Yes, you are looking at my first wallpaper in life smiley Please comment. I will gladly hear constructive criticism and tips on what and how to improve. Also please bear with the possible major mistakes, but I am still learning how to work in Photoshop and how to create walls.

Before I start talking about the wall itself, let me thank Keltosh for his enormous help on this wall (I have been bugging and pestering him with stupid noob questions on "how/what do i do/what does it mean" and frequently asking for step-by-step explanations). So thanks again Keltosh :]

I also thank Rikimaru-jp and Dufoe and Papy for their help and words of encouragment. smiley Guys you are wonderful ^^

Now back to the wall. While starting I had some concept in mind of what I want to create... well it did not turn out, as I lack skills. So this wall, lacks in originality, is simple, with stars and wings and so on... basic really. But I put my best in it.

The scan choice was really easy, I did not want to make a wall with an ecchi scan, there are already too many of them. I wanted to use artwork by an artist whose work I really value and respect. Thus I choose Chen Shu Fen's scan that I found here at Anime Paper. That scan was a hell to extract, esp. hair. I want you to know that it is also my first scan ever to extract. At first I did it using Shinta's tutorial with the polygonal lasso as a tool for the job. It did not look well, thus Keltosh taught me (once again thanks) how to use pen tool for extractio ^^ (As you see I am really a complete noob at it) and I later improved its quality following Shinta's tut. But still the extraction is not ideal. I realize that. But also I am not sure if I am capable to fix that. This is just the nature of the scan I used for this wall.

Then I created starry background following Greg Martin's tutorial. Then I searched through Deviant and found really good brushes - Galaxies by Sunira with which I created the nebula. What followed was my playing with stars and swirl brushes and later creating wings (also done accoring to Shinta's tutorial). Added sig and the title. And voila. My first wall ever is done smiley.

I first created that nebula background. As you all can see, the colors are very bright and intensive (is that a proper word?:/). Thus the sole scan looked pretty plain on the bg. I thought about the way to balance the color contrast between the scan and the bg, thus I thought about making the wings. They did they work. But it was not enough to balance it all. The whole wall just lacked smth. Thus I played with the swirl brushes and imho without them the whole bg looks unfinished, cause they make this king of "frame" for the whole wall.

Possible faults:
- I guess that some of you might not like the font, well I choose this one because I wanted the title to appear there in the bg but I did not want it to stand out too much.
- it has also been brought to my attention that I lack randomness with the big stars - true. I am gonna change this.

Time: around 32 hours (includes: tips, reading/searching for tutorials/brushes/fonts, and getting familiar with the photoshop)
Layers: 24
Program: Photoshop CS2

So comments and criticism welcomed :]

WALL: link

The extraction is decent. I can only discern two problematic areas, the right of the belt and the left arm. The background is good too. What I find problematic though are the wings. They do not look neither at a natural position nor of a color matching to the model.

So any actual tips on how to improve the extraction? cause as i wrote i did it with the 800% zoom and using the pen tool. still the scan is kind of tricky cause it in a way gets transparent (esp. look at the hair) and dissolves into the bg

Well, i suggest you change the background color, or somehow make her blend in the wall. Otherwise, its pretty good.

I'd think more about re-drawing/filling in the edges, rather than improving the extraction. Just use the pencil brush tool on a new layer over the top.

Re-drawing... hm... i did not thought of that... this is gonna take time >.> not that i am complaining

The nebula background is lovely! ^^ I think the background and the side is dark, but she is very white in the middle. Her white has a blue tint, maybe if you make it a slight purple tint in might blend in more with the purple in the back...