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Going Dotty
by Dyan CrossDigital Deck Designer
I have a confession - I love polka dots! Dotted paper, dotted ribbon, dotted flowers - there's something whimsical about polka dots. I recently needed some dotted digital paper and just couldn't find the right kind in my digital collection.
Last year, I made dotted paper by setting up a grid on my image and putting a paint dot at each intersection - rather tedious. There's a wonderful tutorial by Dizteq which uses the Half-Tone effect in Paint Shop Pro. I've used that successfully but the size and spacing of the dots is not as adjustable as I needed. You can use Mura's Meister filter "Copies" but then you have to duplicate the line, offset the second line and so forth.
Then I stumbled on Shawna's site, Scrap Stuff with PSP, and was reminded about the Seamless Tile, which is a perfect way to make dots. However, Shawna used Mura's Meister filter, and I wanted to try the Seamless Tile feature of PSP, so here's what I came up with.
- Create a new image, 200 pixels square, transparent background
- Set your Paint Brush to round, size 75, and place a dot on the image
- The dot needs to be in the exact center of the image.
Delete the dot, then place it as a New Layer-shortcut keys are CTL + X, CTL + L. (When you place as a new layer, the item will automatically be placed in the center of the image)
- Click the Effects Menu > Image Effects > Seamless Tiling.
- Set the following: Tiling Method-Corner, Direction-Bidirectional, Transition-100%, Corner Style-Curved and OK the box
Your seamless tile will look like this.
- Open a new image, 3600 pixels square
- Fill with any color
- Add a layer and set your seamless tile as a pattern (if you're not sure how to do this, check out my April article on creating striped paper. About half-way down the page, in the section that starts "Now we're ready to fill our image with the stripe pattern..." you will see complete directions including screen shots of how to set an image as a pattern).
- Fill your image
If you want to add a different colored border to your dots, add your background layer, and then add your dots. Using the Magic Wand, select a dot, then choose Selections > Modify > Select Similar and all the dots will be selected. Then choose Selections > Modify > Select Selection Borders. Choose Outside, and enter the width (in pixels) that you want the border to be. Set your contrasting color, and choose the Fill tool (with Match Mode set on none) and click on one of the selections.
For another variation, after doing the first set of borders, select the border color (the pink color in the example). Select Similar and then Select Selection Borders. Fill with your third color. Since that option selects both the inside and outside borders, you see the the new color (yellow) borders the pink on both sides.
And yet another variation. Recolor your seamless tile light blue for the image on the left and dark blue for the image on the right. Fill your image at 100%. Change the color of the tile to pink (or red) and fill the image at 50%. Change the color of the tile to yellow and fill the image at 25%. Rather different look, don't you think???
Shown below is a small gallery of cards I've made using dots. You can see that not all of them are "cutesy," and you can use polka dots regardless of your style. (All of these cards have been previously viewed on my web site).
Have a Happy, healthy New Year!
Dyan Cross
Dyan Cross
dyancross@ssreflections.com
Digital Deck Designer
S.S. Reflections Publishing Group
http://dyan.topcities.com
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