This tutorial is extremely image intensive. I tried to go step by step for beginners but please read my Graphic Tips first so this will make more sense. Some basic knowledge of PSP would be helpful. You can download a trial version of Paint Shop Pro right here but it will be PSP 9 which is similar but there will be differences from the version I am using. Remember to have your Layer Palette and Tool Options Palette open at all times. And don't forget, you can always click undo as many times as you need to if you don't like how it's turning out. And always, always save your work repeatedly. Make sure you are saving it as a Paint Shop Pro Image. Go to File>Save As and choose Paint Shop Pro Image from the drop down arrow where it says Save as type. Now let's get started.

First I choose the pictures I want to use. Sometimes it changes, I’ll add more or end up not using as many. Try to use pictures with similar color tones, like pictures from the same photo shoot or screencaps all from the same scene. This one will be easy since I’m only using 2 pictures. This one and this one of Gerard Butler from GerardButler.Net.

Next I choose a texture. I ALWAYS use textures. You can hide a lot with textures and they give your art more depth. Sometimes I make my own but most of the time I use textures from all of the wonderful graphic arts sites out there. A list of my resources for these can be found in the links section. For this particular wallpaper I used this background from The Magic Box.

I offer wallpapers in 2 sizes: 800x600 and 1024x768. But I always make the wallpaper in 1024x768 and resize to 800x600.  You don’t lose as much quality downsizing as you do upsizing. So since this back ground is 800x600, I just resize it by pressing Shift+S. Where is says pixel size type 1024 in width. As long as Maintain aspect ratio (at the bottom) is checked it will automatically fill in the height to 768.

Before we add the pictures to the background, I want to clean them up a bit and make them brighter. I almost always duplicate all pictures and set them to screen. Choose the filmography2 picture just by clicking anywhere on it and go up to your Layer Palette, right click and choose Duplicate. 

Go all the way to the right (still in the layer palette) and change the Layer Blend Mode to screen by clicking on that little arrow next to where it says Normal. 

Now the picture is a little too bright so just lower the opacity by clicking on the gray area where is says 100 until it looks right. I lowered it to about 56%. 

Then merge the image (Layers>Merge>Merge All (Flatten)). 

Before we brighten the next Gerry picture we need to get rid of all the text around him. So choose your Crop tool on the Tool Palette and cut him out. 

Make sure you don’t get any of the white but get as much of the picture as possible. Repeat the steps above for brightening the picture.

Next we resize the pictures so they fit how we want on the background. For the filmography2 picture, I didn’t do any resizing even though its height is a lot bigger than 768, it’s about the size I want so we leave that one alone. The filmography1 picture however needs to be resized. But first I want to crap it a little closer to his head. So use the crop tool again and crop off the top of the picture, closer to Gerry’s head. Now we need to resize so it will fit on the background. Press Shift+S and type 768 in height since that is the height of the background. The width doesn’t matter.

Now it’s time to put the pictures on the background. Click on the filmography2 picture at the top where it says the name of the picture, right click and choose Copy. 

Then go over to your background and click on the top where is says the name, right click and choose Paste As New Layer. 

Use the mover tool to bring the picture down so the top of it is in line with the top of the background and move it over to the right. 

Go to the filmography1 picture and repeat the steps for copying and pasting it into the background. Now this picture will fix exactly in the background height wise so make sure it’s lined up at the top and the bottom. Next we are going to set both pictures to screen by changing the Layer Blend Mode like we did on the original pictures.

Now it’s time to start blending the pictures together and with the background. Choose the Eraser tool on the Tool Palette and then go up to the Tool Options to change the size and opacity. 

You can change the size or opacity according to the size of the pictures you are working with. Since these pictures are pretty big, I go with a bigger sized eraser but I usually keep the opacity pretty low to make the blending softer. Now you just need to find the edge of the picture on the right and just start erasing. If you’re having a hard time finding the edge, you can change the layer blend mode back to normal until you erase what you need of the edge. Don’t erase too much because you want the two pictures to overlap. After you do the right one, do the same to the left.

Now since the color on the background was off to the left, it kind of looks uneven so I made a few adjustments to the background. You might not need to do this with other backgrounds, it’s just a personal preference or whatever you think looks right for the blend. Go up to the Layer Palette and choose the background by clicking on it. 

Next go over to your Tool Palette and choose the Clone Brush. 

