Motivation: Creating Patterns in PaintShop Pro
Feature: Paint Shop Pro 8 or Paint Shop Pro 9

One of the persistent problems in illustration and photofinishing is creating good background patterns. One nifty trick is to use portions of the image you are creating the pattern for to act as the patter's template. This has dual benefits - it incorporates some of the colours and curves from the larger image into its background - this can be striking if the color shading is made a couple of stops lighter or darker. We explore that very idea in demonstrating how to create patterns in PaintShop Pro here.

In the tutorials on placing images in text and lettering, the use of Patterns in PaintShop Pro was critical. Patterns can be used as fill just as on websites; but they are more powerful in PaintShop Pro because you can scale (enlarge/reduce) and rotate patterns to get just the fill effect you want. In addition patterns can be used with all paintbrushes as well as the Flood Fill tool. So this tutorial will examine some of the options available in creating and then using patterns in Paintshop Pro

The image to the left shows the starting image for floral background pattern. In the first exercise, no changes are made to the image - it is just adopted as a pattern as is. Now this is sometimes a good plan of attack because user may not want to tile the image but rather have it fill as much of a graphic object as possible. However, when users are interested in tiling then they should consider some of the tiling preparations noted below.

Simple Creation of a User Pattern

Load the image into PaintShop Pro. Resize down to 600-800 pixels if its a large image to keep the download size around or below 50K. Also scaling down produces interesting patterns for tiles if the image is not too large at the start. We use the image at the left.

Next make sure the Materials palette is showing (click F6 key or View | Palettes | Materials). This is one of the tricky steps in creating a pattern so we shall show the step in full detail. The screenshot at the left shows the Materials palette. The top color , royal blue, is the Foreground or Stroke color (the lower color is the background or fill color). We are changing the foreground color to a pattern by clicking on the small, round bullet icon on the lower left of the foreground color chip. As soon as you click on the black paint bullet a drop down emerges showing the different options for the foreground color - the shaded circle icon is for gradients, and the black circle with grid in it indicates patterns. Select the patterns icon - and the color will be replaced by the current default or last used pattern.

Double click on the current pattern and the Material Properties dialog pops up (see the screenshot immediately below. Notice that the Materials dialogs allows users to change the current Color, Gradient or Pattern properties. We want to change the current pattern and we are now in position to do so.

Creating the pattern once in the Material Properties dialog is ridiculously easy. Just press on the Add to Swatches button at the lower right of the dialog (see the screenshot at the left). Give a name to the swatch, we used YellaFlora in this case, click OK and the pattern is created for you by Paintshop Pro.

But in strange bit of programming shortsightedness, PaintShop Pro does not immediately use the newly created pattern. Users have to go to the top left and click on the the Pattern Pulldown and choose the new pattern from the the popup collection of thumbnails (not shown here).

Now to add coke bottle bottom lenses to the Jasc programmer's glasses - once they create a pattern - it is only available for this session of using PaintShop Pro. If you want to make the pattern permanently available you have to save it to the Corel pattern folder. That can be usually found at:
C:\Program Files\Corel\Paint Shop Pro 9\Patterns
depending on where PaintShop Pro was installed. Once you have saved the file to the pattern folder it will appear as one of the default choices of patterns. If you have a lot of patterns, users can add their own patterns folder. But be advised to have no more than 30-60 images in the folder depending on their size; otherwise the load up time can be painfully slow.

Now before you say okay to this dialog, try adjusting the pattern's Angle: and Scale: settings. You get a mini-preview of what effect it has on the pattern in the thumbnail - although the scales is only suggestive. Now say okay.

By the way when you click okay the pattern is ready to be used - so just click on File | New - get an empty canvas and then choose the Flood Fill Tool and pour it on and see how your pattern came out. That's exactly what we have done in the screenshot on the left. The scale effect is such that the tiled floral images of the pattern seem to be raised and stand out. This works well in some circumstances but not always. In the next section we show how to scale and then modify the images so that the borders blend together smoothly and the tiling is, well, seamless.

Creating Seamless Tiling

The whole idea behind seamless tiling is to create a pattern that looks like an Escher drawing - effortlessly covering the area it fills. Okay we exaggerate because the great Dutch painter and engraver does amazing mathematical transformations within his clever tilings - but at least with seamless tilings the tiled plain can look simply complete yet still fascinating.

So now that we have decided to do seamless tiling, it means that the image will NOT be used as a single fill object so we should start by resizing the image down to the 200-400 pixel range depending on how small the tiling will get. Next do any color corrections - not too contrasty, it makes the tile blending more difficult to do. Finally choose Effects | Image Effects | Seamless Tiling.

