While I’ve been happily using it, I wanted something with a bit more colour, but still with the natural wood. I stumbled across this colourful wallpaper, which turned out to be “Catch the Beat” by StaredownStudios, and wanted to combine the colours with the wood.

This is what I came up with:

Download

1600×1200

1280×1024

1280×800

1920×1200

Update

On some computers I prefer the colours to be at the top rather than the bottom. So I made a flipped version. I think i prefer it to the original in some ways.

Flipped version: 1600×1200

Flipped version: 1280×1024

Flipped version: 1280×800

Flipped version: 1920×1200

Any other size requests?

Update 2

Following a request from LOSTman, I’ve done a few iPhone versions of the wallpaper.

1. Colour Wood iPhone

2. Colour Wood iPhone – flipped

3. Colour Wood iPhone – alternative

Click the icon to download the action. If you want to know what the action does, then read on.

How it works

Start off with the basic image

Add a Gradient Map adjustment layer

Choose the “Copper” gradient, which should be in the default set

Make sure you tick “Reverse” and “Dither”

Set the adjustment layer blend mode to “Soft Light”

That’s it! It results in a nice, slightly vintage look, which is subtle enough to not need any further adjusting, most of the time. Obviously it’s not suitable for every photo – it warms the colours, so if the photo is already quite warm (for example, an indoors photo, with no flash), then it will likely ruin the picture.

I have the action set to one of the function keys (F6), so I can quickly press that to see how the photo looks with the slight vintage colours.

Before looking at some more before and after shots, I suggest experimenting with Gradient Maps yourself. Load some of the other gradients that come with Photoshop and scroll through them with the arrow keys. The image should update in real-time so you can see how the different gradients look on the photo.

More examples

Video

High resolution version

Another GIMP tutorial. Based on the earlier Photoshop version showing how to get vintage colours using Curves. I’ve tried to recreate it almost exactly – even used the same photo.

The recording process went surpringly well in Ubuntu. I didn’t even need to take it into Vegas for editing. Just recorded with Xvidcap at 640x480px 30fps then added the music and fade out at the end with Avidemux.

And because I uploaded it at the full resolution, you can watch the video in high quality on Youtube if you add &fmt=18 to the end of the URL (Thanks Lifehacker).

Or you can just click here to view the high quality version.