Hello everyone, today I’m gonna teach you how you can develop a forest wallpaper, with leaves, cherries and branches around using photoshop tools, this can be tried by any level of the user, that is if you are a newbie then it will be a learning experience. The final image will look as shown in the above image, and this tutorial will involve many techniques, so follow carefully to get the desired result. Also, it can test your drawing skills, as well as your sensitivity with the mouse or mice usage. You will need lot of patience and concentration while developing specifically leaves, cherries and the text with shadow and glowing effects. Also, this tutorial will teach you the uses of many tools of photo shop which probably you might have not used it till now make you more familiar with photoshop. Also, this tutorial works fine with adobe photo shop CS4 and newer version which are released by adobe. :)

Develop Forest Wallpaper via photoshop

  1. Open adobe photoshop and create a new document, which you can do it via file option in the menu bar or by pressing Ctrl+N. And then choose the size of the document you want to develop, I’m choosing 700×700, that is 700 pixel width and 700 pixel as height, though it can vary from computer to computer as resolution is not same for everyone and I chose background as white with color mode as RGB 8 bit.

  2. Now chose any nature image with greenery around it and open it in photo shop and blur some parts of the image, I surfed the image online and then blurred the image using some brushes and in built tools, as shown in the below image,

  3. Now, hide this window by clicking the eye icon in the palette and then download leaf texture from the following link,

    http://www.bittbox.com/freebies/free-high-res-photoshop-brushes-leaves

    And then load the leaf texture in the new project and name the layer as leaf, or what ever you can remember easily, so that we can use it comfortably. Now select the rectangular marquee tool from the toolbox and then right click on it and select free transform and then warp and then divide your layer in different cells by clicking and dragging your mice/ mouse, as shown in the below image,

  4. Now, adjust the corners and the edges of the leaf by dragging and then use Polygonal Lasso Tool from the tool box get more sharper edges, and after this step the leaf looks as shown in the below image,

  5. Now repeat the steps mentioned above for all the corners of the layer, that is repeat the wrapping on all four corners. And the using free transform tool use distort and perspective option to give the look of the realistic image, as shown in the below image,

  6. Now, Duplicate the above developed layer with differing wrap and let the duplicated layers be placed below the original layer and do it for minimum of 4 times. Now we will add shadow, for this choose the drop shadow tool from the tool box from the left (in general) and adjust the opacity, size and distance accordingly, that is which suits your requirement and taste, I chose the distance as 24, size as 53 and opacity as 57%, to give more realistic and depth to the image and then the image should look like as shown in the below image,

  7. After the above step tick the Bevel and Emboss box by click of the mouse and modify the depth to 90%, or more than 90% depending upon your requirement and soften to 0 pixel with size as 60 pixel while adjusting the opacity and shadow simultaneously.

  8. Now, right click on the the leaf layer in the palette and then click “Convert to Smart Object” options and now we have to apply Gaussian filter to blur some parts of the image, for doing it just go to menu bar and then click on the filter and then from the drop down menu select blur and then choose Guassian blur with size as 2.5 pixels and repeat the procedure for other layers, note that you should lower the blur level as you are going towards the leaf, and this is the reason I said this tutorial will require lot of skill and patience, as you have to do it very carefully and slowly. Then after this step the image looks as shown in the below image,

    And it the last step to develop leaves, which we will insert/ embed in the image we hided in the 3rd step of the tutorial.

  9. Now, create a new project and chose the dimension as 600×500 square pixels, or any size which suits your requirement and taste. And now draw circle using elliptical tool from the tool box and color it as red, as we are going to develop the cherries from this step.

  10. Now, double click on the above image and then apply the Inner shadow, Bevel and Emboss and Gradient Overlay effects while adjusting the values of depth, opacity, direction and size.

  11. Now, draw shield like shape using Pen Tool and fill it with black color, as shown in the below image,

  12. Now, place the red color cherries we developed earlier as shown in the below image, and do it carefully so that the placement of the cherries look realistic and it looks like gropu of cherries, as shown in the below image,

  13. Now, fill the full shield color shape with cherries and then hide the shiled layer by closing its eye from the palette and then using Burn Tool darken the edges of your cherry with brush size as 180, exposure around 25% and then hardness of 0% with some range of shadows. Now use Dodge Tool to make the image developed so far more realistic by adjusting the harness and the brush size and exposure around 15%, then the image looks as shown in the below image,

  14. Now we adjust the leafs developed previously on the cherries by rotating the leafs by 90 degrees and then duplicating horizontally, which you can do it from the menu bar by selecting the edit option and then transform has to be chose and then click on flip horizontal, then the image looks as shown in the below image,

  15. Now create new layer and then we will add the stem on the leafs so that the image looks more furnished and polished, as we are taking care of minor things also. You can draw the stem using the pen tool and now go to the blurred image of the forest and mark the selection using the pen tool as shown in the below image,

  16. Now, add anchor points to the selected line and with some twist and bend and then apply stroke path and repeat the procedure to make another long stem kind of thing, that is vine. Now select Bevel and Emboss with Shadow Mode Opacity around 65%, Highlight Mode Opacity as 45%, angle as -127 and other settings depending upon your requirement and taste, then the image looks as shown in the below image,

  17. Now, add leaves to the vine randomly by just dragging and dropping the leaf image we developed earlier and add some more irregular figure, then after this step the image looks as shown in the below image,

  18. Now, add group of cherries we developed earlier randomly and then Type any text with white fore ground color and bold text, I typed Jungle, which means forest. You can type any word or sentence depending on your taste. Then the image looks as shown in the below image,

  19. Now, duplicate the layer of the text and change the color of the text in the duplicated layer which is in synchronization with forest and blur it using Gaussian blur and after that apply motion blur to the original text layer with angle as 90 degree and distance as 65, which you can find it in menu bar, that is go to filter option and then select the blur option and then choose motion blur, then the image looks as shown in the below image,

  20. And now, apply the Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Inner Glow and stroke effects accordingly, that is which is in synchronization with the image, then the image looks as shown in the below image,

  21. Now, add the vines which developed earlier, so that we reach the final image shown in the starting of the tutorial and then using the eraser tool delete the parts of the vine which are on the text Jungle randomly so that it looks that vines are moving around the Jungle text and it is purely embedded in the image. Then add some cherries by dragging and dropping then the image looks as shown in the below image,

  22. Now, we have to give finishing touches to the image by adding the zoomed cherries and leaf over it image on the left side and then adding leafs on the top right corner, then the image looks as shown in the below image,

  23. Now, use the magical brush, which you can download free of cost from the website brusheezy.com and add some stars looking spots on the image randomly and then apply outer glow to the stars we just painted in the image using the layer options and then you can see the final image, as shown in the first image of the tutorial.

And then you can see the final image which looks like forest wallpaper which has cherries, vines and leaves around it, with the touch of style, which you can see in the following final image of the tutorial,

Also, you can add any Text instead of Jungle word, as I mentioned earlier, though the words like Jungle, forest looks more genuine for this kind of images. In this tutorial you learned about many techniques which involve careful approach with some new texture.
This concludes the long and not to boring tutorial on forest wallpaper with some fairy and glow touch in the image and how to make it look more realistic and look like a image developed by professional. And now you can use the developed image as you desktop wallpaper with some caption on it or you can improve it further.

Hope you didn’t got bored while reading the tutorial and implementing simultaneous. To get the expected results just play around with the tools, which fits your requirement correctly and by doing that you will learn more about photo shop software, brushes used in various images and tools, and at last you have fun and satisfaction that you developed something really wonderful using photo shop, and can go forward in your designing career using your creativity.

And at last, have fun.. :)