I enjoy partaking in graphic design and manipulation as a hobby. A pretty recent creation of mine is this Lois & Clark wallpaper featuring the superhero in both his identities.
![[Linked Image]](http://img11.deviantart.net/1257/i/2017/146/b/c/clark_kent_and_superman__dean_cain__wallpaper_by_paperechidna-dbaj35c.png)
To download, go here:
Clark Kent and Superman (Dean Cain) Wallpaper (Don't use the mini preview above, it's small so it won't look as good.)
The wallpaper is 1366 x 768 because that's my laptop's screen resolution. Hopefully that looks decent on your screens too
Programs used:- GIMP
- Paint Shop Pro X9
- Inkscape
A pretty substantial amount of work went into this. The first thing I did was cut out the background from a screencap of Clark Kent. I was doing this using GIMP, a 100% free all-purpose image manipulation program, and I wouldn't have a problem recommending it if you
really don't want to spend money, but unfortunately it's also kind of tacky and has a pretty poor user interface, so it was literally in the middle of doing this that I decided to break down and buy Paint Shop Pro X9 (the most recent version of Paint Shop Pro)! I had been using Paint Shop Pro 9 (plain old 9, not X, lol), a program that is about 10 years old, for quite a long time before when it suddenly stopped working, which is why I started using GIMP to begin with. But man, PSP feels so much better to use, and it feels good to be actually using the modern version of it too. Paint Shop Pro is of course a Photoshop-like program that is not quite as advanced as Photoshop and substantially cheaper (especially these days when Photoshop is ONLY available on a subscription service and can never be permanently owned).
After getting the new PSP, I decided what to actually do with the image I was cutting out. That's right, I didn't actually know what I was going to do with the background-removed image of Clark when I'd started! It was just after I'd finished and realized I had gone through all that work that I knew I had to, y'know, actually have a purpose for it. So of course, I decided to make a wallpaper, and the concept of including both Clark and Superman on it came pretty easily. I found a good screencap of Superman I had taken and then proceeded to cut it out, which was much, MUCH easier than Clark, which is probably both because of using PSP instead of GIMP and because the Superman image had a less busy background than the Clark one. For Superman, I just used PSP's handy and quick Image Extractor tool to make a layer mask (as the tool is not perfect, I couldn't just use it by itself, though it did come awfully close). With Clark, I had made a layer mask in GIMP by painstakingly drawing around his entire silhouette with the pen tool. Oh, and since Clark is in 3/4 view in this picture I had to take some time to cut out the empty area behind his glasses, lol. I also made some adjustments to the images (brightness, color saturation, smoothing, etc.), as being taken from a decades-old low-resolution show that probably didn't have ideal lighting in every scene, they needed a little bit of work to look their best.
The most significant component of the wallpaper other than the Clarks is the S-shield. I "had" to put it in because in order for Superman's size and position to be the same as the Clark picture I had chosen, I had to choose an image where his S-shield can't be seen. It was important to me that it specifically be the version of the S-shield from Lois & Clark. To make it, I used the pen tool in Inkscape (a free vector images program...which, like GIMP, is a tiny bit tacky, but overall I'm pretty happy with it) to carefully trace over a screencap of the show, thereby creating a vector image (that is, an infinitely resizable one, so that it can be as big as you want and still look great with no nasty pixelation). When I put it in PSP, I used the bevel effect on it, spending some time to figure out the right parameters to create the best effect.
The fading effect on the bottom of the picture of the Clarks was created using a gradient and, again, a layer mask! Putting the stars in the background was a little inspiration that hit me due to that little clip the show plays of the Superman logo appearing on a starry sky while a meteor flies past, and because I guess I felt there needed to be something in the background other than a solid color. The stars photo is an image I found on Pixabay, a 100% free (not even credit is necessary!) image resource that I highly recommend.
So, yeah! Overall it was a lot of fun to make and I'm totally looking forward to undertaking more Lois & Clark (and other Superman series) graphic projects. It was a satisfying endeavor both on a compositional level and in terms of using programs to their best potential. A great way to "break in" Paint Shop Pro X9. In the past, I have made a couple of Superman wallpapers but this is my first Lois & Clark one. Something I've noticed I love doing is extracting nice images I find directly from a show or comic and doing what it takes to cut out the backgrounds and pretty them up significantly for further use rather than using already discrete and ready-to-go official artwork. I did this both with
this Superman: The Animated Series wallpaper (using an image from a screencap) and
this Golden Age Superman wallpaper (using an image from a cover). It's a fun challenge and gives me an infinite breadth of cool images to choose from that would otherwise be unavailable. Doing it with a live action show such as Lois & Clark increases the challenge in some ways, and I think I like that! I'm sure I'll later do one for the George Reeves show, which will probably be even
more challenging because it's in black and white (the seasons I like, anyway)!
Anyway, I'll be sure to share any more L&C graphic creations I make here. I'm also open to suggestions for future projects if anyone has any to share
