Satin Tile Tutorial - PSP 7

I searched high and low for a satin tut a while ago, but despite some of the great stuff I found out there, I couldn't find any particular one that suited me for the exact style of realistic-looking satin I wanted to make. So, I experimented, experimented and EXPERIMENTED (til my arm just about dropped off) until I came up with my own. I was very excited with the results, because not only does it look exactly the way I wanted it to, but it produces a very versatile seamless tile which can be colourized and resized to produce an even greater variety of satin (see bottom for more info.) Even though this tut is primarily about making a tile, you can use the technique to make a great-looking satin effect for anything you may need it for.

Once again, if there is anything about this tut you don't understand, or something I haven't made as clear as you think I should have, please don't hesitate to email me at the link above with any questions. This tut was created in PSP7, but with a couple of minor adjustments it should work just fine for PSP8 as well.

Before we get started, you'd better grab my tile blank which you're going to need for the tut.

Note: This tutorial may be downloaded or printed out for personal use only. It must not, under any circumstances, be taken from this site in its entirety or in parts and passed around Yahoo or MSN Groups, re-posted on other websites or passed on to other individuals. Placing a link on your Group's site or your own site is fine, and passing links around is also fine. But links ONLY please, and remember to acknowledge that they are external links, otherwise many of your visitors will assume they are still on your site. There are logos available on my resources page if you wish to use one. Thank you for your co-operation.

As always, if you have any questions about this tut, or any comments or suggestions in general your feedback is always welcome. Just click on the link above to contact me.

1.    Open the 'tileblank.psp' file, and before we start work, go to Window>duplicate IMMEDIATELY, and close down the original image to make sure we don't have any unfortunate accidents with the original file ;-)

    2.    To give our tile a shadowed, satiny look, we'll blur it, so go to effects>blur>gaussian blur> with the settings shown below:

3.    This step is optional, but if you'd like to change the colour of your satin to a more colourful shade, we can do it now before we go any further. Go to Colours>colourize and play around with the Hue and Saturation sliders. I came up with an effective-looking gold tile with the following settings:

Have fun and experiment here. I came up with the rose and blue-coloured tiles you see here by just playing with the sliders, so play around until you come up with something you like (you'll see more examples of this below).

4.    Now we have to make our time seamless. Click TWICE on the selection tool to make the dialogue box pop-up (see left). Enter the settings as shown, which are, Left: 78, Right: 169, Top: 68, Bottom: 168. Hit 'OK'. Those exact settings are important, as they should give us a pretty good seamless selection. When you've made the selection, go to Selections>Convert to seamless pattern. Voila! You have your seamless satin tile....

5.    You can use your tile as is, and it will give you the delicate satiny-look of the tiles on this page. But, if you'd like a more smoother look, all you have to do is enlarge your finished tile (I resized mine by 200% - image>resize>percentage of orginal>200) and you get a satin background like this. If you want a more dramatic pattern, you could try halving the size of your original tile, (i.e: image>resize>percentage of original>50%) and that should give you an effective result also. Like I said above, you can come up with a pretty good variety of satin, such as pattern size and by playing with the colourization slider, a large variety of colours, such as the ones I've done below:

Last - but not least - have fun with this tut, and by all means email me at the link above when you've made your satin as I'd love to see what you've done!