The Professional ~ OpenSource
FREE Image Editor

Professional Functionality
Modular Interface
Easy to Download & Understand
Plenty of Tools
Extendable Features Via Plugins

Clicking this Download button starts InstallIQ™, it
manages your installation. Learn More

GIMP Tutorial #5 – How to Create your Own Abstract Wallpaper with GIMP

GIMP is such an amazing image editor with professional features that makes you think why should anybody pay for expensive pieces of software when you can get GIMP for free, yes it's true and almost embarrassing that this tremendous image manipulation and retouching tool-set is just for free. So, put on the safety belts to your eyes because I'm going to take them for a ride!! In this new tutorial of GIMP I'm going to tell you how to create an astonishing abstract wallpaper for dressing up your desktop GIMP-Style.

First things first, have you got GIMP installed and running on your machine? No? Well go to the download button up there and click on it, when you are done with that come back and go on reading.

Hands on! So, assuming that now you have GIMP, what you have to do is to open it and create a new image by going to File > New... in the Image menu, in the window that opens you can adjust a few things, the most important is the new image's size which should fit your monitor resolution, as a guide line, 1024 x 768 should fit most displays.

Click OK and immediately select the Bucket Fill Tool and click on the new image. This will get you a black background for your wallpaper.

You have now the background for your abstract wallpaper, what we are going to do next is to select the colors for the image, go to the Foreground & background tool and click on the black rectangle, this will open the color selection dialogue box, as you can see for the first color I selected a turquoise-like color but you can select whatever you want, it will be better if it is a bright color, avoid dark ones because the image will not make enough contrast over the background.

Now for the foreground I selected a gray-pink color see it in the next screen capture.

Colors set, let's move into the image itself, this will be done by a flame rendered filter go Filters > Render > Nature > Flame...

Here comes the part where you can play a bit till you get the image you like in the Flame window click the Edit button and you get the Edit Flame selection options, click repetitively on the Randomize button and see what happens...

Click OK when you selected the one you liked most but take your time and search there are so many variants. It'll take you back to the Flame options here you can adjust the size and position of the image by clicking on the Camera tab.

And finally in the Rendering tab you can adjust other parameters like brightness, contrast etc play a bit with them till you find it appealing.

Click OK and a few seconds later the image will appear in your new image. Nice huh?

All you have to do to finish is to export the image in a format that you can use for your wallpaper, I recommend JPG but many other work too, you can also use PNG, BMP, etc.

The final step is to apply your new image as a desktop background, browse to the folder you saved the wallpaper and right-click on it from the popup menu select “Set as desktop background”

And Voilà!! your new background is displayed.

Final Words

Creating a new wallpaper for your desktop background with GIMP is not only easy and straightforward but also fun and creative task. Free your imagination with abstract backgrounds, GIMP is your friend!!

Download GIMP now and start creating, click on the “download now” link right below and enjoy!