Desktopography finally releases its 2008 exhibition! Check it out!!

They’re not just great wallpapers, all of them are astonishing pieces of art created by masters of the image editing software. 38 wallpapers this year, all one by one will bring your desktop to life! 

The desktopography project arrived in 2005 as a place to download nature / topological themed wallpapers with edits from selected designers. Designers spend about 90% of their waking life in front of a computer so the most appealing genre for a wallpaper would be one that has beautiful design mixed with the all important aspect of being outdoors.

What we see everyday can affect our mood and state of mind, enhance your desktop with a wallpaper creation from desktopography and feel the essence of nature and the outdoor existence on your computer. Bring tranquility to your desktop, feel the wilderness and give your background a breath of fresh air.

Desktopography is curated by Pete Harrison (www.aeiko.net).

40 websites that will convert your PSD to HTML in a small amount of time. This will save yourself a lot of time on your projects. Every option has its own details on their services.

Here are 3 of the 40 I collected.
The cheapest
9xhtml The starting price on $50 makes this the most cheap converter of them all.
Though you’ll have to wait 2 working days.

The fastest
Instant Coding It’s possible that this site will give you your html the fastest, they can do it within 4 to 12 hours! But it will cost you $129.

Cheap and fast
htmlBlender You’ll be spending 95 dollars a page in only 8 hours each.

The best?
It’s nearly impossible to say which one is the best, because we can’t test every website. You’ll have to see this for yourself, what you need the most.

Step1

We start of by making a new document (Ctrl+N), or open (Ctrl+O) something your working on. Alright we can start creating our button for navigation or anything you like. I, for example, will be making a play button. Pick your Rounded Rectangle Tool and put the radius on 6px, and your front color on something dark grey for example #555555. If you’re planning to create navigation buttons you better keep the radius a little more low, like 3px.

Now create your button and choose which size you want, where you think you’ll text or icon will fit in. I’m going for a small one because a play icon doesn’t have to be that big. Owyeah, see that your pixels aren’t fooling around and that your sides of the button are sharp.

Step2

Put the white color in front and drag a rectangle over the button. Pres Ctrl+T (Edit > Free Transform) and put Reference Point Location on top, now type 50% in the height box. The white shape will be now half so high, so will be cutted in the middle of the button.

Get the Direct Selection Tool (A) and hit one of the sides of the white shape. Now pick up the Pen Tool (P) and hit the bottom side of the white rectangle in the middle. Now pick again the Direct Selection Tool and drag the Anchor point down.

For the Blending Options you put Fill Opacity, not the overall opacity, on 0%. Add a white to transparent Gradient Overlay with Blend Mode Soft Light and 45%. See that it’s Linear and 90° in Angle.

Step3

Add your text, icon or whatever you want to put in.

For the triangle you pick the Polygon Tool and but the number of sides on 3.
Pick a light grey color, for example #d6d6d6, and make your triangle holding shift and drag right which is very important. The way you drag is the way the corner will be at.

Put on a Gradient Overlay on the Blending Options. The Blend Mode of the gradient from black to white on Overlay and a 25% opacity. Also put on a 1 pixel black Stroke of 15% opacity.

And see, you’re already completely finished creating this pretty simple grey button.
This were my results.

For the navigation buttons I’ve putted a Drop Shadow on the background shapes. And also duplicated the text flipped it vertical and putted a mask with a gradient on for creating that ‘clean floor effect’.

If you joined Photoshop Express you can have 2 gigabytes of free space, that’s around 2000 pictures you can store. Than you’ll get your own URL and see other peoples pictures in no time. You can also directly access your Photobucket, Facebook and Picasa account.

Get started!
If you’re having troubles getting started, here to go!

(download for the package)

Some parts of this tutorial could be probably unclear. I don’t want that people just copy paste stuff, it’s too easy than. You’ve got to have inspiration yourself, how to place objects for getting a good composition, etc. Though I want people to learn techniques that I use. That’s why some parts of this walkthrough are still more tutorial-like. Come and follow me through this!

