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Creating a muted seamless background with texture (Much kudos to Nanette who discovered this idea back in the days of PaintShop Pro5 and who showed this to me first)
To start by giving you everything you need to do this tutorial I have created a zipped file containing the image above. (Just click on the image) Open Paint Shop Pro and load up this image from where you keep your stationery images. You are able to see from the bottom right of status bar the dimensions of this image. The figure we are really interested in is the height - in this case 338 (in pixels which you will ideally be working with)
Create a new image 1024 pixels wide and the height of this image, i.e. 338 pixels high. Go back to your wolves image and click on Effects>Image Effects>Seamless Tiling... This brings up the Seamless Tiling dialogue window:
Within this window you have the option to tile from the corner, edge or midle outwards. I left the default settings as is in this case . . . . By clicking on the Show tiling preview you can see the result in more detail . . . .
You can toggle between the result of tiling and the image as it was by clicking on the Show original tick box . . . . When you're happy with the result click on "OK" and the Seamless Tiling dialogue window will close and you will see the result . . . . . .
Save this file as a BMP file to your Textures Folder within the Paint Shop Pro Folder List.
You will need to specify the format when saving this file from PSP8 as there is no default format setting. i.e. in the Save As browser window - browse to the Textures folder and type in wolves and choose "Windows or OS/2 Bitmap (8.bmp) from the dropdown menu to save the file. Part 2 On your Paint Shop Pro desktop you will need the original image of the wolves which has been converted to seamless tiling and you will have the blank 1024x338 image which is to become the final image. Click on the header of the blank image and then select the Floodfill Tool. You now want to set the pattern to floodfill with. To do this click on either the foreground or the background colour swatch of the Materials Toolbar:
This will produce the following Option mini-window: Click on the Pattern Tab which will change the Options Mini-window to this:
Click on the downarrow beside the last pattern used window . . . this will cause the window to expand to include all current open images and all Patterns available in your Patterns folder to appear as thumbnail images within a scrollable window.
Choose the wolves.bmp image thumbnail and click "OK" to close the dialogue window. Now we want to control the way the floodfill tool fills the back ground and we can do this via the Tool Options Menu which will be available for the Floodfill Tool when we selected it . . . . .
You will want to change the setting to the screenshot below
Choose the RGB Match Mode and set the tolerance to 100. Leave opacity at 100 percent and we're going to want to use Normal blend mode. Using the flood tool we can now fill the prepared background strip.
Use the floodfill tool to flood the blank 1024x338 image. This just creates a repeated image across the width of the blank strip but as it stands this would be both too loud and flat for use as a background so we are going to add some texture to liven it up. Click on Layers and add a new raster layer. Click on the floodfill tool if it is not already selected and return to the floating Toolbar Palette. This time select Solid Fill. Use your Eye Dropper tool to select a colour for the background by right click somewhere on the original wolves image . . . . . . I went for a pale hue of the blue. But it really does not matter too much. By right clicking you adopt this colour for use as a background colour. Right click on the blank 1024x338 image and you will see the repeated image disappear beneath this now coloured in top layer.
Now to add some texture we are going to go to Effects >Texture Effects > Texture and select the image of the wolves which is now available as a BMP texture via the drop down arrow beside the thumbnail preview within the Textures Dialogue window.
Choose it and okay the use of the Effect. The relief (or depth) of the texture is a personal thing and with Edit>Undo Texture Effect you can play around until the aspect is how you like it. I used the settings in the above image:
You will see that texture has been applied to the image but it is a bit lackluster - so lets go to the Layers Palette and you will see that the current New Layer is highlighted and to the right of it is a horizontal slide control for opacity. Draw back the opacity from 100 percent and as you decrease the opacity the background layer will show through. There is a happy medium where the amount of texture on the top layer enhances the colour of the bottom/background layer and vice versa. It is somewhere about the 60 to 70 percent mark but this is purely personal choice. Save the 1024x338 image as wolves_bkgnd.jpg (JPEG format to keep 16 million colours/24-bit resolution but also to compress the file size). You can either merge the layers before saving or let PSP8 ask you first . . . . you want to merge all visible layers. You now have a vertically tileable background with pattern and texture and one of my favourite ways of presenting stationery. This is the result: (Reduced in scale of course (click on the image to save it)
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