Wallpaper with a sleek mirrored pictureframe

First of all, the focus of this tutorial is to show you how to create a unique looking pictureframe. I chose to turn it in to a wallpaper because I'm sure a lot of people won't know what I'm talking about when I say 'Create a sleek looking pictureframe for your Deviant ID'.

Examples of what you can use this tutorial for are avatars, (yup) a Deviant ID or cd-covers to go with your iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Be creative!

You'll need Photoshop CS2 for this Tutorial



- open a new file of 1024x768px and fill it with black

- create a new layer (name it "picframe"), select your Elliptical Marquee Tool and create a square with a fixed size of 250x250px

- Fill this square with black, go to 'Layer' > 'Layer Style' and change the following settings:



- Open up the picture you want to place inside the picframe and resize it to 240x240px

- name this layer 'photo' and center it inside the picframe layer. When you've done this hold down Ctrl and click on the 'picframe' layer and the 'photo' layer in the Layer window

- Right-click and select 'Merge layers'

- Create a new layer (name='top glass') and make a square of 238x238px with the 'Rectangular Marquee Tool'

- Center it inside your photo

- Select the 'Eliptical Marquee Tool' and while holding down 'Shift' draw out a selection as shown in the screenshot:



This leaves you with the following result:



- Fill this selection with white and set the Opacity of the layer to 30%

- Create an new layer (name='bottom light") again and draw out a rectangle (Rectangular Marquee Tool) with a fixed size of 238x120px

- Get your 'Gradient Tool' out with a 'white to transparant' gradient and draw out a straight line from the bottom of the selection to the top of the selection.

- Set the opacity of this layer to 20%

- This is what it should look like by now (zoomed in on picframe):



- Hold Ctrl down and click on the 'bottom light', 'top glass' and 'photo' layer in your layers window

- Right-click and select' Merge Layers'


- Right click on this new merged layer and select 'Duplicate Layer' (or drag the layer to the 'new layer' icon at the bottom of your Layer window)

- With this copied layer active, go to 'Edit' > 'Transform' and give it a vertical Flip

- Select your 'Move Tool' and drag the layer down to just underneath the original layer, leaving just a thin space between the two pictures (see screenshot):




- Create a new layer, take out your pencil tool with a size of 2px and #585858 as the color and draw out a straight horizontal line over the full length of the file

- Drag this 'line' layer just above the original 'background' layer so that it's behind the two other photo layers (see screenshot)



- Select the 'Magic Wand' and click underneath the line

- Create (yup - you guessed it!) another layer (name='white gradient') and, with the selection still active, apply a gradient ('white to transparant') from the top of the selection to the bottom of it

- Set the opacity to 40% on this layer

- Keep the selection active, create a new layer (name='black gradient') move it all the way to the top of the layers and apply a black gradient from the bottom of the selection to the top of it

- You probably have to repeat this gradient 5 to 6 times to get the right result

- This is what you should have by now:



- Guess what...you have to create a new layer (name='backlight')

- Select a 'Soft Mechanical Brush' with a size of 500px and white as the foreground color

- Click once with your brush on the 'backlight' layer giving you a nice white glow.

- Place this layer right above the 'white gradient' and 'line' layer, centered behind your original photo layer (the non-mirrored one)

- Go to 'Filter' > 'Blur' and apply a Gaussian Blur of 50pixels

- Next (and this is optional) duplicate your background layer, go to Filter > Render > Lighting Effects and channge the following settings:



(it even might look better if you apply the same lighting effect twice - experiment with it a bit)

After applying some text, mirrored the same way as I did with the pictureframe, this is the final result:

Click here for the Full-Size wallpaper.