Learn how to create this graphic text wallpaper using a collection of graphics. This tutorial will teach you masking techniques, text editing, and using stock photography to enhance your work.

Preview of Final Results

Tutorial Resources

• Grass Photo - Dreamstime
• Paint Tossing – Media Militia
• Butterflies - Shoofly-Stock
• Aspidistra – WammyP
• Giant Ivy Leaf – Wammy P
• Flower Pack – Ailedda
• Yellow Flower - Pralinkova-princezna
• Flower Pack - Monika-es-stock
• Small Birds - Fairiegoodmother

Step 1

Open Photoshop. ChooseFile > New then create a document 3200px wide and 1800px high as we're planning to make it 16:9 wallpaper size. Of course if you've got different display aspect ratio, you can as well pick for example 3200x2400 pixel workspace for 4:3. Remember to select Transparent background.

Step 2

We're now going to create our base gradient background. In order to do that, select Layer 1, change it's name to “background” (right-click on layer name, then select Layer properties and type it). Now click the Gradient tool (if it's not visible on the main toolbar, go to Paint bucket tool, right-click it and go to Gradient tool).

Step 3

Click on gradient preview (from the Gradient Toll option Bar) and Gradient Editor window pops out. Click on the bottom left colour marquee under the gradient preview bar and enter RGB colour parameters: 153/172/118, then click on the right to marquee and make it RGB: 30/81/6. Click OK

Remember to pick radial gradient in option bar.

Step 4

Now place the crosshair cursor in the centre of the image and draw a line towards the edge of the document. It should look something like this.

Step 5

In the layer panel, click on Create a New Group icon on the bottom, and name it “Spring”.

Then select the Text tool and place the cursor somewhere in the centre of the document, select “Franklin Gothic Heavy” (or other thick-style font style, for example Calibri with extra bold on) font style and 650pt font size, then type the word “SPRING”. Open the character menu, then highlight your text, and in the new window change the character spacing to 20.

Step 6

Now let's prepare the grass image that will be the base of our grass effect. Open “grass_image.jpg” (in a separate document). As you see – there is a bottle in the grass. We don't want it here (or do we? :) ). To get rid of it we simply have to select the Clone Stamp tool right-click on the document, choose round brush, adjust the diameter (250) and hardness (60%). Now you have to choose the source area to clone. To do that, simply click on some place where the grass is nice, pressing alt key at the same time. Now just cover the whole bottle with nice grass.

Step 7

Now choose Rectangular Marquee tool from the main toolbar and select the bottom part of the document, then press ctrl/cmd + c, switch windows to spring.psd, select the text layer and press ctrl/cmd + v, and grass image should appear just above the text layer. Rename it to grass texture.

Step 8

We now have to match the size of the grass texture to make it look best. In my opinion it looks the best, when the blades are relatively small. To do that, press ctrl/cmd + t, and enter values in Transform option bar: H:40% W:40%. Press Enter to confirm. Select grass texture layer, press ctrl/cmd + j to duplicate it, choose Move tool (V), and move it to the right edge of the layer below, then do it again (duplicate + move) to cover the whole text with some margin.

Now select all three grass texture layers (holding shift key), right-click on any, and select Merge layers.

Step 9

Place the merged grass layer in the centre of the image, to cover the whole text with exact margins. Now hide the layer. Create new layer above the text. Select the Brush tool, open the Brush presets window and choose the basic “dune grass” brush, adjust diameter (60) and hardness (100%), then click somewhere else to close the window. Now go to Window\Brush (F5) to adjust some advanced brush settings.

Step 10

In advanced brush settings window, go to Shape Dynamics, then set Size jitter to 100%, Minimum diameter to 22% and Angle jitter to 100. Other settings may remain by default.

Go to Scattering, and set Scatter to 45, Count to 5.

You can now close this window. Choose any color but black – to see clearly where you paint, and draw the outline of every character. Try to do each letter by one single stroke (without releasing left mouse button). Of course you can change the diameter in some more difficult moments, to make it good better -for example inside the “P”.

Step 11

Select the text layer, right-click on it and choose Rasterize Type. Then select the layer with the grass outline, you've just done and press ctrl/cmd + e (shortcut for Merge layer down). Now turn the grass texture back visible, now right-click on it, and click on Create clipping mask. I should look like this (see below). What's great about Clipping mask is that you can edit it in any moment, and if you draw anything on the layer it's attached to, you will automaticly see the right effect. In other words – it covers the layer below with it's content. If you're satisfied with the effect you've got, you may now merge those two layers. In order to do that, select both layers, right-click on any of those, and choose Merge Layers.