And up pops the dialog shown in the screenshot at the left. Now the Seamless Tiling dialog has a lot of settings but the most important is the blank option box Show tiling preview (see it in the screenshot at the left just above the Tiling Method. Be sure to click it on - next in the preview window which pops up, be sure to click on the negative magnifier value so it is set between 20-40% - this is the only way you can check the repeat pattern of the tiling effectively.

Now as mentioned, the Seamless Tiling dialog is a bit complex - here is the 80-20 rule. 80% of the time you are going to want to use the Corner Tiling method and the Direction should be set to Bi-directional - that is the tiling will be done both horizontally and vertically. Now the creative part comes with the Transition %, Corner style and Offset settings.

Let me suggest trial and error - and just watch what happens in the Seamless Tiling preview window. However, there is an important shortcut to all that trail and error - its the crosshairs that are visible in the upper left thumbnail window of the Seamless Tiling dialog just to the left. Move those crosshairs and the offsets change and so does the Tiling preview - very dramatically to say the least. This is the creative part. Adjust the crosshairs, Transition % and Corner Style to get the most pleasing tile.

Now sometimes all you want to do is tile an image either horizontally or vertically. In these cases, use either the Edge or Mirror Tiling methods. They work more effectively with vertical and particularly horizontal tilings.

However, even with these tiling methods, sometimes the edges are too contrasty or the matching sides are way too discordant. If that is the case you will have to do some work on the original image before going into Seamless Tiling. The most effective changes tend to be reductions in contrast, particularly at the edges and recentering the original crop to get more matching opposite edge and their lines and forms. On occasion its worthwhile to take a hint - the image just does not tile well - so try another.

In our next example, we use a vertical only tile, partly to see the effect but also because it will be needed for one of the images we are working on.

So before creating the pattern, we first modify the image using the Effects | Image Effects | Seamless Tiling command. In the Seamless Tiling dialog, we use a Mirror method on a Vertical direction tile. In thee Tile Preview window the tiling looks good so it is Okay-ed.

Then we go through the steps outlined at the top of this tutorials to create the vertical tiling pattern. So then the pattern is ready to try out - which is shown in the screenshot to the left. Here the view is zoomed in on the area where the vertical tiling pattern is being used. Note the diagonal pattern - this is achieved by setting the Patter Angle: to 45 degrees. Note the tile blends well on the vertical direction; but the horizontal seam is still visible. This happens to be the effect desired; but our next example will show a seamless bi-directional tiling.

The screenshot to the left shows a bi-directional tiling. The same starting image shown at the top of this tutorial was used. But this time when using the Seamless tiling we set the Tiling Method to Corner and the Direction to Bi-directional and set a very high value for the Transition % - nearly 80%.

The image was still off so we reduced the contrast - but increased the intensity/saturation of the image. However the tiling still did not work. The tile remained too edgy. It started to look like a case of image balking or refusal.

However, one more try was in order. This time the settings for the Seamless Tile were almost identically the same as before but with two slight changes. First the Transition % was upped to 88% and the Corner settings adjusted to Curves. Bingo - see the final tiling results in the screenshot at the left. Now I underline this extra effort because tilings are not always straight forward - the tithe for pattern tiling is planning, patience and playing around.

Playing Around with Patterns

I am always on the alert for images that make for good tiling and pattern possibilities. The image to
the left is from a Toronto Artist who works in glass, Paull Rodrique. Right away one can see the opportunities presented by the image. So I set to work to harvest some patterns from the image.

The new Crop tool in PaintShop Pro 9 picked up a cue from Photoshop and darkens all of the area outside the crop - this makes it easier to judge how good the cropped area will be for a pattern. Also the crop tool also allows users to drag and slide the crop area over the image so it is easier to spot a good candidate crop for a tiling pattern. Its easy then when a pattern does not tile well to just undo the crop and try again. However let me assure readers that Paull Rodrigue's glass work produced many great and different patterns.

The following pattern is just one of several that were generated from the Glass work. We did some post pattern smoothing and sharpening on this pattern to get an almost totally different style of pattern.

In sum it pays to play around in PaintShop Pro - particularly when creating your own patterns and tiles and other art craft like brushes and textures. One of the very nice aspects of PaintShop Pro is it is very state-conscious. users can save just about every dialog setting. Or the program remembers the last setting a tool was used with - and this acts as a default. That is a great time saver when repeating a color correction, sharpening setting or some special effect.

So lets summarize what we have learned about patterns and tiles in this tutorial. First and foremost, patterns are created when you know how to get at the Material properties dialog. But be careful, the pattern is not permanent until you save the file to Corel's (or your own declared)Patterns folder. Finally, it pays to use the Seamless Tiling effect to help prepare an image for tiling. Also the cropping and resizing tools are useful as well. Tiles and patterns add polish to your images and websites take advantage of them.

(c)JBSurveyer
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