The Golden Wood: Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit graphics

(Well, that depends how you define 'frequently'... anyway, these are questions which people have asked me at some point)

If you have further questions, feel free to send me an email.

How do you make wallpapers?
There are a few basic pieces of advice for those who want to create their own wallpapers:

1. You need a good graphics programme. I have used both Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop. If you are looking for a free programme, I'm told that GIMP is worth a try.

2. You need to find high quality images to use in your wallpapers, or find a programme for making screencaps from your own dvds. Larger images are better: you can easily reduce the size of an image, but it is quite difficult to enlarge a small image and still have it look good. You can find links to some of the sites that I use on my links page. You can also find links to sites providing some of the fonts that I use - a variety of attractive fonts is always useful for a wallpaper designer.

3. Search the web for online tutorials for your graphics programme - there are a variety of good tutorial sites out there. Spend time experimenting with different effects, and don't worry too much about what your early wallpapers look like. Mine were terrible! Also hunt round the various wallpaper sites on the web to get ideas and to see what you think works.

Beyond that, you can email me to ask me how I achieved any particular effects in specific wallpapers. It may help to tell me which graphics programme you're using, but bear in mind I'm only familiar with PSP 7-9 or PS 7.

Would you make a wallpaper of ... ?
Unfortunately I no longer have time to take requests. You're welcome to email me with suggestions, but I can't make any promises.

May I send you wallpapers / graphics for The Golden Wood?
I'm sorry, but I only display my own graphics here. There are a number of reasons for this, the main one being that I do not own my own webspace, and do not have enough space to host large numbers of extra graphics. However, if you set up a graphics site of your own, I would be very happy to add a link to it in my links section.

May I put your wallpapers on my site?
Please contact me if you wish to put any of my wallpapers on your site. Please note that you will be required to upload the images to your own server - direct-linking to the images on this site is not acceptable. Please also link back to http://www.leavesofgold.co.uk/

May I use one of your wallpapers to create a layout?
The wallpapers aren't really designed to work as layouts, so I'd prefer it if you didn't use them in this way.

Could you provide wallpapers at different sizes?
I originally made wallpapers in 1024x768 as that seemed to be the most common resolution at the time; more recent wallpapers are available for a choice of resolutions including widescreen. I can't offer wallpapers in a large number of sizes because I have limited web space. However, if you have a different screen resolution, check out my instructions page for info about how to get the wallpapers to fit.

How do you skin your site?
Because I've been asked this a few times, I've written a tutorial, which you can find on my collective / portfolio site Well of Stars. Look under 'Tutorials' in the navigation.