Making a wallpaper from neon lites tutorial

20 comments // Jul 23rd, 2007

In my previous post i was talking about drawing in dark with a light photography. Today i’ll take make the next step and use this images in graphic design to make a pretty wallpaper.

As i was drawing with light and took those photos i used some elements or shapes that i have in my logotype (you can see it on the right). Here are these pictures and the parts i’ll be using:

logo parts

logotype parts

I’ve also made some photos with just the dots for the top and bottom of my logotype.

Now i need to setup my space. The usual sizes for a wallpaper are 1600×1200, 1280×1024 and 1024×768. I will only make one, and then crop it down to other sizes. It’s always good to crop images to smaller sizes since you don’t loose the sharpness etc.

I will use a radial gradient for the background with this settings:

The 2 colors i used are #023d50 and #066b89. Here’s the result:

radial gradient background

In the next step i’ll put all the images in that new file i created and save it. I save often
I’ll just have the 2 layers for “D” and “P”, and i’ll cut out the dots from others. All the layers will have the blend mode “lighten” which looked like the best option in my case. I have rotated/flipped/scaled/moved the shapes to match my logo and here is what i got:

darjan panic logotype

A good thing is you can also change colors to it and have different colors of the light lines. These look like neons.

darjan panic neon lights

The next step is a more artistic one. I used some of the lines in this picture:

random lights

random lights 2

Feel free to download it in high quality here and here, (right click -> save target as..) or use of of your own following this Drawing neon lights in light photography tutorial.

With these you can now do a lot of things, it’s up to you how you use them.

Here’s my finished product. I know it’s not the best of my work and i know i could do it a lot better but when you do wallpapers you have to try to keep it simple. If you don’t the icons and shortcuts on the desktop won’t be visible.

darjan panic wallpaper

And here are the download links:

Wallpaper - 1600px X 1200px
Wallpaper - 1280px X 1024px
Wallpaper - 1024px X 768px

Tags: Graphic Design

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Minty Ferret says :

That is slick! I’ve always liked the ‘painting with light’ effect, nice job turning it into a wallpaper!

Jul 23 , 2007 , 2:04 pm

glenn says :

thanks!

Jul 23 , 2007 , 5:32 pm

rhemsky says :

very nice … i like the combinations and the blending was great!!! keep up the gOOd work.

Jul 23 , 2007 , 7:49 am

kim says :

that’s so cool! thanks for the tutorial, you saved me hours of finding the right settings for it

Jul 23 , 2007 , 12:10 pm

Photoshop Tutorials says :

very awesome and useful tutorial, You’ve got a rocking website (y).

Jul 23 , 2007 , 8:59 am

Neon lights with Photoshop says :

[...] Before i start, you may also want to see the last two tutorials i made, one is how to make Neon Lights with your digital camera, and the second is how to make a Wallpaper with this neon light. [...]

Jul 23 , 2007 , 5:12 pm

boris says :

how can i make the glowing lines ?

Jul 23 , 2007 , 1:18 am

Dreamerboy says :

outstanding….
very nice…

Jul 23 , 2007 , 6:20 am

Darjan Panic says :

You can download some already made…

here and here

…or you could check my new tutorial on neon glow.

Jul 23 , 2007 , 10:01 am

PhotoshopTalent.com says :

Thanks for this great tutorial.
I Added it to my photoshop tutorial directory and attached a photoshop contest to it:
http://www.photoshoptalent.com/photoshop-tutorials/ext/

Jul 23 , 2007 , 10:59 am