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I found this image of a Windows Vista Wallpaper made by Pher-D on deviantArt (who’s work is pretty spectacular and you should all go check him out). Anyway, I thought this look was pretty interesting. I liked the rainbow ribbon background and the classic reflection is always a popular look. I thought to myself, I can do that! So, I tried it, and although my stripes aren’t exactly like Pher-D’s, I came pretty close and found a way to take it a step further. So here is what I did…

First, I started with a new document that was 1280 x 1024px at 72dpi.

Next, I created a new layer and with my gradient tool, I filled that layer with the Transparent Rainbow gradient.

Now, I added noise to my rainbow layer to start making the stripes. I went to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and set the filter to the following settings.

Now I went to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and set that to the following settings.

Now I needed some more definition in my stripes. So I went to Filter>Artistic>Poster Edges and set that to the following settings.

Now I added another Motion Blur set to the same settings I had before.

I felt like I was getting there only now the dark lines were a bit too strong for me so I decided to soften them up with a little Gaussian Blur as follows…

And then a final Motion Blur.

Now, I dragged my Layer 1 to the New Layer icon at the bottom of my Layer’s Pallet to make a copy of it. Then I hit Ctrl/Cmd + T on my keyboard (for Transform – which can also be found under the Edit Menu). I reduced the Height of this layer until it was about a third of the way from the bottom of the image. Then I clicked and held the Shift and Ctrl/Cmd keys and dragged out the two bottom corners. My Transform box and layer looked something like the image below. Then I clicked OK.

Now, this is where I started to branch off from the original image and got funky with it. I double clicked on the "Layer 1 copy" layer to bring up my Layer Styles pallet and added an Inner Shadow and an Outer Glow with the following settings.

I now had something similar to rainbow fabric with a fold in it. <see below>

Now, I wanted to add a neat spotlight effect to it. So, I created a new layer (Layer 2) and using my paint bucket, I filled this entire layer with a 30% Gray.

Now, I went up to my Filter Menu and choose Render>Lighting Effects and set it to the following settings and then clicked OK.

To soften the hard black edges, using Ctrl/Cmd + T (for Transform) I scaled my Layer 2 to a 10% increase. Then I set the Layer’s Blending Mode to Hard Light and dropped the Opacity down to 60%.

Now, in the original graphic the font they used is called Luna Bar and can be found on daFont.com. I knew this font instantly as I often work with it. It’s one of my faves as well. However, when it came time to create the text, I couldn’t bring myself to type "Windows Vista"; and wasn’t it Apple that was known for the rainbow anyway? I loaded Luna Bar, set it to a 90pt size and typed out what I wanted to say in a pure White color. I then double clicked my text layer and added an Outer Glow layer style with the following settings and clicked OK.

I then clicked and dragged my Text Layer down to the New Layer icon to make a copy of it. I then went up to the Edit Menu and chose Transform>Flip Vertical and then while on the Move Tool I just hit the down arrow until my text was directly beneath the original Text Layer. I then set the blending mode of that later to Soft Light, and then added a Mask and used the black to transparent Gradient (make sure you are selected on your Mask and then start at the bottom and draw a vertical line up with your gradient tool) to fade out my letters. I then dropped in the logo I wanted, repeated the glow, transform, and mask – and stepped back to read:

You can click the above pic for a larger view and feel free save it for a new desktop wallpaper.

Oh, and by the way, my gradient masks looked something like this:

If anyone runs into any issues trying to duplicate this tutorial, please let me know. I’m happy to answer all questions, and I hope you enjoyed this Rainbow Ribbon effect.