My monthly wallpapers are becoming more and more popular and people are starting to ask me ‘How you do dat Tom..?’ so I thought it might help a few folk out if I shared the process which I go through to make these things.

Well it’s all created in photoshop and uses just 2 files. The first is the photograph, but not every image works well as a desktop wallpaper, I often find myself shooting specifically for the wallpaper. When I do Im looking for a particular composition, I’m looking for clean, uncluttered, simple, bold images that have space not only for the calendar details but also for the desktop shortcuts (of which I have way too many). You’ll need to crop and resize it to fit your screen resolution.

The other file you’ll need will be a .psd file that will contain the actual calendar info (month name, days of the week etc.)

in this file you’ll need several layers:

- One with text for the month and year name (ie ‘Feb 2010′).
- One with text for each of the days of the week (Mon – Sun).
- One with text for each of the numbers between 1 and 31.
- A shape layer which I use as the calendar background and have set the opacity to about 60%. You may wish to add some other effects, such as a shadow or bevel & emboss.
- One with text for a copyright notice layer.
- A Transparant background layer.

If I’ve done my maths right thats a total of 42 layers. Arrange the layers nicely and it should look something like this.

Confussed??, Lost?? or lazy?? just download mine from here. Feel free to change it as much as you wish.

Now every month you’ll have to rearange the numbers so they match the days for that month. ie. when the 1st
of the month is on a Monday, Tuesday, Wed…etc. But you’ll only need to do this 7 times, one for each day of the week. Save each file as a seperate .psd, and eventually you should end up with files that are named something like this Calendar_Week_Begin_Mon.psd, Calendar_Week_Begin_Tues.psd, Calendar_Week_Begin_Wed.psd …etc.

Now when you create your monthly wallpaper all you have to do is check whcih day of the week the 1st is and open the correct file (you many also need to hide the number 31 for some months and the numbers 29, 30 and 31 for February)
.

If you’re still with me you should have 2 files open in Photoshop.

In the Calendar_Week_Begin_xxx.psd file change the month name and year to match the current month.

Now it should be a simple case of dragging and dropping all the layers from the Calendar_Week_Begin_xxx.psd file into your photo file, I keep them all grouped together to make this easier. Flatten it and save this as a .jpg. Browse you hard disk until you find where you saved it (you did save it somewhere sensible, no??) right click and select ‘Set As Desktop Background’

As if by magic, you’ve just created your desktop wallpaper.

Tags: wallpaper