Working with Materials

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There's certainly more to lifeand imagesthan color . The Materials swatches on the Materials palette work with patterns, gradients, and textures. The three buttons at the bottom of each Materials swatch are what you'll use to set your pattern, gradient, or texture.

The three buttons on the Materials swatches are what you'll use to set the style of your materials. The first button, called the Color button, is where you determine if you want to use a solid color, a gradient, or a pattern. The second button, the Texture button, is an on/off toggle button where you turn the Texture feature on or off. The third button, called the Transparency button, is where you designate that you want nothing for the foreground or the background. The Transparency button is also an on/off toggle button.

Generating Gradients

Gradients are created from the gradual blending of colors. Paint Shop Pro includes multiple pre-designed gradients. Many more gradient designs are available free from the Web and if you're really creative, you can even design your own.

This figure illustrates a star drawn by using a gradient fill style.

Picking Patterns

In addition to gradients, Paint Shop Pro includes many different patterns to use in the foreground or background of images. You can also use any existing image, such as a drawing or a photograph, as a pattern.

If you want to use an existing image as the pattern, you must open the image first.

NOTE

If you want the line to have a pattern, use the Foreground and Stroke swatch; however, if you want the interior of a shape to have the pattern, click the Background and Fill swatch.

Notice that the currently open image also appears as a pattern choice.

Tinkering with Textures

Using texture effects gives an image a three-dimensional appearance as though the image were created on a textured surface. Similar to using patterns, the top swatch is the foreground or stroke texture whereas the lower swatch is the background or fill texture.

NOTE

You can use textures with Colors, Patterns, or Gradients.

A rounded corner rectangle with the crumpled paper texture and a solid color grey style.

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