that we’ve brushed over. Duplicate the original image ( Right Click > Duplicate Layer) and move this on top:

16. Now create another layer mask like we did in step 12, and hide everything. Then with a small white brush, brush into the section that you would like to repair. Below is an image showing the selection of the area that we fixed:

Result of the characters on the foreground fixed:

Adding Lighting

17. We will be adding extra lighting to enhance the realistic feel. Zoom in, and grab a small white brush. Brush slightly across the edges of our characters where lighting would seem logical:

18. Now set this layers blending mode to Soft Light or Overlay depending on how strong you want the lighting to be. Reduce the opacity a little if it looks too strong. We’ve kept the opacity at 100% and used blending mode Overlay:

19. We’re going to blur the outlines of the explosion. Create a new layer, and apply the image (Image > Apply Image) and go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur, and set the angle to 0. Set the distance to about 15 to 25. Our settings:

Result of this motion blur:

20. Now add a layer mask (Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All), and brush a little around the edges of our flames to unhide some of the blurred parts.

The result of our motion blur layer:

21. Grab a large brush, and brush with a dark color around our focal point. This is to add some extra lighting around the explosion:

22. Set this layers Opacity to about 30%, our result after fixing the lighting:

Fixing / Removing details

We’re going to remove the character near the explosion, because it just doesn’t make sense for him to be there. Here’s an animation to illustrate what we’re going to do be doing in the following steps:

23. Zoom into the canvas, and hold alt to define a point. Then, start brushing over the character:

Keep brushing and defining new areas to brush trough.

After removing the character from the canvas, it looks kind of odd.

24. Brush a little on top of the fire and in the air, and smudge it slightly to fix the background:

Finnishing Touches

25. We’re going to add the final finnishing touches. Brush over areas with a soft white brush, and set its blending mode to Overlay. You can reduce the opacity a little if it appears too strong.

The result after changing the blending mode an opacity:

26. Apply the image on a new layer, and sharpen either with the sharpen tool, or Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen. This gives us our final result:

We hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial. Premium members will be able to download the PSD of this file and the stock in the premium member section. Enjoy!

I’m going to start with this wallpaper from gamewallpapers.com:

Creating Depth with Layer Masks:

The most common and easy way to create depth is by blurring. There’s several ways you can do this. If for example we would like to focus on our main character in this wallpaper, these techniques can be used:

1. Layer Masks. Duplicate your wallpaper, and go to “Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All…”. This will create a white image next to your layer on the layer window:

adding the layer mask:

the layer mask shown at our layer window:

2. Now we have to select our actual wallpaper instead of the layer mask, and blur this layer. To do this, click on your wallpaper in the layer window, and go to Filter > Blur… Now there’s several blur options we can try. For this example, I’m going to use Gaussian Blur. The reason for this is because its the easiest effect to work with and makes the most sense for our wallpaper. Set your Gaussian Blur between 1.5 and 3 pixels depending on your wallpaper:

Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur… and pick your settings:

My result after blurring:

3. Now we have to mask the background, but have our character stand out in the foreground. Select the layer mask in your layer window, and pick your brush. You will see that your brush will automaticly take on two colors, black and white. If you brush black on the layer mask, the layer will dissapear where you’ve brushed. For example, I will make a straight line in the middle:

After brushing 2 black lines randomly onto the canvas:

You can see our blurred layer dissapear. We’re going to use this technique to show our character, but blur the background. If you’ve experimented with the layer mask, undo your moves, or otherwise select all and fill it with white.

4. Grab your brush, and select a hard round brush. With a black color, brush on top of your character

Now remember, if you miss your characters outline and go over it, don’t worry about it. Just continue brushing. This is the advantage of using a layer mask over erasing, when you’re done you can simple grab a white brush and show parts that you’ve missed!

5. As you can see, I now have the main outline of our character. However, this looks a bit sketchy and needs fixing. Zoom into areas where you’ve made mistakes, and brush with a white color:

After brushing with a white brush:

Some brushing tips to improve your result:

• When you’re brushing, make sure you don’t keep your mousebutton held in for too long. If you go over large areas without releasing your mouse button every so often and you make a mistake, you cannot undo your action (CTRL + Z) because the entire area you just brushed will be reset. Try releasing your mouse button now and then so you can reset every action or mistake you make.
• Don’t worry if you’re not very accurate, most people won’t notice if you blur the edges a bit.
• You can change the opacity of your brushing in the toolbar window on top if you’re having trouble with hair or other edges.
• You can copy/paste your layer mask to see your brushing. To do this, simply press CTRL + A to select all, CTRL + C to copy, and CTRL + V to paste.

My layer mask pasted onto a new layer before fixing. This is a good method to check spots that you’ve skipped or missed:

My result after fixing the edges:

Now as you can see, we created a focal point into our image by adding depth to the background. However we’re not done yet, we can add some more effects to it. Another method to add depth is to add different lighting:

Adding Lighting to create depth:

The best way to add depth with lighting onto your image is by using adjustment layers. The easiest way would be a Levels layer. Another advantage of using layer masks is that we can reuse it with our adjustment layer!

Possible result by using a levels layer:

6. First, create a levels adjustment layer. You can do this by going to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels… (or pressing the black and white circle on your layer window and selecting Levels). You will see another layer mask on the layer window next to the levels. We’re going to copy the one we used for the blurring on this new layer mask. Here’s how it goes:

When you’ve made a new levels layer, you will see this window appear. If you play around with its settings, the colors will change. I found that the best method to darken while maintaining color is to use the grey handle and move it to the right:

You will see your entire canvas darken or lighten depending on the levels you’ve changed. Select the layer mask in your layer window. You can now either brush over the parts that you want to remain in the previous lighting, or you can copy/paste the layer mask we used with the bluring. CTRL + Click on the layer mask, press CTRL + SHIFT + I (or Selection > Inverse Selection…) and fill this with black:

Inverse the selection, and fill this section with black on your layer mask:

our result:

Combining Lighting and Blurring

These are just a few out of many techniques you can use to add depth. You can experiment by combining the previous two steps, adding the blurring and lighting together. Also try out different types of blurring, like Lens Blur, Motion Blur, Smart Blur, Radial Blur, Smart Blur, or many other filters. I added the two effects together into this image:

As you can see, we’ve really put this character into the spotlight! I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial. Feel free to comment or make any suggestions.