Aurora Borealis Typopgraphy Wallpaper Photoshop Tutorial

I recently created this wallpaper for Lucidry an online inspirational, business, social media and creative professional website. I thought it would be great to share my process in a tutorial! You can download my version here. Hope you enjoy.

Step 1

Create a new document that is the screen resolution of your PC/Laptop Screen – So for me that was 1920×1080.

Step 2

Then fill the background layer with the color #2d2d2d – To do this, with the background layer selected, hit SHIFT + F5 and select color ; or go to Edit –> Fill –> Colour.

Step 3

Now create a new layer above background and name this ‘texture’. Ensure your foreground color is black and your background color white. With this layer selected, fill the layer with black by hitting SHIFT+F5 and selecting black, or by going to Edit –> Fill –> Black. When this is complete, go to Filter –> Noise –> Add Noise . You should then have a new dialog box pop up – here you want to drag the percentage noise to 160-ish and select ‘Uniform’ and ‘Monochromatic’

Step 4

You are now going set the blending mode of the layer ‘texture’ to Overlay and its Opacity to 33%. You hsould now have anice textured/grainy background.

Step 5 – Download the Galaxies Brush File here – download.

Create a new layer above texture. You are now going to use your Galaxy brush – (installing new brushes tutorial is –  here) and by using a combination of the different brushes in the set create a cloud like shape as below.

Step 6

Create a new text layer above texture. In this layer type your main heading i.e – ‘SUCCEED’ . When you have typed your word(s) and placed them where you want their position to be. You are going to hold CTRL (CMD) and click on the layer’s thumbnail in the layer panel. This should create a selection of the text. Now go with the selection active, click on your cloud layer and the hit CTRL+X or CMD+X to delete. Now go and delete your text layer. You should be left with the cloud layer having a perfect cut out of the text characters. To add ‘i am going to’ simply repeat this process.

Step 7

Create a new layer above your text-cloud and select a large soft round brush and spot brush over the cloud area. Then choose some bright colours such as #00baff (blue); #ff4000 (red); #5afe00 (green); #fcff00 (yellow);#ff9000 (orange). Then once you have done this, set the layer blending mode to color.

Step 8 – Download Grunge Brush here – download

Now create a new layer, and with a grunge brush in different complementing colours, gently add a little grunge to to the tips and bottoms of some of your text characters. this will help to merge the characters with the aurora.

Step 9

Now create a new shape layer by selecting the shape tool and selecting a rectangle. Set your color to black and then draw a slim rectangle underneath your main type to add your subtitle/quote inside. Once drawn, rasterise the shape layer by going to Layer –> Rasterise —> Shape. This will make it editable. Select the eraser tool with a soft brush and set its opacity to 60% and brush away at the edges to make the box fade out at either side. Set the rectangle’s layer opacity to 50%.

Step 10

Select the text tool and add your quote to sit on top /inside the rectangle. Add a Drop Shadow to make it pop up off from the rest of the composition.

You can download my finished versions here: Succeed Wallpaper

Related Posts:

• December 8, 2009 -- Give Old Photos A Punchy Stylistic Feel – Photoshop Tutorial – with Video (5)
• November 30, 2009 -- Turn A Boring Photo Into An Emotive Portrait – Photoshop Tutorial – with video (9)
• July 5, 2009 -- 5 Amazing Photo Manipulations & Digital Art (deviantArt) (1)
• May 12, 2009 -- 4 Tutorials to Improve Your Drawing (0)
• April 14, 2009 -- Speed Up Adobe Illustrator Performance (3)
• October 2, 2008 -- Photoshop Actions Tutorial (0)