Photoshop background tutorial

Hello,
today I will be showing you how to create a back ground that may be used in forum signatures or wallpapers or even just a plain background!

To start off, you are going to have to open Photoshop. I used Photoshop CS2 in this tutorial, however, you may use some earlier versions, but i am not 100% sure.

Open a blank document. (Control+N, or File -> New) I am going to use 400x200 just for the heck of it. You can use which ever size you want to.
Now that you have a blank document open, press D on your keyboard. This will make your foreground colour black and your background colour white (the default)
After doing this, make sure you are working on your background layer (there should only be one layer at this point) and go to your paint tool (or just press G on the keyboard) and fill in the background layer black.
Click on the dodge tool under the paint tool, (or press O) and make the size of the dodge tool large enough so that it covers your whole black background layer. The size of the dodge took for a 400x200 document should be around 450. After you have the dodge tool large enough and covering the whole black area, click once. Exposure should be 100%.
Now go to Filter --> Noise --> Add noise. Apply the following settings: Amount 7.5%, Distribution: Gaussian. Monochromatic: Yes.
Your result should be something like the image in the "preview" section below.

Now here comes the lengthy part. Go to Filter --> Artistic --> Plastic Wrap. Use the following settings:
Highlight strength--> 20
Detail --> 13
Smoothness--> 4

Do this once more with the same settings.

This should be the result:

Now, go to Filter --> Distort--> Ocean Ripple. Use these settings:
Ripple size --> 9
Ripple magnitude --> 7

Next, Filter --> Artistic --> Dry brush.
brush size --> 5
brush detail --> 10
texture --> 2


Last thing we have to do with filters is Filter --> Artistic --> Colour pencil. Settings:
Pencil width --> 4
Stroke pressure --> 9
Paper brightness --> 25

This should be the result of the filters:

Now to colour the background. You have to duplicate your background layer twice. Simply right click your background layer and click Duplicate layer. Do this two times to duplicate it twice. Name one of the layers Background copy and the other one Background copy 2 which should be the default names.

Once we have it duplicated it, go to the first duplicated one (Background copy) and go to Image--> Adjustments --> Hue/Saturation (or press Control + U)
Tick "Colorize." Here, you may choose any colour you want by messing around with Hue and Saturation. Once you have chosen your colour, make the Lightness around -35 to -40.
Note: to view your colours while you play with Hue and Saturation, you have to click the eye beside layer called "Background Copy 2" in the layer menu

We are going to do the same thing except with the other layer (Background Copy 2) So click it and press Cntrl + U, tick colorize, find a good colour and take brightness down to -35 to -40. Again, click the eye beside Background Copy to view your changes to Background Copy 2.

Once they are both coloured, go to the first one you duplicated (should be called Background copy) and set blending mode to Pin Light, like so:


The second one's (should be Background Copy 2) blending mode should be luminosity:

If you did not name your duplicated layerrs Background Copy and background copy 2 then just make sure the layer with the Luminosity blending mode is ahead of the Pin Light Blending mode layer.
Flatten the image by right clicking on it:
I used yellow and a shade of brown for my colours so here is my final product! You may have a different result if you used different colours other than yellow and brownish:

You may use this image as a background for signatures:


Simply by messing around with the settings of some filters I used here, you can get completely different backgrounds and different colours too:




Thanks for reading this tutorial and have a good one!