This tutorial will teach you how to make your very own, personalized and trendy wallpaper image for your iPod Touch or iPhone. For the record, the concepts learned in this tutorial can be used for any smartphone, with the corresponding change in dimensions for the wallpaper.


Start off by opening up a new document of size: 320 x 480 px. Yep, as you guessed, that is the iPod Touch / iPhone wallpaper size. If you are a real high definition junky, then you might one to increase the resolution from 72 dpi to around 200 or even 300 for a crisper looking image, but for the most part 72 should be more then fine.


Now that you have your canvas open, start off by finding a stock background image that suits your style. I will be focusing on a tech background since the Touch is a tech toy after all. I will be using this image.

Open up your background image, copy the part if that you like by selecting it via the marquee, and then paste it into your canvas.

Now lets personalize it my mimicking the iPod’s glossy style. First create a new layer, and then select the marquee and drag out a rectangle that stretches across the lower mid portion of the image as shown below:

Set your foreground and background to the colors shown below, select the gradient tool, and drag out a gradient so that it looks like something similar to what is shown below.

Now, with the rectangle still selected (i.e. marquee is still blinking), click on the create a new layer to create another layer, change your foreground color to white, and choose the following gradient option from the secondary toolbar:

Drag out a gradient and the effect is shown below:

Now use the marquee to select the bottom half of the white gradient layer and delete it:

Set the opacity of the black-grey gradient layer to an opacity of 85% and the white gradient layer’s opacity to 65% like shown below.

Next, find a picture of a person / object which you would like to add it into the canvas. I chose to add this chick. Feel free to add a picture of yourself if and only if you feel you are a hot enough equivalent to her.

Since we used the magic wand to delete the background, we can see she is a little rough around the edges… literally! To solve this, duplicate her layer, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur to apply a slight blur. Then set the blurred layer’s opacity to around 50%, and set its Layer Effects to “Darken”. The effect is shown below:

Now let’s add some text onto the gradient bar. Type out a new text layer (choose white) and set it to a nice font. Set the Layer Effects of the font to “Overlay”. Next, add the “Outer Glow” Layer Style with the following settings:

Now duplicate your font layer. Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical , and align it so that it is exactly under the upright text with a small space in-between as shown below:

Now rasterize the inverted text layer (right click on that layer in the Layers Window and Select “Rasterize Type”), set the opacity of the layer to 50%, choose a large soft eraser brush and fade away the bottom half of the layer. This should be your result:

Looking pretty good. The only thing annoying me now is that fact that shes wearing a pink bikini which looks awkward against the orange swirl in the background, so we shall doctor an orange bikini! Select a shade of bright orange as your foreground color, create a new layer, set its Layer Effects to “Linear Light” and using the paint brush , brush over her clothing neatly! Zoom in if you have to.

And there you have it! Simply sync it to your Photos using iTunes. Open up Photos on your iPod Touch / iPhone and find it, and set it as your wallpaper. Here is our beauty on display: