Make Your Own Textures

There are a few different things you can do with this, so I guess I will make more than one tutorial for you.

This one is for texturizing a graphic, using the graphic itself, and texturizing your background with the same pic.

I am using PSP6, but I would think this would work about the same in 7.

1. Open any graphic, and size it to your liking.

2. Save your graphic as a .psd in your PSP Textures folder.

3.Name it something you will remember...( I will explain why I named mine what I did at the end of this tutorial... I don't want to confuse anyone yet. LOL!)

4. Now go to your Texturize plugin and use the dropdown to select 'Load Texture'

5. Choose the .psd file that you just saved, and adjust the settings to your liking. Keep the Scaling at 100% though. It may look 'off' in the preview window, but it won't be unless you change the size of your graphic. (Sometimes I try this with Invert checked too, for a different effect.)

Here is my graphic, texturized using the above settings.

6. Another way to use this is to add a side border to your graphic. (I added a frame first, so I had to re-size it back to the height it was when I saved it as a .psd)

7. I floodfilled my border with a gradient, but you can use whatever you want, but select the border while it is a solid color so that you can texturize it later.

8. With the border selected, Texturize it with the .psd file you made.

Here's mine...

OK, now for those of you who want to know why I named my .psd the way I did....

I have been doing this 'texture thing' for a long time now, and I found that the files pile up fast. I got tired of going in and removing the ones I would probably never use again, so I named one of them '1-2-delete.psd'

The numbers are so it always stays at the top of the list, making it easy to find.

Now when I go in to save one that I will only use once, I just click on that file name, and 'replace' it with the new file. Quick, easy, and my folder doesn't get bogged down anymore. One less thing to worry about.

I hope this tutorial helps someone learn something new... feel free to share it with anyone you want if it does.

Hugs,

Terri

Texturizer 2

Before I start this one, I want to say that someone pointed out to me that I should mention this...

It is always a good idea to make a duplicate copy of your original image before you start your project, and work from that. That way, you will never 'lose' the original. Also, SAVE your work in .psp format often! To do this, save your work right away as a .psp file, somewhere that you can find it again easily. (I save them to my desktop, that way, when I am finished, it is easy to throw it in the recycle bin.) Then all you have to do is click 'save' after each step that you want to preserve in case of a power outage or something. It is so frustrating to be almost done and have your puter freeze up and lose everything you have worked on.

Here is another way to use those .psd files....

1. Open any image you want to use.

2. Using the selections tool, select an area you want to use for your texture. (remember... not too close to the edge if you want it to be seamless)

3. Click Selections/ Convert to seamless pattern.

4. Now you will have a pattern to save as a .psd file in your Textures folder. I always check the height before I save this, and resize if I need to. The reason is this... Most of the finished stationery I make is a height divisible by 100px. To have something scrolling, or tiled, and seamless, the texture and the fill (if you use one) need to fit the height perfectly. In this case I resized the tile so it is 50px high. (If you plan to use the color version of this tile to floodfill your background like I did, don't close it after you have saved it as a .psd.)

5. To make my stationery, I opened a plain white image of 1000px wide by 300px high.

I then added a layer and floodfilled it using my seamless tile. I went to the layer pallet and faded the floodfilled layer until it was how I liked it, and then merged the layers by clicking Layers/ Merge Visible. (I copied and pasted my main graphic over this as a new layer before I did the screenshot, that is why there are 2 layers shown)

6. Make sure you have your bottom layer (merged, or background) active.

7. Apply your Texture at 100% for Scaling, it may not 'line up' in the preview window, but if it is 100%, it will on your background. Use whatever settings please your eye for the rest. (remember, you can always 'undo' and try a different setting.)

results..

8. If you haven't added your main picture, now you can copy and paste it on 'as a new layer', and position it with the mover tool. I added a drop shadow to mine. Then Layers/Merge/Merge All (flatten) and save as a .jpg

You can create textures from anything. Here is one I made from an ocean graphic.

(feel free to snag it, but you will need to make it into a .psd file because for this, it is a .jpg)

Here is how it looks applied to a solid color...

One more thing about these tiles you save as .psd files....

If you ever wish you had the color version to floodfill a background with, just use your PSP browse feature to browse to that Texture file and open it. You can use it just the way it is for floodfilling!

I hope this was useful, and again... feel free to share it with anyone you think it might help.

Hugs,

Terri

Coming soon... Texturizer 3