Over the next few weeks, I may be MIA. One, because my wife is having surgery, and two, Diablo III is coming out! Let’s create a wallpaper to celebrate it’s release!

Create a Diablo 3 Wallpaper in Photoshop

The Setup

The size of you wallpaper is completely up to you. It really depends on the resolution of your monitor. Check your System Preferences or Control Panel to see what size your desktop is. For the sake of this tutorial, I’m going to be designing at 1280 x 720.

When your document is ready to go, it’s usually a good idea to drop in the basic shapes.

- The background color for this document is set to: #311411
- A rectangle was drawn out at the bottom of the document, with the color set to: #771307
- A smaller rectangle was placed right above, with the color set to: #140604

The Images

When your document is laid out, it’s time to find the images you’re going to be using!

The Map

Starting with the bottom rectangle, I chose to use a map of The Sanctuary, found over at Wikia.

Once you have brought the map into Photoshop, place it overtop of your red rectangle layer, right-click on the layer, and choose Create Clipping Mask. This will place your image inside the red rectangle.

Once it’s inside the rectangle, experiment with the Blending Modes to blend the map with the red. Multiply worked quite well.

The Texture

Next, we’re going to find a texture to use on the smaller rectangle. Over at CGTextures.com, I was able to find a nice mural texture!

When the texture is placed into Photoshop, make sure to place it above the smaller rectangle layer, then duplicated it several times until it fills your document, horizontally.

When your texture is in place, merge the duplicates together by selecting them all in the Layers Panel (Command/Ctrl+click on the duplicates) then using the Merge Layers option in the Layer menu, or Command/Ctrl+E. After the layers have been merged, Clip it to the smaller rectangle layer to place it inside. (Right-click on the layer > Create Clipping Mask)

When the layer has been clipped, you are still able to move it around to get the perfect placement. And just like on the previous image, changing the Blend Mode will blend it nicely with the rectangle. Soft Light looks nice.

Now to give this shape some depth, you may want to add a Drop Shadow to the rectangle that the texture is sitting inside (the smaller rectangle).

The Background

The image you use for the main background should be the focus of your wallpaper. I’m going to be using one of the official artworks from Blizzard’s website.

When your main image is in Photoshop, make sure it’s behind all current layers, except the red background layer.

Just like previous images, changing the Blend Mode can really help give the wallpaper a nice ‘mood’. Soft Light worked for this image as well.

The Logo

Of course, what’s a Diablo 3 wallpaper without the logo! Again, this was found over at Blizzard’s official website.

Once you bring the logo into Photoshop, place and resize it where you would like it to appear.

Now there are a few ways to remove the black background from the logo, but because the background is black, and the majority of the logo is not, we can simply change the Blend Mode of this layer to Screen.

And that does it! Your very own Diablo III wallpaper, created in Photoshop!