It's all well and good us telling you to brighten up your home with a new custom wallpaper, or add some depth to your living room with a feature design, but how on earth do you actually choose which image you want? We have a huge range of designs on our website. You're more than welcome to browse through these and choose any that you like, and most of our customers tend to find exactly what they're looking for.
But sometimes it's nice to have something a little more personal, something that means a lot to you or your family, something that is unique to your design. Here are a few tips on how to go about getting your own images for your new wallpaper.
Before we start: Copyright
Copyright laws are quite strict, and many people have found their design ambitions become unstuck because of image rights. Here's a handy tip to avoid any problems further down the line:
IF IT'S NOT YOURS, DON'T USE IT!
Simply saving an image from a Google search and using it as a custom wallpaper design is not allowed. Those images belong to someone else, and if they find out you have used an image without their permission, you can be fined. With the designs on our website, they are either original images made by our graphic design team, or we have asked permission from the owner of the images beforehand. Many of the images you find online are owned by nice people who don't mind you using their design at all. All you need to do is contact them (most websites will have a contact email on them somewhere) and if they say yes, you're free to go ahead with your wallpaper.
1. Photo editing software
You've searched through our site, you've found a great custom wallpaper, but it's not quite what you're looking for, or it just needs a few tweaks here and there. What do you do? You change it of course! There are plenty of photo editing programmes available on the market. Adobe Photoshop is most definitely the market leader, and if you have the money I would highly recommend it. It allows you to completely change an image, and there are helpful guides and tutorials all over the internet to teach you. If you're strapped for cash, however, there are a number of cheaper programmes available, such as Paintshop Pro, and some free ones you can download too, that allow you to edit and manipulate your image. Most of them are pretty simple to use once you get the hang of them, and this way you can take one of our designs, change it, shape it, and truly make it your own.
2. Stock Images
Now if words like 'cropping' and 'airbrushing' are completely alien to you, and contacting strangers for permission to use their designs sounds a little scary, then there are plenty of alternatives, one of which is using stock image websites like Shutterstock. These sites have huge collections of royalty-free images (that's images you can use for whatever design you want). Some sites, such as Shutterstock and iStock Photo, charge a small fee for their services. For this, however, you have access to a huge range of high-quality images that you can download, edit, and use wherever and whenever you like. There are some completely free image sites too, such as Morguefile and Flikr, but please double check these images. Some of them are free to use, but others have different terms and conditions that need to be met before you can download them.
- This design could come up in a search for 'trees' or even 'winter' or 'snow'.
Also, when you're searching and you can't seem to find the image you want, try using slightly different search terms. If you're looking for a tree design, for example, and your search for 'trees' hasn't come up with a lot, try looking for 'forest' or 'woodland' to see what else comes up. The wider your search, the more likely you are to find that perfect design.
- The best way to get the perfect design is to do it yourself.
3. Use a camera!
It sounds really obvious, but you'd be surprised at the amount of people who don't think of taking the photo themselves. It's the best way of getting the exact image you want. It saves you having to search the internet for hours for the design you want, or spending time and effort tweaking every last detail in Photoshop to get it just right. And quality isn't an issue either. Most cameras nowadays can take high resolution pictures with no fuss, lots of them are really easy to use, and there are some great bargains you can pick up.
Even phone cameras these days are highly sophisticated and can take brilliant photos. We ran a piece on the new Nokia Lumia a while back, looking at its 41 megapixel camera, and how easy it is to take a great photo on the move.
So there you have it. Don't sulk and argue about which shade of magnolia will look best with the beige carpet, or whether the grey of the sofa clashes with the mauve on the rug. Break away from the boring old design habits and choose something exciting.
You never know, you might like it!
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