Pattern Tiles

Create Seamless Pattern Tiles
with Fractal Design Painter

This tutorial will teach you how to create seamless pattern tiles using the paint program Fractal Design Painter.

1. In Painter, select File/ New. Create a small new file, say 100 pixels by 100 pixels. Select Edit/Select All (Ctrl+A on Windows, Command+A on the Mac) to select the entire image area.

2.Next, from the Art Materials Palette, select Pattern, then select Define Pattern. Then, paint away using any colors or brush choice you like. Each paint stroke will automatically wrap around the edges of the image, creating a seamless pattern tile. You can continue to paint until you're happy with the results.

3.If the image is to dark or has too much contrast to use as a background tile, select Effects/Tonal Control/Brightness-Contrast. Select File/Save as Gif to save your seamless background tile.

This is a simple, easy way to create many unique, hand painted pattern tiles for your web site.Experiment, and have fun!

Create Seamless Pattern Tiles with PaintShop Pro 4.1

This tutorial will teach you how to create seamless pattern tiles using the paint program PaintShop Pro 4.1, a shareware program available at http://www.jasc.com.

1. Select File/New, and create a new image at least 100 pixels by 100 pixels in RGB color. Create a texture by experimenting with brush strokes and paper texture selections.

2. Now you have a nice texture, but it isn't seamless. To create a seamless pattern, first make a selection using the Selection tool. This selection should be in at least 30 pixels away from the sides of the image. Then, select Image/Special Effects/Create Seamless Pattern. The resulting cropped image will be a seamless pattern.

3. Chances are that the texture you selected is too intense to use as a background on a web page and still have text that's legible. To fade the tile, select Colors/Adjust Brightness-Contrast. Raise the Brightness number and lower the Contrast number.

4. Select Colors/Decrease Color Depth, and save this as a gif file.

You can create dozens of interesting seamless pattern tile backgrounds in just minutes in this way.

Create Seamless Pattern Tiles
with Corel PhotoPaint 5 Plus
or PhotoPaint 6 or 7

This tutorial will teach you how to create seamless pattern tiles using the paint program Corel PhotoPaint 5 (Plus version) or Corel PhotoPaint 6 or Corel PhotoPaint 7.

1. Open an image or photo to begin. You might want to start with some of the clipart or clip photos that come with Corel PhotoPaint. You'll be generating seamless pattern tiles from this image using a filter set built into Corel PhotoPaint.

2. Select the entire image using the Rectangular Mask tool. Next, select Effects/Artistic/Terrazzo. The Terrazzo filter will create a seamless pattern tile from your image. Experiment with the Symmetry and Feather settings. When you find a tile that you like, select Save Tile. You can continue to experiment with different settings and saving the results, thus generating many seamless patterns from the same image. You can only save tiles in the .BMP format from within the Terrazzo filter, so you'll need to open the .BMP files and resave as a gif files later.

3.Open the .BMP file you've created. Chances are that the texture you selected is too intense to use as a background on a web page and still have text that's legible. To fade the tile, select Effects/Colors Adjust/ Brightness-Contrast-Intensity. Raise the Brightness number and lower the Contrast number.

4.Select Image/Convert To/256 Colors, and save this as a gif file.

You can create dozens of interesting seamless pattern tile backgrounds from the same original image in just minutes by following these steps. Experiment, and have fun!