Working with Tools in Paint Shop Pro 8

A texture is an irregular pattern that simulates a textured surface such as grass, silk, burlap, bricks, or wool. Paint Shop Pro provides many textures for you, but you can also add your own. Because it's semitransparent, a texture must be laid over a color, pattern, or gradient. After creating a textured material, you can use it with the paint or fill tools to apply the texture to any object, selection, or layer. When needed, you can apply the textured fill or paint multiple times to darken the texture and make it more apparent.

As I mentioned earlier, you can create your own textures from any image. Simply save the image in any format and copy it to the Textures folder in the Paint Shop Pro 8 folder. If you have .TEX files from an older version of Paint Shop Pro, they will work too, if you copy them to this folder.

1. Click a Material Box

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

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   Tip - To remove a texture from the current material, click the Texture button below the Foreground or Background Material box in the Materials palette.

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2. Select Texture Option

   To add a texture to the current color, pattern, or gradient, enable the Texture check box.

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   Tip - For best results when using a texture, apply it so that it shows through opaque pixels, rather than transparent ones. For example, fill the layer below the texture with white.

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3. Select a Texture

   Click the arrow next to the Texture Type sample box and click a texture to select it.

4. Set Angle

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

5. Adjust Scale

   Adjust the size of the texture pattern by entering a percent in the Scale box. (A value of 100 displays the pattern at 100% or actual size.)

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   Note - If you set the scale to a low value, the pattern will repeat more frequently; use a large value to repeat the pattern less frequently. To make the plastic pattern more noticeable, I decreased the scale to 75%. If I had chosen a woven pattern, I might have increased the scale instead.

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6. Adjust Style and Click OK

   You can click the appropriate tab and make adjustments to the style of the material as needed—the color, gradient, or pattern you're using with the texture. After you're done, click OK to finalize your material choices.