Hello everyone! My name Gerry Button and now I’m going to show you how to make a simple Apple TV Style Wallpaper within Pixelmator. Now, you can look at this image and say, well that looks entirely like Apple’s wallpapers but that’s true. Pixelmator has a few limitations and I’ve change around the colors of the actual wallpaper to suite my own preferences. I was inspired to do this tutorial by seeing a Photoshop version within YouTube by a user name Photoshop Talent. I will be sending him a message letting him know that I did a Pixelmator version of this tutorial with that said, ready? Let’s get started.
Begin with creating a New Image within Pixelmator, when you get the new dialogue box appear, change the Width to 1024 and the Height to 768, make sure your resolution at 300 in case you want to print this on a nice lovely piece of photo paper and then click okay. When you get your new canvas appear, if it’s just white by default, hit Command I to invert the color to black. Then, in your layers palette, rename the untitled layer to background. I do this so if I ever need to go back and change something I know exactly what layer is on. It just helps for better organization and anybody using a layer base image editor or video editor should practice naming their layers. Next, make a New Layer and call this Brushing.
Over here, you’ll see your two main color palettes, your foreground color and your background color. With the foreground selected, just simply go over to your swatches and click any pink when you want, I’m just going to use this one right here, hit X on your keyboard to bring the black background. To the foreground and then choose a blue and x again because you want the pink one forward first and then choose a large brush. I’m going to make my brush size roughly 626, I’ll click my brush and I’m going to click it right once—no, I ‘m going to move that right out there and then hit X on your keyboard to bring the Blue forward and then click right about here. Then, hit D on your keyboard to reset the colors and if white is the background, hit X to bring it to the foreground, change 626 down to a nice 365 or 313 of you want and click in the middle of the two previous spheres.
Next, make a New Layer, and call this one Bokeh, I’m not sure if that’s pronounced properly but that’s okay. Then, get a hard brush, I want to use about 192, I’m going to click here, and then I’m going to size my brush down to 151, I’m going click here and finally maybe just a bit smaller and then click here. Now, I’m going to get my Move Tool and move them down just a slight bit to about right here. I’m going to hit Command J to duplicate this, Command F within Pixelmator to rotate them 180 degrees, I’m going to bring them up here like this, that looks about right, I’m going to just move them so they centered more. Now, I’m going to move merge the layer together.
When I merged it, I will call it untitled layer number to I’ll just rename it Bokeh, change its Blending Mode to Overlay and then change its opacity to about a 22 or anywhere in between, it’s up to you. Duplicate the layer by hitting Command J, rename it to Bokeh rotate and then hit Command F once again and rotate it slightly in any angle you wish. And once again, bring its opacity down to about 11. Next, make another New Layer, call this one brightness, get a large brush, I’m going to say about 313, is that big enough? No, make it a bit bigger, let’s say about 452. In the Tool Options, make sure Opacity is set to 100% and then click in the middle of the white sphere, now change the Blending Mode to Overlay and you have a brief idea what it looks like. Is that spot on what Apple makes? But it’s pretty close especially with Pixelmator.
It does have few limitations at Photoshop does have but this application make it down the road but this coming pretty close so it looks pretty good. Click your Move tool and then make another—hopefully the final layer and call this, lines. Then, grab your Brush Tool, get a small brush—let’s say for example this one—let’s see—change the Stroke, no, leave that alone. The opacity is fine, the size is fine, the spacing, you can change the spacing if you want and the scatter you can make it more if you want. I’m going to make the scatter quite large. I’m going to bring the flow down pretty low, I’m going to bring the hardness down. I’m going to bring the hardness all the way up then I’m going to click okay. And then, I’m just going to brush around on these lines—oh nope that’s not righ.
I’m going to double click and we’re going to make its diameter much, much bigger—sorry about that guys. Now, click around, change the Blending Mode to Overlay and then the opacity down to 10% or if you want you can bring it to 28, go to Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur, one, two, three, four, click it four times. I should rename—I don’t know why I called it Lines—I’m sorry for that, guys. Rename this one brushing random. And for the final layer, call it Clouds, Go to Filter, Generator, Clouds, click okay, change the Blending Mode to Vivid Light and bring the opacity down to about—let’s say at 10% and there you have it.
It’s just a basic Apple TV Styled Color Wallpaper with three simple spheres, colored many, multiple times, moved around is nothing too taxing, anyone can make this. It can be achieved—it can get different looks within any application that you use. This is just the way it is achieved with Pixelmator because of these limitations versus Photoshop. I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial guys and there will be more coming soon. Thanks for watching.
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