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© 1999 by Ramón Bartschat. All Rights Reserved.
This is a recompilation of various effects, tips and tricks I stumbled across while using and studying Corel PHOTO-PAINT 8.
"All the roads lead to Rome" or "I did it my way!"
There are many different ways on how to achieve the same effect. The steps described here are the way I did it.
In any case, by following this example you will also learn a lot about PHOTO-PAINT and the way different tools are applied.
There are miriads of tile generators on the market today, some are very powerful and some are even free. (Editor's Note: The Corel TEXTURE utility is one of those utilities and it is included with CorelDRAW. We have a set of tutorials to help you learn it.) Many of them allow you to make so called seamless tiles. Seamless tiles are those that fill a background with no visible start or end, and no visible borders.
You can use the technique here described to easily make your own seamless tiles in PHOTO-PAINT without any plug-in or extension.
A word of caution: Many Internet sites have 'horrible' backgrounds to say the least. It is important to keep good taste and make the background not too evident. That is, the background should be a BACKground and not an eyesore. Use soft colors in your end-tile. When making the background image, keep in mind that it should be something secondary. (If the image is too vivid, apply a 50% Transparency for example)
For this hands-on exercise the following tools are very important:
"Image sprayer Tool" (Located on the "Paint Tool" Flyout)
"Object Picker Tool"
"Tool Settings Roll-Up" (CTRL-F8) or [View] / [Roll-Ups] / [Tool Settings] or Double Click on the "Object Picker Tool".
"Object Docker" (CTRL-F7) or [View] / [Dockers] / [Objects]
"Create New Object" button in the Object Docker or [Object] / [Create] / [New Object]
Rectangle Mask Tool
1. Create a new image, Color mode: 24-bit RBG color, Paper color: White, 600 x 600 pixels at 72 dpi
2. Set the Zoom level so that you can see the whole page (50% on my 800 x 600 monitor for example)
3. Define a Grid of 300 x 300 pixels (Select [Tools] / [Grid and Ruler Setup]) Enable "Show Grid" and leave "Snap to Grid" unchecked (not enabled).
The paper should now be nicely divided into 4 quadrants.
We will call them I-quadrant (Upper-Left), II-quadrant (Upper-Right), III-quadrant (Lower-Left) and IV-quadrant (Lower, Right)
4. Create a new (empty) Object with the "Create New Object" option. We will paint on this new object (layer) and not on the background. In the Object Docker this new object should have a name like: "Object 1" and should be automatically selected (red frame).
5. Pick the "Image Sprayer" Tool
6. Open the "Tool Setting" Roll-up (Hint: Double-click the Image Sprayer Tool)
7. Load your favorite Image list (In this exercise we use the "Foliage" Image List) / In the first tab in the Tools Setup, choose from the Presets, or use the Property Bar (Load Image Sprayer List).
8. In the Tool Settings Roll-up click the second tab (Dab variation). Enter the following values: Number of dabs: 25, Spacing: 25, Spread: 75, Fade out: 0, Image choice: Random
9. Again, in the Tools Setup Roll-up, click the third tab (Orbits) Check (Select) Enable Orbits and make Number of Orbits: 4, leave the other parameters the way they are on their presets (defaults).
10. We will paint only in the IV-quadrant. As mentioned earlier, make sure that you are painting on the new object (Object 1) and not on the background. (Once you understand the principle behind this you may start in any quadrant for your future creations)
11. Place the cursor inside the MIDDLE of the IV-quadrant and click the mouse only ONCE! Now wait a little. (If you click more times or if you click and drag, the system will take quite some time to calculate everything, 25 dabs with 4 orbits are much work even for a PENTIUM!)
12. You will notice that the foliage will cover all or almost all of the IV-quadrant now. Our goal is to cover the whole quadrant and let the foliage overlap to the three (3!) other quadrants. If the first attempt fails then make another click. (If you do not like the result then "Undo" (CTRL-Z) the last step and try again. Since the actual look will be randomly generated no try will look like the other.
13. Now click on the Object Picker Tool, 8 small black handles should be around the selected object now.
14. Duplicate the object 3 times (CTRL-D) or [Object] / [Duplicate]
Notice in the Object Docker that the new objects will be named: Object 2, Object 3 and Object 4. The 4th Object will be selected (red frame).
15. Enable Snap to Grid. CTRL-Y or [View] / [Snap to Grid].
16. Select the object with the lowest number (e. g. Object 1) by clicking on it in the Objects Docker. Place that object in the I-quadrant by dragging it there.
17. Repeat that for Object 2 and 3 placing them in the II and III quadrant.
In other words Object 1 will be in I, Object 2 in II (or III), Object 3 in III (or II) and Object 4 in IV. By now you can already see our seamless picture.
18. Combine all objects with the background. [Objects] / [Combine] / [Combine All Objects With Background]
19. Choose the Rectangle Mask Tool and mask the area of the I-quadrant. (Since Snap to Grid is enabled this will be easy)
Click the copy button (or [Edit] / [Copy] or [CTRL-C] )
20. Select [Edit] / [Paste] / [As New Document] and continue working with this new document.
21. Select [Image] / [Resample] and reduce the size to 100 x 100 pixels. (Always try to keep the background tile small to reduce loading time on the Internet)
22. After resampling it is always good to sharpen the image a little bit. Select [Effects] / [Sharpen] / [Adaptive Unsharpen] set it to 100 percent and click OK.
23. You can now, for example optionally apply a 50% transparency to the object to make the background more pleasant.
Click the Object Picker Tool and set the "Object Opacity" slider - in the Property Bar - to the desired level of transparency.
24. Our seamless background tile is ready. Combine it with a white background. We can now either export it as a JPG or reduce the colors to paletted (8 bit) and save it as a GIF file. You have to try and compare file size, in the case of a "Foliage" background JPG gives the best compression results.
As mentioned earlier there are many ways on how to achieve the same results.
A. Ignore Steps 8 and 9 and just do it by hand. Manually fill in the IV-quadrant. This has one major drawback though, most of the time a certain (human) pattern will be visible, unless you take the time and make it look random. (I'd say let the computer randomize it, that's why I prefer the 4 orbits with the 25 dabs setting) A smaller dab setting will also work, feel free to experiment.
B. Or first mask the IV-quadrant (enable Snap to Grid to create the mask for that but do not forget to disable Snap to Grid again before continuing). Select the Image Sprayer Tool and in the Tool Setting Roll-Up set in the second tab Dabs:5, Spacing:25 and Spread:55. In the third tab enable Orbits and set 2 or 3 orbits. Then Select [Edit] / [Stroke] / [Stroke Mask] / [Middle of Mask Border]. Voilá!
So now, if you have a nice image map for the image sprayer go ahead and experiment.
Another good ready image list is "Gears". The examples you see below are made from Foliage (manually made) and Gears.
Click on any of the following tiles to test it.
100 x 100 pixels
128 colors
8341 Kb
Seamless tile
10% JPG compression
100 x 100 pixels
Seamless tile
6616 Kb
10% JPG compression
50% Transparency
100 x 100 pixels
6657 Kb
Seamless tile
10% JPG compression
100 x 100 pixels
4773 Kb
Seamless tile
10% JPG compression
50% Transparency
Feel free to use the tiles displayed here for non-commercial use. All I ask is that you send me an e-mail and let me know where you've used them.
Read more articles by Ramón along with a short bio.
Copyright © 1995–2013 Unleashed Productions, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
