Let's talk about making a background for your webpage or Incredimail stationery!! ... You'd be surprised how easy it is actually so I made a tutorial on it ... First you need to start with an image ... any size, doesn’t matter because we will resize it … I am using an old Red Sox Image that I made … I am using Paint Shop Pro because that is my favorite program ... you can get a free trial of it here ... www.corel.com ...

Resize the image {edit … resize} to 400 height and don’t worry about the width let it just automatically set that … click Shift+D {duplicate} twice so that you have 3 of the image then close out the original so you don’t accidentally screw it up like I would …

Resize one of the two new images to 1280x400 {make sure that keep aspect ratio is unchecked} … Right Click in your layers pallet and select “Promote Background Layer” so that the background layer now says “Raster Layer” …

Click Effects -> Art Media Effects -> Brush Strokes … then click Ok … You may want to do this twice depending on how you want the background to look …

Right click on your layers pallet again and select “New Raster Layer” … Then put it on the bottom and flood fill it {the paint can} with a color of your choice … I chose Red … Click on the original layer of the image and then play with the slider for the opacity until you have it looking the way you want to … I chose 30 because I like nice round numbers … makes it easier to remember later …

Click Effects -> Image Effects -> Seamless Tiling … Click OK … We are done with this part … Minimize this graphic with the – in the corner …

On the other image that you have you simply need to click Layers -> Load/Save Mask -> Load Mask From Disk and choose a Mask that you like using these settings …

Right Click on the layers pallet and click Merge Group … Edit -> Copy … Then Open up your other Image that you were working on and click Edit -> Paste as new layer … Then move it over to the left or the right depending on how you want the border to go …

Adjust the opacity of that layer to your liking and save your new perfectly tiling background as a JPG!!! … I hope you all learned something … Play around with setting … That’s all I do to get better ;-)

Now simply try it with other graphics and colors and you have the basis for many cool backgrounds. I also use many different filters with it and suggest you do the same when you get good at it to vary the effect. Amphisoft and Toadies filters have all kinda of cool toys to try on it. I hope someone got something out of this. Jeremy Crow {angelis deZines}