Fined grained backgrounds are very attractive and work well with cutout techniques for text, buttons, bars, etc. This tutorial will teach you how to make a template for a fine grained background using Paint Shop Pro 5 (currently in its beta release). The tutorial takes advantage of the layers option in this program. Before you start this tutorial, please go through my Layers tutorial so that you will understand the layers concept and the instructions.

To create this template:

  1. Create new graphic 200x200 pixels.

  2. Add a new layer and call it "Grain".

  3. Fill this layer with white.

  4. Choose Image|Noise|Add. Set to 100% and Uniform. Click OK. Your graphic should now look like this:

  5. Choose "Colors|Greyscale", then increase your colors back to 16 million.

  6. Add another new layer on top of the "Grain" layer. Name this one "Color". Your layers palette should now look like this:

  7. Save this graphic as a "psp" file (which will preserve the layers) and name it "GrainPattern.psp" or something similar.

  8. Copy this graphic (Shift D) and close the original.

  9. Working on the duplicate, flood fill the "Color" layer with a medium color of your choice.

  10. Now start playing with the opacity slider on the color layer. Drop it down until you start seeing the grain texture show through.

  11. Then lower the opacity on the "Grain" layer. Play with both opacity levers until you find a combination you like.

  12. When you have the background tile you like, choose "Save a Copy As" and save it as a jpg or a gif. Save a Copy As automatically flattens the layers for you.

  13. If you resize this graphic down, it will smooth out the grain and make it softer. Experiment until you find the effect you want.

For another interesting background that works well as a tile and with cutout graphics, make a copy of the "Grain" layer (right click on the layer and choose "Duplicate". Right click on the copy layer, choose "Properties" and name it "Embossed". With that layer selected, apply the emboss filter (Image|Other|Emboss).

I recommend starting with a graphic 200x200 pixels because this gives you room to resize it to soften if you want to. Once you have saved the background graphic, you will probably want to crop it down to 100x100 pixels or less (this will reduce the file size and increase download speed). To do this, double click on the "Selection" tool and set the Right and the Bottom to 100 (or less if you want a smaller sized graphic). You can drag this selection to the middle if you want by clicking on the "Mover" tool and hold down the right mouse button and drag the selection. Then, choose Image|Crop to Selection.