Now it's time to play with the filters a bit and give this simple word of warcraft screenshot a warmer, smoother look. First of all, we need to duplicate the layer with the screenshot. You can do that by pressing Command/Control + J with the screenshot layer selected.

After duplicating, with the duplicate layer selected, go to Filter->Blur->Gaurssian Blur and apply the following setting of 1 pixel blur and then click ok. Set the layer opacity to 45% and the Blending options to Overaly (Layer->Style->Blending Options).

Now that we got that settled, we will duplicate the original screenshot layer again, and move it in top of the blurred image. To move a layer click and drag it upper in the layer pallet.

On the new duplicate we will apply a dry brush filter (Filter->Filter Gallery...) using the following settings and then set the layer opacity 20%to and the blending options to Multiply..

We'll have to duplicate the original layer one more time, to create the paper effect. After duplication, move the layer on top of the other like explained before and apply a Texturizer Filter (Filter->Filter Gallery...) as shown below.

There we go, we are almost done with editing the main picture. For the next step we will use a Hue/Saturation Tool to make the colors of our 'paper' layer more accurate. In order to do that we must select the layer that we want to edit ( that's layer copy 3 for me ) and press Command / Control + U. The Hue/Saturation Dialog Box Appears.

Right now the paper layer blocks any other content from the other layers. We need the paper effect only on the borders of the wallpaper, so we will use a layer mask on the paper layer to mask some of its content in order to space for the other layers.

To apply a layer mask click this little button on the layer pallet, then click the mask to make sure you selected it.

Now we will draw the 'mask'. Press D to reset the colors that you use and get the Gradient Fill Tool (Hotkey - 'G') and set it's mode to Radial.

Draw starting from the center of the image, in my case I started to draw with the gradient fill tool from the head of my character.

Make sure you selected the Layer Mask not the layer in this step. Feel free to try it out a few time, until you get a decent mask.

Now in order to make the circle from the mask bigger we will apply a Levels Adjustment to the Layer Mask. Again, make sure you have the Layer Mask selected not the layer itself.

Press Control or Command + L to get the Level Dialog Box and move the sliders like this:

The last thing that we are going to do on the main area of the wallpaper is to give it some extra color. By extra color, I mean adding a Hue/Saturation and a Color Balance Adjustment Layer.

We will start with a hue/saturation adjustment layer. Click the New Adjustments Layer in the layer pallet and select Hue/Saturation.

Create then the Color Balance Adjustment Layer.

Now we can select al the layers and group them together(Control / Command + G) to keep the layer pallet organized.

It's time to work on the upper and lower bars of the wallpaper. You can put these bars in a different position or size, depending on how you want your wallpaper to look like.

We will start by creating a new layer on top of the group created in the last step. On this layer we will make a rectangular selection with the Marquee Tool(M).

After that we will invert the selection, to get the borders area selected. In order to invert a selection we will right click on the image with the Marquee Tool selected and chose the option "Select Inverse".

We need to add some kind of texture to the borders. We need to open the group where the original screen shot is, duplicate it and move it on top of all the other layers. The whole image should look just like before we edited anything. Now it's time to cut the new layer up a bit.

We will select the contents of the black borders by Control / Command clicking the border layer, and with the screenshot duplicate that we made before selected, we will invert the selection.

After we made the selection, we should have something like this:

Pressing delete will delete all the content that are not over the borders.

Time to add some filter effect. We will use color pencil filter (Filter->Filter Gallery...) with the following settings:

We need this borders to look darker, so we will change the opcity options of the filtered layer to 20~25% (Layer->Layer Style->Blending Options).

It's time to add the last effects to the borders. First we will add a drop shadow to the black borders. Selected the borders layer and apply the following drop shadow (Layer->Layer Style->Drop Shadow)

Then we will make a new layer on top of all others and reselect the selection we made earlier (by grabbing the Marquee Tool, right clicking the image and choosing Reselect) and fill it with white..

This time we will have to deselect the loaded selection in order to archive the effect I want to show you. To Deselect simply click on any point of the image. After that apply two Radial Blurs in the following order (Fitler->Blur->Radial Blur).

We need our little Reselect Trick once again, this time with the white layer selected. After reselecting, press delete and this is the effect that you should all have:

And our last thing to do is adding some kind of text to the bars.

Just grab the type tool, hose a font that looks good and is on your taste, and write something like "World of Warcraft Noobs" on the top bar.

The simplest and easiest way of creating good font styles is by using layer styles. (Layer->Layer Style). The fisrt thing that we are going to do is set the fill opacity to 0% (Layer->Layer Style->Blending Option).

After that, we will add the following outerglow effect (color used is "#cc6600").

And the following inerglow effect (color used is #ff9900).

And finaly the following gradient overlay (colors used #ffcc66 and #ff0000)

And voila! Your are done! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and that you learned a few things about photoshop and how to use it to create quality wallpapers!