Disney Haunted Mansion Background

Thank you for your interest in this background. Some one on the rec.arts.disney.parks newsgroup mentioned using the wallpaper from Disney's Haunted Mansion as computer wallpaper. I was interested in trying it out.

First, I had to get an image of the wallpaper. I decided the best way to do this was to go to Disney World in person! :-) I hate to admit this, but I actually used flash photography in the Mansion (shudder). It was on an e-ticket night, and no one was in the buggy in front of or behind me, so I hope it wasn't too bad. Anyway, I got the picture of the wallpaper. It was a little disappointing,though.

I didn't have a chance on the ride to get the picture centered properly, and the flash was uneven. I used Paint Shop Pro, an image processing program, to cut out the basic figure at the bottom and paste it onto the figure at the top. I also tried to even out the light and dark portions.

Now, I cut out the main figure, then carefully pasted copies of it onto the original, at diagonal corners. I figured I had to have exactly the same image so it would tile properly. I went over the image with Paint Shop Pro's retouching tools to get the colors as even as I could. I only did one half, because I figured the only way to get both sides exactly the same was to copy the right side, then flip that side over and paste it onto the left. After doing this, I just adjusted the overall contrast and brightness of the image to make the lighter and darker versions.

Of course, the images I worked with were much larger that these. I hope this gives you some ideas. I have seen many background images on the internet, and never seen how to make one. This method would only work with a repetitive image. If you can think of something else to try, I'd be glad to go back to Disney World to work on it!