Step 1, the background

First of all you’ve got to create a new document (Ctrl+N) in Photoshop, choose a size you want your wallpaper to be. For the background I used a couple of grungy brushes. You can find a lot of them on deviantART, search for grunge on popular. The dots where done with Random Grunge by ~Scully7491.
If you finished doing that go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters (beware this is a Photoshop CS3 and higher option only). First sharpen (Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen) your background twice. Than go to Filter > Distort > Lens Correction and put Fix Red/Cyan Fringe on somewhere around -25, and Fix Blue/Yellow Fringe around -100. For Vignette you can put the Amount on -80. All the rest stays on the defaults.

Now make another Lens Correction but now the options of Vignette on Amount -100 and Midpoint 0. And the filter blending options on Color Burn and 25% opacity.

Now create a new layer and paint with a thick brush of 90% opacity in a green color or whatever color you would like to use in your wallpaper. Be sure to not just paint bucket the layer in green with 90% opacity, because than you’ll not have texture in the color. Put the blending mode of that layer on Pin Light. Now you’ll have something like this.

Step 2, placing an object

Now we’re going to place an object where we will be working around. Like for example I used a bear, because it had something to do with my subject. I used google to find an image, but you can always use stock sites like Stock Xchng. After finding an object you’ve got to find a way to get it in your image in the best way. I did that by Live Tracing it in Illustrator, so it was vectorized, and than copied it in my wallpaper. You can ofcourse use lots of ways. After that, I Sharpened it and gave it a Lens Correction with Red/Cyan Fringe of -100. I played with my object by cutting parts out and placing them somewhere else. You can do this by using the Polygon Lasso Tool selecting a part and just move it around. See what you think is best. I also putted a black rectangle over the eyes of the bear. You use the Rectangle Tool get it over the eyes and Free Transform (Ctrl+T) it for turning it slightly around. I also gave the bear a black Outer Glow with the options Overlay 75% opacity and 25% Noise, the size was 75px.

Step 3, behind the object

Create a new layer behind the object. Pick up the Chalk brush which is in the basic brushes of Photoshop (Reset Brushes…). Make it 7 pixels small and pick up a light green color and just scribble around the object.

Use the Elipse Tool and create a new circle and add another circle (shift while clicking). Give that circle 0% Fill(!) Opacity and give it a black Outer Glow of 75% Overlay with 15% Noise and one that 200 pixels big. I created 3 circles.
Create new layers where you’ll be adding brushes. I used some vector brushes and eroded stripe brushes.
The circle brushes I gave them Overlay with around 40% opacity, used black and white. I duplicated the layer with the circles and gave it a Radial Blur (Filter > Blur > Radial Blur). The stripes I gave Hard Light 75% Opacity in white and also used some yellow ones. What I also did is that I added the world, and gave that the same outer glow as the circles. This is what you’ll have until now.

Step 4, more objects and a title

Here I want you to be free and I’m not going to explain every single thing I’ve done. I want you to have your own inspiration and not just copy paste.
For example I created lots of new objects. Cutted out a building and placed that a few times behind the bear. Cutted out two jesus images and placed that behind the bear but in front of the buildings, gave them a white Outer Glow Overlay with 100% opacity and 20 pixels big. I also used some abstract models and colored them up. A vector skull that I used quite some times, and a few more brushes.

Step 5, lines and text

I putted some cool lines I created with Illustrator in the background. You can learn that on Illustrator Tutorial – Create a Colourful Abstract Wavy Ribbon, and as colors I used the ones out of the image from light colors to darker. Put one of them on Color Dodge as blending mode and a duplicate on Multiply. For the title I used a font out the section Eroded of Dafont called Birth of a Hero.

Step 6, print screen

As you can see on the finished wallpaper I picked a small area of the original image zoomed in so you can see the pixels really big and press Print Screen on your keyboard. Than paste it on the wallpaper turn it a little and give it a Layer Mask and brush away parts you don’t want to see with a grungy brush. And put that layer just above the on of the background colors.

Step 7, finishing

For the finishing I just used some adjustment layers, which can be found on the layer palette. The circle with black and white.
First Brightness and Contrast, than Hue/Saturation, third Curves, than again Hue/Saturation and last but not least a Color Fill with pink/magenta on Blend Mode Hard Light with 6% Opacity.

Hope you’ve learned something from me today and you’ll enjoy making also a wallpaper in this style.

Well give it a go. Tutorial : Create your own planets.