Photoshop help

[fustercluck]

To the point. I want to make This image into a 1680x1050 wallpaper for my desktop. I don't want to stretch the image at all, it'd just be in the middle of the screen. Wanted to try and blend it onto a black gradient background but can't figure out how to do it. I suppose the only way to get the blue out of the image would be to cut out the characters manually and then just paste em onto some 1680x1050 black background I made? If that's the case, maybe it'd just be easier to somehow expand upon the existing blue textured background to fit my screen. I don't know how I'd do that though. I don't have whatever blue background the original artist used to make the image, and not sure if I can recreate it to look good.

I've pretty much never been able to do anything I wanted in photoshop - Still it's fun to fool around with. Would just be nice to know what I'm doing once in a while.

Wasn't sure where to post this, mods can move it if they want. Seems like there would be some good photoshop forums out there on the net somewhere but there really aren't. Just lots of inactive ones scattered all around.

 

[JasonSix78]

You could create a new image to your desired size, then drag your picture over onto the newly created 1680x1050 one. Before you drag the crazy ass mario image over, you can make your gradients or any other effects you want.

Here's a .psd file for you to play around with. The only thing I did was drag over your mario onto a black 1680x1050 background.

Text

 

[Jeff7]

Working......


Something like this?
Or have I misread the OP?

I used GIMP.

First I resized the image to 1550x936, then used a rectangular selection filter. It was set to use antialiasing, feather edges set to radius = 40, with rounded corners set to radius = 20.

Then I took that selection and pasted it on a black background. The blending was already taken care of by the selection filter.

 

[FDF12389]

Dude, thats a fugly wallpaper.

 

[state 08]

Took out the blue background, and saved as PNG to retain transparent background. Just paste over your Gradient for instant win!

itsamemario.png

just realized there a spec of blue in the top left area, and some right where his cape connects to his body.

I'm sure you can just erase that though... not to hard

 

[fustercluck]

Many thanks to the other night owls who were bored and decided to help me out

How did you cut out the characters, state?

 

[state 08]

90% with the Wand tool, and then rest was a lil manual labor using the Eraser.

 

[pcslookout]

There a cool website with people that will do this all for you.