Step 12

Select SPRING layer and from Layer\Layer style pick Drop Shadow.

In Drop shadow options, adjust the Blend Mode (Multiply), Angle (120), Distance (20), Size (8). Click OK.

Step 13

Create new layer above SPRING. Select it and pick the Paint Bucket tool. Choose colour : RGB (33/83/8) and fill the layer with the colour. Now right-click on the layer and choose Create clipping mask again. Now, still on the same layer, change it's blending mode to Soft Light, and opacity for 77%. It looks much better now. You may close the group SPRING for now.

Step 14

Ok. We've already got the title. Now it's time to add some extra effects to it. Create a new Group below SPRING, and name it “SPLATTERS”. Extract all splatter images, and open 11.jpg in Photoshop. When you've got it, we must now extract it from non-transparent background. In order to do that, go to Select\Color range, then pick the black background colour from the document using eye-dropper tool and set the Fuzziness to 24.

Click OK then choose Select\Inverse (shift+ctrl/cmd+i).

However it looks like there are some places, where the selection needs to be improved, as it looks awful. Some black areas were included in selection.

To fix that, go to Quick Mask Mode (Q), and start painting with black colour to cover bad areas.

In this mode the imperfections are very well visible, so it won't be a difficult task. Selected area is red. Sometimes you may need to paint some areas with white colour, to deselect – see example below.

When you finish, exit the Quick Mask Mode (press Q again) and go to Select\Refine Edges.

Use the following settings: Radius: 1 Smooth: 2. Other parameters should remain with value 0.

Then press ctr/cmd +a, ctrl/cmd + c and switch back to our document. Select the SPLATTER group and press ctrl/cmd + v to paste the first splatter. One thing more to do with this one is to change a bit it's colours – go to Image\Adjustments\Hue & Saturation, check Colorize and enter values: Hue:337 Saturation:100 Lightness:+18.

It looks much more vivid now. You may now transform and move it to place it in the desired position in our composition.

You need to do more or less the same with all other images provided. Remember, to extract them carefully from the background. The result should look something like this:

Step 15

Now let's focus on flowers, butterflies and other stuff. The fastest way to create a digital work out of many small elements is to prepare yourself, finding stock images that ale already with alpha channel (transparent background) – for example those in PNG, TGA or already PSD format. If you've got a file in PSD, for “examplegiant_ivy” and “aspidistra” by WammyP, you can just copy the layers to your destination document (ctrl/cmd + a then ctrl/cmd + c on the desired layer in source document, then ctrl + v in our work). Create two groups in your layer manager. One that will contain flowers that’ll be behind the letters, which should be created below the text, and the second one above for the stuff in the front. Paste each flowers etc on one of those depending whether you want them to be in front of or behind the grassy text.

Now let’s add more flowers and leafs. Open Flower_pack_by_Aliedda.psd and copy/paste layers with the flowers into our main document. I’d especially suggest you to use the tulip.

Step 16

In this work more flower means better effect, so now we are going to add “flower_pack.psd” by monika-es-stock. Every flower is on a separated layer, so we just need to copy and paste it to our work.

And now it’s time for “stock9 – yellow flower ” by pralinkova-princezna. In this one, we have to extract it from the background. In this case we can just use quick selection. When we have it in our work, you now need to put it into the right place. When it’s ready, duplicate the layer and resize it. Now from we have two flowers out of one. J

And now the gorgeous butterflies. Open butterflystock.png. Extract each insect from the source document simply select them using Lasso Tool and then do the same as you did with the others. In one of them it'll be great to use Layer mask to make it look like it sits inside one of our flowers.

To do that, pick Layer\Layer Mask\Reveal All from the menu and remember to have the right layer selected before. When you’re on the layer mask start painting using black colour on areas where you don’t want the butterfly to be seen.

As you can see, I added also a small bird from “small_birds.psd” by fairiegoodmother. You can also add some more things to our work like birds, insects, etc… just be creative and find your own stuff.

Step 17

When you’re finished with all those elements, there’s only few final things to do to. I think we should change the colours a bit by adding at the top an adjustment layer with gradient on it. To do so, create a new layer above the SPRING group and fill it with radial colour gradient as in one of the first steps of this tutorial. The settings this time are:

In Blending Mode pick Soft Light and change layer opacity to 50%.

Now it looks much better. Well, the work is finished and now you can put in on desktop as a wallpaper.