Craquelure Background

Craquelure Background

This is what we want to achieve.

Craquelure Backgroundbackground tile

These instructions are for PSP 9.
It does work in PSP 8.

These pages will be slow to load as they are
graphic intensive. They are written for
those with only a basic knowledge of PSP.

Materials you will need.

Unzip the plug ins into your plug in folder with PSP closed.

Paint Shop Pro
Get a trial version here

Ulead Particle here.

Craquelure
Download it here.

A graphic of your choice.
Download mine here.

my image

I do not know who the artist is of the graphic.
If you know, please let me know so that I can
give credit where credit is due, or remove it.

Now that we have all the materials that we need,
we can get on with our lesson.

Please feel free to play with the setting and come
up with something different.

*Save your work often!*

1) Open your image in PSP and hit Shift D
to duplicate the image.
Close the original. We won't need it any more.

2) Open a new image 100 x 100 with a transparent
background and 72.000 pixel resolution.
Flood fill it with a color from your image.
I used #2f1c3c.

3)Go to Effects/Ulead Effects/Particle/Smoke Effect

Settings:

Density: 45
Size: 43
Variance: 58
Opacity: 30
X scale: 42
Y scale: 21
Frequency:20
Wrap: checked

4)Go to Effects/Texture/Craquelure.

Settings:

Crack Spacing: 20
Crack Depth: 2
Crack Brightness: 10

5) Go to Effects/Simple/Quick Tile

That is it for the background tile.
Save it as a jpg.

There are some things that we can do with
the background tile that we made.

If you find your tile a bit too bold,
you can reduce the opacity of it.

1) Layers/New Raster Layer and click okay.
Flood fill it with a lighter color from your image.
I used #9486a0.

2) Go to your layer palette and lower the opacity
to about 60% as shown below or to where you like it.

Reduce Opacity

Then go to Layers/Merge all visible.
Now you have made a muted tile.

Reduced Opacity

Both tiles that you have made are seamless tiles.

Way to go!

There is more that you can do!

We can make a left border stationery tile with a
part of our graphic on the left hand side.

Craquelure Background Tile

1) Open a new image:

Width: 1280 px
Height: your image
Colour: transparent
Resolution: 72.000

2) Flood fill it with the tile of your choice.

Have the tile that you want to use open in PSP.
Set your foreground to patterns.
Find your background tile.
Flood fill your canvas

3) Now open your graphic in PSP.
Go to Selection Tools/Selection.
In the tools palette, choose ellipse.

Setting shown below.

4) Draw an oval around your selection.
If your oval is not where you want it,
right click and hold the mouse button down
and drag it to where you want it.
Shown below.

Draw Ellipse

5) Go to Selections/Modify/Contract, 10 pixels.
Click okay.

6) Go to Selections/Modify/Feather, 8 pixels
Click okay.

7) Go to Edit/Copy.

8) Click on the 1280 background tile to make it active.

9) Go to Edit/Paste as new selection.

10) Move the new selection into place and go to
Selections/Select none.

11) Add a new raster layer.
Now you can add your signature to the
background with the text tool.
Give it an inner bevel and a drop shadow.

Congratulations on getting through this tutorial.
I hope that you had fun!