10 Steps to create a KILLER Twitter background from YOUR photos! What could be more interesting?

Here is my current Twitter background at my @nationwideclass profile.
Here are the 10 steps on how YOU can create your own personal Twitter background from scratch using YOUR photos!

Final Product…

From these 6 images…

If curious photos are as follows: Road (somewhere in AR) Sunset (Norfork Lake, AR) Dam (Norfork Lake, AR) Mountains (Gatlinburg, TN)  Rainbow (front yard) Car (my personal ride, with Tanya O. as hand model). I used GIMP to create this theme instead of Photoshop because GIMP had the few brushes I liked for this project (for free no less!).

SO LETS GET STARTED…

Step 1:
I started with the Road image set on a black background. I simply brought the original into my template scaling the image to 1920×1200. I masked away the area I didn’t want to see. Added a cracked texture set to “overlay”. I used “perspective” slightly, then twisted the road using “distort, Iwarp, Swirl CCW” feature to get this result:

Step 2:
Now comes the Dam. I brought the photo into my template, cropped out the Dam from the original, sized it to fit nicely with the road. I flipped the image horizontally, then used perspective to get the dam to look the same as the road. I then added the cracks with a brush. To merge the 2 near seamlessly, I used mask! Do not try to remove things from backgrounds with transparency! After cleaning it up a bit with masking I got this result:

Step 3:
Next I added the water coming over the Dam to look like it was a flood and that the seams were about to burst with a water brush. I duplicated this layer to double the intensity of the image. I adjusted both the image “level” and “color balance” to get the desired effect, resulting with this…

Step 4:
Next comes the sunset. Again, bringing the image into the template. Sized to 1920×1200 and just placed BELOW the dam and above the road layers currently in the template. I used mask to remove the areas I didn’t want above the clouds, adjusted the “levels” to darken the image to get this result:

Step 5:
Mountain time!  Brought the mountain image into the template. Adjusted the size to fit on the left side until it fit properly. This was much smaller than the other images because I wanted to create depth! Depth is good! Adjust your images to reveal depth in your final image. This will create the illusion of looking more realistic. Again masking areas not wanted or needed, adjusting levels to produce this result:

Step 6:
Now you cant have mountains without MIST!  So created some mist. To do this I simply brushed white on a new layer, then blurred the white lines. I then used “smudge” to create the mist to look realistic. By dragging the smudge tool along the blurred white lines, you can control wherever you want or need mist. Very cool and fun to do artistically. Now, this isn’t easy to learn, but just be creative and play with it till you get the desired effect. I have 4 mist layers to finally get what I wanted. Notice how I left the dark hills from the Sunset image! These are not part of the Mountains image. This again is where masking instead of trying to erase or use transparency does you wonders!  If you mask in black, it erases. If you mask in white, it brings areas back!  By using masking correctly, you will be able to create the effect you want. I may have even left  a step or two out of this as I did this portion. As I did, resulting in this:

Step 7:
Everyone loves rainbows!  I do too, so I had to have one too in my theme. I brought the image into the template, masked away the areas that I didn’t want. This included the entire left side of the original image! Resized the image. I then duplicated the layer 3 times to get a lot of color! Then duplicated all 3 duplicates, flipping them horizontally, setting to overlay and aligning properly to get this result:

Step 8:
Ok, as you can see, it was going really well!  So, I wanted something super cool at the bottom and really big to create a really good effect. I thought….”a dream drive” , Yes!   So, I need a car image. I toyed with several sites to find a good image that only resulted in lost time. So I went out and took another photo, my car! My lovely daughter was kind enough to be the hand model for me. So, I brought the image in, resized it and adjusted the levels so it wasnt so bright. Then I had to get very creative by masking areas of the car I didnt want, removing the dangeling necklace hanging from the rear view. Then of my cool tweeps noticed I was in park and going 0 mph. LOL, well we cant have that, so I erased the “park” icon, added a “D” for drive in green. Then I cropped the speedometer from the original and put the speed at a whopping 120 mph!  Also, my car shows the outside temperature, so I thought, why not make it super HOT!   Yeah 252 degrees should work. This portion of the design was the most difficult, but well worth the result:

Step 9:
So “Dream Drive” was obviously what I was creating. So it was time to add some cool brushes. I used 2 lightening brushes and some stars brushes on different layers. This part is fairly easy and straight forward, just play with the brushes and you can create whatever you want. Just be patient and use your imagination to achieve the result as I did:

Step 10:
Ahh! Yes, killer theme!   Time to add the text and copyright. You may notice above, no copyright on the left radio knob, but all original creations should have both the copyright visible as well as embedded in the image. This will protect your works from the tireless “snatch and grab” techniques used online. Added text and copyright to finish off yet another hot Twitter theme!

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial!  Questions?  Follow @nationwideclass. I will be happy to answer any you might have. Need a theme but have no creativity?  We can help www.customtwit.com