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Underwater Wallpaper Effects

Tips about how I made the Underwater Wallpaper (see wallpaper).

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 1
Start with blank document. Fill background layer with gradient going from light blue to dark blue.

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 2
In Layer effects, use very large (250px) black Inner Glow, with blend mode = overlay.

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 3
In new layer, select very large brush, set color to white and put a single dot.

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 4
Transform layer (Ctrl-T) to make dot width less and height more.

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 5
Move white dot to top of image (so that only bottom half of it is visible) and set its layer blend mode to Overlay.

 

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 6
Duplicate this layer and make it about 50% smaller.

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 7
Next step is to create nice light rays. Create new document, with square size (width = height), and width is about 200% of your original image width. (if you design wallpaper at 1024×768, create 2000×2000 image). Fill it with any color, and in Layer effects, check Gradient Overlay. Open dropdown list of gradient selection, select Noise family of gradients, and select any noise gradient. Then, set Style to Angle.

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 8
To convert Layer effect to editable image, flatten image (from Layer menu). Desaturate (Ctrl-Shift-U).

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 9
Crop image as shown here. Example: if entire image with gradient is 2000×2000, crop to 1024×768.

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 10
Copy all (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C) and paste into our original image.
 

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 11
Then, simply set the blend mode of this layer to Overlay. Voila!

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 12
Next step is some bubbles. Select 19px hard brush, and set its spacing to very large value (500-700%).

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 13
Also, check Shape Dynamics, and set size jitter and minimum diameter as shown here.

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 14
Make some chaotic btush strokes.

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 15
Set layer blend mode to screen (this will make black dots invisible). Then, use layer effects (such as inner glow, drop shadow, bevel and emboss) to make dots look like bubbles. Registered users can download PSD file from Downloads page of my site, and see what exactly effects are used.

 

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 16
Repeat bubble-making steps 3-4 times.

Underwater 2 - making of - Step 17
…and here is the result!

 Underwater Wallpaper (see wallpaper).

Author: Vlad Gerasimov
URL:    http://www.vladstudio.com

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