How to create a Fringe Wallpaper that is in the opening titles for the hit FOX T.V. show Fringe. A lot of people have asked me about this wallpaper, and I’ve told them that I would eventually write a tutorial for how to create it, so here it is!

Some Details

Difficulty Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Estimated Completion Time: 1-2 Hours
Notes: This tutorial is not for the faint of heart. I will be moving very fast, so if you are not very comfortable with Photoshop, then perhaps this tutorial is not for you.

Final Image Preview

Step 1

Create a new document (1920 x 1200) is a nice standard to work with. Fill in some colors blue (#095f76) green (#0a7d2a) and black (#000000), and then give it all a Gaussian blur of 200px to make sure it is blended nicely.

Step 2

In a new layer, add in some tan/white (#f0e5cc), give it a nice big Gaussian blur of 200px, and then set the layer opacity to 75%.

Step 3

Open up this Smudge Image and place it into your document. Size it up to cover your entire wallpaper. Remember to hold Shift so that it re-sizes proportionately. Set the layer blending mode to soft light.

Step 4

Create this brush:


Create a new layer, and paint around the entire document, making sure that you have a bigger brush towards the outside, and you scale down the brush (using the left bracket on your keyboard) for the center/middle… so that you have bigger dots on the edges with smaller dots towards the center.

Step 5

Create a new layer, and using black, paint around the edges to create a vignette effect. Use a 300px soft brush to do it. Don’t make it too even, notice mine is slightly non-symmetrical which makes for a much more interesting image, which is what Fringe is all about.

Step 6

Create a new layer, fill it with black, and go to Filter > Artistic >Film Grain. Create a grain of 1, highlight area and intensity set down to 0. Set the blending mode to screen, and the opacity to 25%.

Step 7

This is an easy step. Open this Ink Image and place it into your document. It is sized at 1920 x 1200 and the ink is already placed where I had it, so all you have to do is copy and paste… no moving required.

Step 8

You should now put in 3D text with your name or whatever. For this step, I will refer you to one of my other tutorials 3D Text In Blender and you can learn how I made that text, and then make your own with your name instead and then put that in your image.

Step 9

Another really easy step. Open up Rorschach 1 and Rorschach 2 and place them into your document. Once again, these are the exact layers that I used, so you don’t need to re-size them or move them around… they will be in the perfect placement. Set both layer blending modes to screen, and set the opacity down to 75% for both.

Step 10

Now add in some random scientific words, and you’re all done. I used a font called Myriad Pro with varied font weights, and text locations. Every text blending layer is set to soft light. I used the following opacity values:

HYPNOSIS: 85%
ESP: 75%
FRINGE: 100%
NEUROSCIENCE: 50%
PYROKINESIS: 50%

And that concludes this tutorial. If you have any feedback, or questions (it is very possible that you would because this tutorial is very fast paced) please direct them to the comments section below, and I or someone else will respond to you as soon as possible. Thanks for reading, and I hope you liked it!