Abstract Background
page oneI have a terrible time creating anything from scratch in Photoshop. If I use the painting tools, my efforts invariably end up looking like animal droppings. Here is a simple way to create beautiful backgrounds without using any brushes, or, thank goodness, the pen tools.
Below is an example of what we’ll end up with, but there are variations that will be shown which are quite different. I expect the Internet will do terrible things with the gradients in these images, so you may need to be forgiving, and use your imagination to appreciate how they might look in high quality print.
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Make sure you have your colors set to the default of black and white. If necessary, click the default colors icon in the toolbox.
I used the Swatches palette as a source for colors. If necessary, choose Window > Show Swatches to bring that palette to the front. I loaded the Web Safe swatches library by clicking the palette options arrow in the palette’s upper right corner and selecting it from the menu. Choose Append in the alert box that appears, to add the swatches to the defaults, instead of replacing them.
Click on a color you like in the Swatches palette to make it your foreground color.
Try and find a soft, pastel color. I picked a light blue. The swatch you click on will appear as your foreground color in the toolbox, as shown below.
Next, click on the gradient tool in the toolbox. In its options bar, choose the angle gradient tool. Its icon looks like this.
Access the gradient pop-up palette by clicking the little arrow to the right of the gradient thumbnail in the options bar (don’t click on the thumbnail). From the palette, choose the Foreground to Background gradient. It’s the very first one—in the upper left corner of the pop-up palette. Set the gradient’s opacity to 50 %.
Click anywhere in your white document, and drag to the edge of the image. Click again, anywhere in the document and drag to any edge. Keep doing this until you get something that looks interesting. You can keep trying as long as you like. The angle gradient draws a spiral gradient which goes counterclockwise from the line you drag. You’ll get the hang of it as you experiment. Try to drag in all different directions—left to right, right to left, start near the edge, draw parallel to edges, or drag very close to the previous gradient.
I ended up with the background shown below. This is the starting point. Added layers will give complexity to the design.
Continue on page two
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Copyright © 2004 by Jay Arraich.
All rights reserved.
All photographs copyright ©2004 by Jay Arraich
jay@arraich.com
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