How to create an Awesome Abstract WallPaper

Hey guys and gals, this is the first official tutorial of Double Helix Designs on the web. I hope you all enjoy. In this tutorial you will learn to create something similar to this.

(click to see full resolution)

First thing to do is create a new image whatever size you wish. I am using 1280x800 for this tutorial. (Tip: Bigger is better, if you make it bigger you can always downsize it, if you make it too small you can't make it much bigger without distorting it)


Second thing that you want to do is fill the background in with any color you wish. I am going to choose to make a gradient, from #0072ff to #0049a4. To Make a gradient you first choose your click your foreground color and choose the first color you want to use. Then you click the background color and change that.

Now select your gradient tool and make sure that your settings at the top look like this.
(click to see full resolution)


Now that all of your settings are all setup, we can actually make the gradient. Drag your cursor from the top left of the screen until your cursor is past the bottom just a bit. Then let go. Your screen should look like this.
(click to see full resolution)


Now that our gradient is all set and ready to go let's start the abstract portion of the wallpaper. First, select the elliptical marquee tool and create an ellipse somewhere on the canvas. Draw the ellipse to look somewhat like this.
(click for full resolution)

Now we are going to switch back to our gradient tool but this time, i want you to go and click the arrow next to the gradient preview on the top toolbar and select "Foreground to Transparent"
After this press "D" and then "X". Pressing D resets the default foreground and background colors and pressing X swaps the two colors. Now you should have a white to transparent gradient.

Now, create a new layer by hitting the "Create new Layer" button on the Layers Pallete.

Now I want you to take your gradient tool and drag from the top left of the ellipse to about 3/4 of the way through the ellipse.

It should look like this afterwords.

Now that you have this. I want you to press Ctrl + D which deslects, and then change the layer opacity from 100% to about 55%.

After you have done this, I want you to scale up the ellipse by pressing Ctrl + T and drag the top right corner further right and a little downward 3/4 the length of the canvas. Then hit enter. It should look something like this. (click to view full resolution)

After you have achieved this, I want you to go to Edit > Transform > Rotate. Now Hold shift and rotate the bottom left corner to the bottom right of the screen like so.
Then hit enter.

Now go to Layer > Duplicate layer and hit Enter. Now you have two of these ellipsis. Now go back to Edit > Transform > Rotate and hold shift, rotate this one down one movement like so.


Do this entire step one more time, except duplicate this newly created layer. You should now have three of these ellipsis.

Now select all three of these ellipsis layers and Press Ctrl + E to merge them together.

Now you can move these abstract things around, duplicate them, scale them up and down and you can use filters like Filter > Blur > Motion Blur with a distance of about 30. It is really up to you. After you have moved all of your ellipsis around you can add some extra color to make the wallpaper look nice. I will teach you this method next.

Now that I have all of my abstract items finished I am going to add some more color.

I like to use gradients to add color to wallpapers like this, so using the method from step 1, i am going to set my foreground to red and my background to green and just create a gradient across the screen. Then I am going to take that layer and set it's layer mode to soft light.


Do this as many times as you like to get the desired color and you are finished.
(click to see full resolution)

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. If you have any questions, comments or tutorial requests you can leave a comment here or can send an e-mail to me at takido1@hotmail.com.