Tutorial #01 - Roslin Wallpaper
I got several requests, especially from krisnreine, that I do a tutorial for this wallpaper and it's accompaning icon >>

Anyways, I finally got around to putting one together. It's a little jumble because the original piece was an experiment to begin with so I have tried to piece it together in an order that makes sense, but it is not the original order in which I created the piece.

::Warning! This is very image heavy. Load at your own risk, etc.::

Please Note: Not every step has an accompanying image because things would get way to image heavy that way. Hopefully you still will be able to follow along with what I'm doing.




01. I started with this very prettiful promo pic of Laura Roslin. I expanded the canvas size so that I would have some room to work with. The dimensions of the original were around 1215x800.

02. I copied a texture I got here fromdearest onto a layer created beneath my original image, which I then set to 'hard light' @ 100%.



03. Then I created a layer mask and using a large soft brush, I masked out any unwanted areas. I also made some adjustments to the original texture using the patch tool to eliminate some hard edges.

04. Next is a dark navy (#0a0728) fill layer set to 'exclusion' @ 100%



05. I duplicated the image and set it above the dark navy layer and turned the opacity down to 'hard light' @ 21% and again using a large soft brush I painted out more of the layer mask.

06. On a new layer/layers I created some gradients on the bottom of the image.



07. Next I used this texture of long ago and lost origins and set it to 'soft light' @ 100%



08. added this texture by ohfreckle set to 'soft light' @ 91% and masked out some unwanted areas.

09. created another fill layer, this time a light peachy color (#e9d3b7) set to 'color burn' @ 16%



10. duplicated the original dark navy exclusion layer from step #4 and place it on top and lower it's opacity to 56%

11. adjustment layer > levels.
input 22 1.51 245



12. Now let's go back and create Roslin's sainty halo, which is actually a bunch of gradients and textures between our first and second layers. first let's add some gradients. I largely used radial gradients and a large sort brush. Do several at varying opacities set at 'screen' and 'color dodge' I also masked out some areas where Roslin's face was starting to get overexposed.

13. Now let's add the gold halo. I used this texture again, using either the 'circle shape' tool or the 'elliptical marquee' tool with a 5pt. feather. I masked any areas that overlapped with Roslin's face and set it to 'multiply' @ 24%



14. Duplicate this layer and drag it beneath some of our gradient layers that we created earlier. set it to 'multiply' @ 49%



15. Here I just added a few artistic touches. Some additional 'glow' between Roslin's hair and her halo so they don't blend together too much and some brush marks along the edge of her halo to add emphasis.



16. Almost done! Now I'm just going to create a selective coloring adjustment layer on top or everything to make the colors really pop. The settings I used were as follows>>

reds -16 0 +30
yellows -42 0 +5
whites +19 0 -48
neutrals +19 +27 +13
blacks +27 +16 +23

Then I just added a rather quick and dirty hue/saturation layer to pump up the saturation just a tad more.