First Tutorial on Creating Interesting Textures

welcome.jpg (6585 bytes)

It is often handy to have a few textures up your sleeve, or to be able to create them quickly and easily. You will only need Paint Shop Pro 5 for this tutorial. A demo copy can be obtained from the Jasc site.

Step 1		Open a new image with a white background. I used 100 x 100, but you may wish to go larger if you intend to resize.
Step 2		Add random noise to this background. Make it uniform and 100%.
Step 3		Convert this to greyscale, and then increase the color depth back to 16 Million.
Step 4		Go to Image Effects/Other and use Mosaic with the pixel size set to 4 x 4.
Step 5		Now apply the Dilate filter and then the Emboss.
Step 6		Add a new layer and call it Color. Flood fill this layer with some fairly deep solid color. To make this set I chose a rich brown.
Step 7		Adjust the slider on the Color layer until you can see the patterned layer below, and you have the color you want.
Step 8		Now go back to the background layer and play around with its brightness and contrast.
Step 9		Iterate on Steps 7 and 8 until you obtain the effect you want.
Alt A		Another option is to emboss without doing the dilate, this gives a slightly different effect.
Alt B		Yet another option is to Gaussian blur rather than dilate.
Alt C		Try using the motion blur, as another alternative.
		Below, are examples with different settings. They are all based on the same layer of random noise.

	Mosaic - 4 x 4 Dilate Emboss Color - 128, 45, 0 (RGB) with Opacity 50% Pattern - Brightness: +20%, Contrast: +20%
	Mosaic - 4 x 4 Emboss (no dilate) Color as above with Opacity 50% Pattern - Brightness: +20%, Contrast: +30
	Mosaic - 2 x 8 Dilate Emboss Color as above with Opacity 50% Pattern - Brightness: +20%, Contrast: +30%
	Mosaic - 8 x 2 Dilate Emboss Color as above with Opacity 50% Pattern - Brightness: +20%, Contrast: +30%
	Mosaic - 4 x 4 Gaussian blur with a radius of 0.50 Emboss Color as above with Opacity 50% Pattern - Brightness: +20%, Contrast: +30%
	Mosaic - 4 x 4 Gaussian blur with a radius of 1.00 Emboss Color as above with Opacity 50% Pattern - Brightness: +20%, Contrast: +30%
	Mosaic - 4 x 4 Motion blur with angle of 0 and 4 pixels Emboss Color as above with Opacity 50% Pattern - Brightness: +20%, Contrast: +30%
	Mosaic - 4 x 4 Motion blur with angle of 0 and 8 pixels Emboss Color as above with Opacity 50% Pattern - Brightness: +20%, Contrast: +30%

coffee-bar.jpg (2093 bytes)

I know that the differences between the above samples is pretty subtle, but they are there, and can be tweaked to get just the effect you desire.

coffee-bar.jpg (2093 bytes)

Okay, so just how did I make the border for this page? I used the texture which I generated in the first example. I used the FOOD! dingbat for the coffee cup. I then used a modified version of Mardi's cutout effect from the Webgraphics on a Budget site.

I used the eyedropper to grab a color from the texture. I deepened that a bit and used it to fill in the cutout. I then lightened the color quite a bit and used that for the drop shadow. I added another layer. With the cup still selected, I spray painted the steam, Gaussian blurred it, and then lowered the opacity. The rest is typical border stuff with drop shadows, etc.

coffee-bar.jpg (2093 bytes)

Any comments or questions are welcome. Contact me via e-mail.


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coffee-bar.jpg (2093 bytes)

First Tutorial on Creating Interesting Textures

This page was last modified on 08/28/98 04:01 PM CDT.