Paint Shop Pro Seamless Tiles Tutorial
A Technique for Creating Seamless Tiles in Paint Shop Pro 7
Seamless tiles on the web are just like the linoleum ones on your kitchen floor, except that you don’t have to mop away the orange juice and milk stains to maintain the shine. Think of them as self cleaning. That’s not to say that web tiles won’t have you on your hands and knees. Making backgrounds for web pages is not hard. Making them seamless can be frustrating. This intermediate tutorial is just one of many ways to make seamless tiles.
Step 1 – Open Image
Scroll down and right-click on the left below image called “girl1.jpg” and save it to your hard-drive (“save picture as”). Open the image in Paint Shop Pro. Click the Retouch toolbar icon pictured below.
Retouch Tool
After doing this, you should see the Retouch Tool Options Palette. If it doesn’t appear after clicking the retouch tool on the toolbar (the finger above), go to the Paint Shop Pro menu bar and choose:
View > Toolbars > Tool Options Palette
Step 2 – Setting the Retouch Tool Options
Make sure tab 1 is selected and choose the settings below:
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| Shape: | Round | |
| *Size: | 80 | |
| Hardness: | 0 | |
| Opacity: | 100 | |
| Step: | 100 | |
| Density: | 100 | |
| Retouch Effect: | Push | |
*The size setting of the brush varies with image size.
Step 3 – Performing the Push
Place the cursor approximately between the eyes. This is important because you want the push to pickup as much of the face as possible without including extraneous material from the background (like the chair). She such a cutie!
Original (girl1.jpg)
Hold your mouse button down and push it around in a swirling motion until you see faces appear. Try to cover the entire area with faces that look similar because remember, the end result must be seamless. Don’t make the mistake of letting go of your mouse button until you’ve filled the entire area. If you have to restart, place the mouse button over one of the faces you just created and swirl it some more. You may want to drop the step setting (not below 40) to fill in areas that aren’t consistent.
Swirled (girl2.jpg)
Step 4 – Making the Image Seamless
Make a rectangular selection with the Selection Tool over the swirled faces the size that you want your seamless tile to be.
Go to Selections and choose Convert to Seamless Pattern. A new image will pop up that will hopefully be both nice looking and seamless.
Step 5 – Editing the Seamless Tile Image
The chances are, the newly created seamless tile image will need some touching up to get rid of edges or fill in gaps to truly be seamless. A tiled image that’s not seamless is noticeably ugly. A few careful pushes with the step setting dropped can correct much of the problem. Also, use the Retouch tool’s Soften and Smudge modes for smoothing and blending areas.
Step 6 – Lighten the Seamless Tile
To use the seamless tile as a background in a web page with dark text, you will probably want to lighten it. There are several ways to this. The easiest, is to go to Colors > Adjust > Hue/Saturation/Lightness and up the lightness. You can also make create a quick image of the exact size as your seamless tile and fill it with a lighter color, then use the Arithmetic function under Image > Arithmetic > Average to create a new lighter image of a different color.
Lightened (girl3.jpg)
Step 6 – Testing the SeamlessTile
How do you know if the finished product is actually seamless? Well, tile it. The easiest way is to set the image as wallpaper on your desktop. I use a freeware program called sTile, which allows quick and easy testing of tiles. sTile even allows you to merge edges and four-way flip a tile.
Another example of a seamless tile using this technique:
March 21st, 2008
I have Paintshop Pro 9, and I used to have PSP 8. It does not seem to have all the same functions, or I cannot find them. I have been dabbling with PSP9 and came up with some really cool tiles though. Once you get good at it you develop an intuitive feel for what to do to get the result you want. It just takes experience. Myself, I am just getting started with designing graphics. Making seamless tiles can become like an addiction. All day yesterday and late into the night I spent the whole time just working on an artsy Web template. It keeps me out of trouble.
March 21st, 2008
Douglas, I totally understand what you’re saying about graphics being addictive and keeping one out of trouble :)