Go up to the Tool Options to change the size and opacity just like we did with the eraser. 

When I’m working with something as big as this background I usually set the brush at a pretty big size. Use the Clone tool by right clicking on the background and then left clicking to change what you want on it. It's basically copying wherever you right click. I hid the 2 Gerry pictures so you can see what I did to the background. I just wanted to make the picture on the left less bright and the one on the right more bright and since the pictures are screened, you can do that by changing what the background looks like. Here are the before and after background pictures:

Now I want to touch up the pictures a bit more. You can do this before you even start to put the wallpaper together but I usually like to wait until the end since sometimes the texture is enough of an enhancement for the pictures. But I think these need some more work so click on the right picture with the Mover tool and then go up to Effects>Noise>Edge Preserve Smoothing and set it at 2. 

Next go up to Effects>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Set the Radius at 2.00, Strength at 50 and the Clipping at 5. 

Do the same to the picture on the left.

I’m not quite happy with the color so sometimes I use filters such as Harry’s Filters but this time I just played around with the layer blend modes and the natural color of these pictures. We want to copy the whole piece so right click on the top where the name is and choose Copy Merge. Then click on the top again where the name is and choose Paste As New Layer to paste it on top of all the other layers. 

Change the layer blend mode to overlay. It brightens it up quite a bit. But I still didn’t think it was quite crisp enough so I copied the whole piece by doing Copy Merge again and pasted it on top as a new layer. Then use the Unsharp Mask tool one more time on the same settings as before.  Now it’s just time to add the text.

When adding text, always chose from colors in the wallpapers. Use your Dropper tool on the Tool Palette to pick one or 2 colors from somewhere on your blend. 

If you are positioning the text in a place that is dark, make sure to pick a color that will show up and vice versa. For the Foreground I just chose a lighter color between the 2 pictures by left clicking my mouse. That color will show up in the left box at the top of the Color Palette. 

For the Background I chose a darker color around Gerry’s shoulder on the right picture. This color will show up in the right box on the Color Palette. 

Now we are ready to add the text so choose the Text tool on the Tool Palette and click anywhere on the blend. 

Make sure you have the top layer selected so the text will go on top. I chose the font Adorable, size 48. Make sure Antialias is always checked and I put most of my text on as a Vector layer. 

You can change the gradient of the colors and blend them together by left clicking on the arrow where it says Fill or Stroke. I chose to change the Fill. This will allow both of the colors to fill the actual text. 

You can change the angle or amount of each color by left clicking anywhere on Fill to bring up the Gradient. You can experiment to find what you like.

Then just hit ok and your text will be on the blend. As long as the text is selected as a Vector layer you can’t add any effects to it so I always convert it to a Raster Layer. Go up to the Layer Palette and right click on the text and chose Convert to Raster Layer. 

You can then move the text to wherever you want with the Mover tool. I just placed it toward the bottom between the two pictures. Then since I think it’s a little plain I will add some effects by going up to Effects>3D Effects>Inner Bevel. 

Again experiment to find something you like but I used these settings:

And now your blend is complete! 

You already have the file saved as a Paint Shop Pro Image so now you need to save it as a JPEG because the PSP file is way too large and you can't set that kind of file to your desktop. If you go to File and choose Save Copy As you can then save it as a JPEG. I always make sure under Options the Compression factor is set to 1 for best quality. However the file may still be too large and since I have a website that I display all of my wallpapers on I don't want these huge files to take up too much bandwidth so I use the JPEG Optimizer to make the file smaller. This will compress the file but still retain a decent quality for your wallpaper. Go to File>Export>JPEG Optimizer and change the Set compression value to about 3. You can see what the picture looks like compressed on the right hand side. You can go higher or lower depending on how big you want the file and how much the compression is affecting the quality. I usually always check the text and make sure it's not getting fuzzy because that seems to be what is most affected by the compression. Click ok and then choose where you want to save your file. The size will be 1024x768 since that's what we started with but you can now resize it to 800x600 or whatever you like and save it as many times as you need to.

Please don’t copy this exact blend and claim it as your own. This is meant to be a guide for beginners. If you want this wallpaper you can find in right here in my Gerard wallpaper section. This is my first tutorial and since I know PSP very well it's easy for me to skip steps or assume you know how to do something without explaining it in detail. If any of this doesn’t make sense or you have any questions feel free to email me, I would love to try and help you out if I can.  And just practice, it only gets easier!