Making a Desktop Wallpaper from 'His Boy | JaniceO Art of Digital Galleries

Mar

2015

Making a Desktop Wallpaper from 'His Boy"

His Boy - Crop - A crop from the fanart banner, 'His Boy'.

So I'm quite pleased with the His Boy portrait poster but I was pretty sure hubby would not want them on the wall so I thought a desktop wallpaper...

Oh... no this gif has nothing to do with the subject, but hey... a quick brown fox, people....:D

So, anyway, a landscape wallpaper from His Boy. Easy peasy do a 16:9 cut on my lovely big file. The file is 8"x 12" at 300dpi so I have plenty of pixels to give me a great quality 1600 x 900 pixel at 72 dpi. Make a copy of the original PSD keeping the layers in tact and rename it to wallpaper or something. Using the Crop tool, set the ratio to 16:9 and move the image until you have a selection you're happy with. I leave the Delete Cropped Pixels unticked as a matter of course. This allows me to have as many goes at selecting the canvas that I want.

You can see, in the image below, the selection grid marking out the part of the image I am going to turn into my 1600 x 900 wallpaper. You can also see all of the parts of the underlying layers that I have previously cropped for the original portrait orientated image and that I have set my grid to use the rule of thirds. The grid helps me position the main elements of my image so as to draw the viewer eye to a particular part of the image. This adds interest and flow to the finished image, giving a more pleasant viewing experience.

Now I have my cut and my desktop wallpaper:

Click the image for the full size version.

It is nice but not quite what I want. While the bigger Angel fit my last theme nicely, Angel large in the life of his vampire childe. For this crop I really want them sized more in proportion because I think it would be less jarring to the eye. I do love close-up Spike face though, so maybe the answer is a little more Photoshopping and...

Click the image for the full size version.

Yummy Spike all by his self. I've made another 3D text layer with Spike's name this time and for added interest, placed another text layer under it using his other vampire alias of 'William the Bloody'.