We will make this background from a simple texture
that is included in Paint Shop Pro. You should have your PSPby now.a new file. Make it 250 by 250 with a white background I chose 24
bit color, but that is up to you. Since this background doesn't have much
detail and we don't want it to be very sharp, I would suggest planning
on saving it to JPG format, hence the 24 bit selection.
Now select the paintbrush and set the options to Brush Type: Normal, Size: 100, Shape: Round and Paper Texture: Lava. Your screen should look like this.
Now select a color. I am choosing a light Blue-Gray with a hex value of: A8B4C8 or in RGB that would be Red 168, Green 180, Blue 200. You can duplicate this color or choose something more to your liking, but keep it light.
This next part takes a little trial and error. Place the cursor in the window and swipe it across the from one side to the other, somewhere in the middle so that you can get a feel of how wide the swipe is and how fast to move to get a smooth effect. Clear the frame using (del) and try again until you think that you can keep it uniform.Try not to overlap your strokes or leave spaces between them. You should wind up with something that looks like this.
At this point I always like to take out a little insurance so I go to selections and select "Select All" and then go to Edit and select "Copy". Hit Edit again and then "Paste" then "As New Image". Now we have a copy as backup just in case. You can do your selection either from the original or the copy. It doesn't matter, but minimize the one that you aren't going to use.
OK. Now comes the good part. We are going to select a section out of this image that will be our seamless background. The effect in PSP uses the area around the selected part to match up the edges so that they will blend when tiled together. Once again this part will take a little experimentation. Remember to keep well away from the edges with your selection. You should keep the area small. I prefer to make the selected area a rectangle and not a square. Square selections always seem to look more like a checkerboard than a seamless background. The selection tool is that rectangle made with, what are commonly called, marching ants. Set the Selection Type to: Rectangle and the Feather to 0 like this.
Select an area and then go to Image, Special Effects, Create Seamless Pattern, and do it. Now your selected area is the new image. Save this to the directory where you put that blank HTML document as "back.jpg". Now edit the HTML body tags to put in the name of the file that you just created. It should be <body background="/spacer.gif">
Now you can load the HTML document in your favorite
browser and check your handiwork Don't be surprised if it doesn't look
just right the first time. That is why we saved the copy of the texture.
If you don't like the results, go back and paste again as New Image
and select again until you get something that appeals to you. As a final
note on this lesson. I like to blur the background just a little bit
so that the text and images on the page stand out a little more. If
you want to try this, just select Image, Filters, Normal Filters, and
either Blur or Soften. Experiment. Make a bunch of these until you feel
comfortable with the process.
In the next lesson we will try something a little different. If you have any questions or comments, post them in the GraphArt list. Wasn't that fun?
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