I know a lot of people that create their own wallpaper graphics, and even more people that would really enjoy doing this, but don’t have the required knowledge. Today, we’re going to take care of this, and create a nice single-color “explosion” wallpaper, something like the image you can see below…

1. Press Ctrl+N to create a new document, with a size exactly 4 times larger than your screen resolution, and a white background.

2. Use the Gradient Tool to draw a vertical gradient. You can use any color you wish, but be sure to hold Shift when dragging, to get a straight gradient.

3. Now, go to Filter>Distort>Wave.

4. Check my settings below, but feel free to experiment with yours. Be aware that this step has the greatest impact on the final result!

5. Now, use Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates to create the “explosion” itself, using the Rectangular to Polar setting.

6. Select the upper half of the image, copy it and paste it into a new document that has exactly the size of your desktop.

7. Because the content you paste into this new document is larger, shrink it down to fit the canvas. You can play resizing the image layer you have just added as much as you wish. In my case, I distorted the image as you can see below.

Obviously, this can only be the beginning, since there are a lot of other things to do to improve your result, such as creating a copy of the “explosion”, change its color and blend it with the original, but I’ll leave this to you. Of course that I don’t mind at all if you’re going to comment and show the rest of us your result, in fact that’s exactly what I’m expecting, so…be creative and good luck!