I am by no means a wallpaper making expert, I still feel like a complete amateur compared to some of the artists out there but I do get a lot of questions on how to create wallpapers.  I will try and provide some  tips that I’ve learned over the past few years that will hopefully be of some help to beginners. These tips are only for Paint Shop Pro 7.0 (PSP). 

QUICK TIPS

Make sure your Layer Palette, Tool Palette AND Tool Options Palette are always open – Go to View>Toolbars and check Layer Palette, Tool Palette and Tool Options Palette. They will be open every time you use PSP.

Before you begin working with an image, make sure that it is promoted to a layer - in the Layer Palette right click the background image and select promote to layer.

Always save your work repeatedly.  I’ve had PSP shut down on me for no reason right in the middle of a wallpaper many times.

If you are going to try something on your art that you’re not sure is going to come out right, just duplicate it and experiment on the copy. Go up to Window>Duplicate. This will copy your entire piece. Also, you can always use the undo option if you don’t like an effect you’ve applied. Click it as many times as you need to.

Just like with any program there are keyboard short cuts you can use. Here are a few of the ones I use the most:

shift+B – Brightness/Contrast

shift+D – Duplicate window (entire piece copied)

shift+S – Resize image

control+N – New Image

control+S – Save

F12 – Save As

Control+F12 – Save Copy As

Also, there are many tool bar buttons you can add or subject depending on which you use the most. Just go to View>Toolbars and choose the ones you want to customize. 

PICTURE QUALITY

One of the most important things in making your wallpapers visually pleasing is the quality of the pictures you are using.  It would be nice to be able to always use high quality photos but a lot of the time that’s not possible. To make images cleaner I use different filters.  The one I use the most is Aetherize which is part of the Flaming Pear plug-in. It’s a little on the expensive side ($50 for the Designer Sextet bundle which includes 6 filters) but I pretty much use this filter on every picture I use. It really brightens them up and smoothes out the flaws. However, if you can’t afford something like this right now there is a trick for brightening up and smoothing out pictures that just requires the basic tools in Paint Shop Pro.

1)      Open up your image in PSP.

2)      Duplicate it. You can either go to Layers and click duplicate or go up to your Layer Palette, on the left hand side, right click on the background picture and select duplicate.

3)      Make sure the top layer is selected (it will be highlighted in the Layer Palette). Go to Effects>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius at 5.00 and click ok.

4)      Go up to the Layer Palette and on the right hand side it will say 100 and Normal. Click the arrow next to Normal which is the layer blend mode and it will drop down a bunch of options. Select Overlay.

5)      Select your bottom layer in the Layer Palette. Brighten the layer by going to Colors>Adjust>Brightness/Contrast. You can play around with the brightness and contrast but I usually always keep my contrast set at 15 and for my particular picture I used a brightness of 50.

6)      Now if the picture looks a little orange (which mine does) go back up to the Layer Palette and on the left hand side where it says 100, that’s the layer’s opacity. You can change this by moving the bar. Just click right on it like your selecting it and you will see how it moves.  I made the opacity 65%.  Merge the layers by going to Layers>Merge>Merge All (Flatten). It still looks a little too orange for my taste so I changed the color a bit. You can do this several ways but the one I always try first is to go to Effects>Enhance Photo>Automatic Color Balance. You can play with the strength and temperature until you’re satisfied but I used strength of 75 and temp of 9300. Just make sure it doesn’t look too blue.

7)      Now just to give it a sharper look smoother look I went to Effects>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask and set the Radius at 2.00, Strength at 100 and Clipping at 5.

Here are the before and after pictures I used. This effect makes the image much brighter and a lot prettier to use.

And just by comparison I used the Aetherize filter on the one on the left below and the above method on the one on the right. They're very similar except the aetherize gives it a little more glowy look. I have had some problems when using the above method on darker images. You just need to play with the brightness/contrast, the colors and the opacity levels.

CUTTING OUT IMAGES

One of the biggest things you want to avoid when cutting out an image is jagged edges on the person or object that was cut out. What I use the most is the Eraser tool (on the Tool Palette). To erase large areas I use a large size eraser with the opacity set at 100. When I get close to the edges, I use a smaller eraser (30-50) and lower the opacity to 50% or less to smooth out the edges. You can change these settings in the Tool Options Palette. You can also use the Smudge or Soften tools to smooth out the edges. To use those, select the Retouch tool (the white hand) and go up to the Tools Option Palette. Go to the drop down menu at the bottom and select smudge or smooth. You will need to play around with the size and opacity to get the effect you want. Make sure the opacity isn’t set too high when using the smudge tool or your image will look too blurred. Another option for cutting images is the Freehand tool (the yellow lasso).  You can select which option to use in the Tool Options Palette. I usually use Point to Point and change the feather setting to 5 or lower, depending on what I’m cutting out.  Again makes sure the edges are smooth by using the eraser, smudge or smooth tools.

RESIZING IMAGES

The easiest way to resize an image is to go up to Image>Resize. Make sure Smart Resize is selected in Resize Type, Resize all layers is checked and Maintain aspect ratio is set at 1 to 1. I usually enter in the pixel size I want. If the picture I’m using is going to be the full height of the wallpaper I’ll just enter 768 under height. It doesn’t matter what the width is unless you need a specific width. Or if you’re just trying to resize a picture you can enter in a percent either greater or smaller than 100.  

Also when using screencaps from DVDs, a lot of times they tend to be distorted. Make sure the faces don’t look elongated or abnormal. If they do, use the Deformation tool (on the Tool Palette) to correct it. Promote your image to a layer and select the deformation tool. Your image will have the deformation guides and handles on it. I usually go up from the bottom so move your cursor to the bottom of the image over the bottom handle until it turns into a two-sided arrow. Drag the picture up until you get the desired effect. If you look in the bottom left hand corner you will see the new size of your image as you are dragging it.  That is helpful if you are doing several screencaps that need to be the same size.  Be careful though, since your image is a layer, you can move it right out of the layer it’s on. If that happens, just click undo. To apply the deformation click the apply button on the Tool Option Palette. You will then need to cut out the newly resized image using the Cropper tool (on the Tool Palette). Select the cropper tool and place the cursor over the image at a corner of the area you want to keep.  Press the left mouse button and drag. When the rectangle encloses the area you want to keep, release the mouse button. To crop the image select crop image from the Tool Options Palette or double click the image. If you cut out more than you wanted too, click undo and start over. You can see the differences in the images below. The original on the top is much more elongated. It can be very distracting to see distorted faces in your art work.

COLOR MATCHING

When making wallpapers or collages that involve putting two or more images together, make sure all the colors match. A person with a really yellow skin coloring is going to look bad next to a person with a really red coloring. Use the settings like Automatic Color Balance, Brightness/ Contrast, Red/Green/Blue levels or Hue/Saturation/Lightness, etc to help even out your skin tones and overall color. You just need to play around with all these options under Colors to get the desired effect.

MONITOR VARIATION

Consider what your art may look like on other monitors. The monitor I use at home is a very good monitor and all my wallpapers usually look great on it. However, the monitor I have at work isn’t so good and tends to run dark. Before I put up any of my wallpapers I view them on my work monitor and 99% of the time I have to make some adjustments. You don’t want your art looking too dark or too light to other viewers.