How to Use Textures in Digital Scrapbooking

February 5, 2008

How to Use Textures in Digital Scrapbooking

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Please give a warm welcome to another Guest Writer on Scraps of Mind.This Guest Writer Series is a great opportunity for Scraps of Mind readers to see some of the great ideas and talent of other Scrapbookers and also an opportunity for other Scrapbooking Writers to showcase their work to other Scrapbookers.Today our Guest Writer is Joe (aka Wildheart) from Wildheart’s Works. When you’ve enjoyed her article, why not click over and check out her blog?

First I want to say hello to all the readers here at Scraps of Mind.

Karen asked me to come aboard as a guest blogger and I happily accepted. One thing that we threw back forth when I was asking what to write about was the use of textures in digital scrapbooking. If you visit my blog and look at my free textures you will get an idea of what a texture is, if you are still new to digital scrapping and to digital design as well.

In this picture, (Layout found at PSP Classic Creations) you can use textures to create the crosshatch look you can see in the background paper.

To do this you need to do the following steps with Paint Shop Pro (the principles are the same for other graphics editing program but the terms may differ):

Go in and open a new image say 400 x 400.

Click off the check for transparent and pick what color you want to use I am going to use #d9e3bd.

Then click OK

Now go into Effects and select Texture Effects and go to Textures

I am going to use hatch fine smooth with the settings; size 114%, smoothness 0, depth 15, Ambience 0, Shininess 0, Angle 315, Intensity 48, and Elevation 32. Leave the color white.

Now you have a nice textured background to serve as a base for your digital scrapbooking layout.

If you’re happy with your results you can now proceed to save it. Go to File, Export, Jpeg Optimizer and when it asks for compression you want to make sure you choose a compression value of 1. The lower the compression the cleaner the image, the higher the compression the worse the image will look.

Lastly you want to go in when it prompts you and give your image a name so you can find it when you go to look for it.

This is the end result I achieved when trying to mimic the textured background in the image above.

If you don’t have Paint Shop Pro you can go to Corel.com to get the trial download. The current version is 12 but I have been using version 9 forever and don’t plan on changing anytime soon even though it is now an obsolete version.

Joe (Wildheart) is a Graphic Designer from Kansas who writes the Wildheart Works blog, where you can get lots of inspiration and more great textures.

Scraps Of Mind

February 5, 2008