Working with Tools in Paint Shop Pro 8 - Select a Pattern to Work With

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Like Windows wallpaper, a pattern is a small design or picture that repeats at regular intervals both vertically and horizontally. Patterns make great backgrounds for Web pages, greeting cards, business cards, brochures, and CD labels. Paint Shop Pro provides you with many patterns you can use as fills for shapes, selections, or layers, as paint for a painting tool, or as text. You can also supply your own patterns, even creating a pattern from an image if you want. Like gradients, patterns can only be used in 24-bit or grayscale images.

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Tip - If you want to use all or part of an image as a pattern, open it and select the area before beginning the following steps. To create your own pattern, save any image in any format and copy it to the Patterns folder in the Paint Shop Pro 8 folder. The pattern can contain transparent pixels if you like.

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1. Click a Material Box

   Click the Foreground Material or the Background Material box in the Materials palette. The Material dialog box appears.

2. Click Pattern Tab

   The Pattern tab might already be displayed in the Material dialog box; if not, click this tab.

3. Select a Pattern

   Click the arrow next to the Pattern Type sample box and click a pattern to select it.

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   Note - If you have other images open, they will appear as choices at the top of the pattern list. Any patterns you have created and saved to the Patterns folder appear in the Pattern Type list as well.

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4. Set Angle

   You can adjust the direction of the pattern repeat by entering an angle in the Angle box. You can also drag the control needle in the sample box to change the angle.

5. Adjust Scale and Click OK

   Adjust the size of the pattern graphic by entering a percent in the Scale box. (A value of 100 displays the pattern at 100% or actual size.) After making selections, click OK to save the pattern.

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Tip - If you set the Scale to a low value, the pattern repeats more frequently; use a large value to repeat the pattern less frequently.

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Figure 3.23

This chapter is from Paint Shop Pro 8, by Jennifer Fulton, (Sams, 2004, ISBN: 0672323893). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today. Buy this book now.

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