How To Create a Retro Apple Wallpaper in Photoshop

Posted by admin on Jul 25th, 2009 | one comment

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Author: Kamel Nahdi

I am Kamel Nahdi. I write tutorials for various magazines and websites when I'm not designing gig posters, t-shirts, catalogues, magazine, etc.

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Follow these simple steps in Photoshop to create a homage to Apple, combining the retro striped Apple logo with a range of soft grungy textures to produce a detailed design with subtle touches of colour and tone.

Everyone loves the Apple logo, especially the retro striped version from 1977. What better way to tart up your screen than with a cool grungy wallpaper design complete with a wealth of textures and distressed effects.

Start work in Photoshop, create a document large enough to accommodate the largest of the popular resolutions. Download a soft grunge texture from Bittbox for use as the overall background of the design. Adjust the saturation (CMD+U) and the Brightness and Contrast to tone down the colours to suit.

Take a colour selection from the texture, then fill the Background layer with a solid tone. Drop the opacity of the texture to give a subtle appearance.

The Apple logo is already available in all its exact proportions as an EPS file from Brands of the World. Head on over and download a copy.

Drag a couple of layers to the centre of the document, then paste in the logo. Scale and move into position.

Change the blending mode of the logo to Multiply, to darken the colours to match the tones of the document and allow the underlying texture to show through.

Double click the logo layer to access the Layer Styles. Add a Bevel and Emboss effect to give a semi three-dimensional appearance. Adjust the sliders to give a large soft bevel, then tweak the opacity of the highlights and shadows to around 20-30%. Use Color Dodge for the Highlight Mode to give light vibrant tones, and Color Burn for the Shadow Mode to produce rich dark tones.

Duplicate the logo layer, then add a Gaussian Blur of around 4.7px. Drop the Opacity to around 60%.

Open up a brown paper texture and copy a selection.

Paste the texture over the logo, inverse the colours and adjust the Levels to give a high contrast.

CMD-click the thumbnail of the logo layer to make a selection. Then create a Layer Mask on the texture layer.

Adjust the blending mode to Multiply to render the white areas transparent, then reduce the opacity to tone down the texture.

Grab a spray paint Photoshop brush and dab a splodge of white onto the document. Change the blending mode to Overlay to give a vibrant highlight, reduce the opacity to suit.

Open up a scratches texture and paste in into the document. Position the texture over the logo images.

Make a selection of the logo, then use the selection to create a layer mask. Change the blending mode to Screen and drop the opacity to around 40%.

Use the collection of Splatter Brushes from Bittbox to paint in a variety of ink explosions behind the logo. Use a layer mask to avoid seeing the splatters over the logo.

Change the blending mode of the splatters to Overlay to blend the tones with the background and adjust the opacity to around 80%.

With a large soft brush, dab four spots of colour onto the document using samples from the retro stripes of the Apple logo.

Change these spots of colour to the Color blending mode. Reduce the opacity to 60% to blend them in with the design.

To give an overall vintage tone to the design, dab some spots of pink and yellow over the whole document.

Change the blending mode to Color Burn to mix the pinks and yellows with the original colours.

The overall design has plenty of detail and soft tones, but is kept subtle to allow the main logo to take visual prominence.

Download the wallpaper:

Download the Zip files containing the complete collection of wallpaper documents, including files for 1920×1200, 1680×1050, 1440×900, 1280×800 and 320×480 for the iPhone: