Square Necessities Background

So now we have our frame almost completed let's get on with the background and sidebars.

1.  Open a new Raster Transparent image 200 x 200 pixels.

2.  Flood Fill Tool/Flood Fill with your dark foreground colour or if your prefer a lighter background use your lighter Background Colour.

3.  Adjust/Add Remove Noise/Add Noise/Gaussian/9%/Monochrome CHECKED.

4.  Effects/Plugins/Graphics Plus/Emboss/Same Settings as previously used. 20/20/0/0

5.  Effects/Plugins/RCS Filter Pack/Triple Exposure/ Separation 150

6.  Effects/Image Effects/Seamless Tiling/Default

7.  Layer Palette/Background/Pattern Tab/Locate the pattern you have just created/Angle 0/Scale 100/minimize your pattern image.

8.  Maximize your frame image/Image/Canvas Size/Increase the canvas size to 480 x 480 image centre.  (This will become part of the background and will not increase the size of your frame).

9.  Layers/New Raster Layer

10.  Layers/Arrange/Move Down

11.  Flood Fill Tool/Flood Fill this layer with your background pattern.

12.  Highlight your top/image Layer/Effects/3D Effects/Drop Shadow/Same settings as previously used.

13.  Repeat Drop Shadow with minus 2 settings.

14.  Add a new layer and add your watermark if desired.

15.  Layers/Merge/Merge all Flatten.

16.  Save as a Jpeg with the compression at 25 and  close this image.

Now  let's make our sidebars.

1.  Maximize the two images you saved earlier.  The small square and the selection from the frame panels/Edit/Copy/the small square image and close.

2.  Working on the panel image/Effects/Image Effects/Seamless Tiling/Mirror/Bidirectional.

3.  Edit/Paste/as new layer

4.   Effects/3D Effects/Inner Bevel/same settings as previously used.

5.  Effects/3D Effects/Drop Shadow/Same settings as previously used

6.  Repeat Drop Shadow with minus 2 settings

7.  Layers/Merge/Merge Visible

8.  Image/Canvas Size/Increase Canvas width to 1024/Height 249/Image Centre Left

9.  Effects/3D Effects/Drop Shadow/using the following settings:-Vertical 0/Horizontal 6/Opacity 30/Blur 8/Colour Black/Shadow on New Layer CHECKED

10.  Effects/Image Effects/Seamless Tiling/on your Shadow Layer/Edge/Vertical

11.  Layers/Merge/Merge Visible

12.  Layer/Duplicate

13.  Image Mirror

14.  Move Tool/Click on the duplicated Right Sidebar/using your left arrow key/move it 17 taps to the left.

15.  Layers/New Raster Layer.

16.  Layers/Arrange/Send to Bottom

17.  Flood Fill Tool/Flood Fill this layer with your background pattern

18.  Layers/Merge/Merge all Flatten.

Now heave a sigh of relief!!

Save as a Jpeg with the compression at 25.

Assemble in Letter Creator placing the background and sidebar image in the body section tiled.  Set the text at about 85 - 90 left and right.

Place the Frame image in the Header Section placed Centre.  Complete your footer details, font choice and size etc. and you are done.  It saves in IM at about 97 - 100K depending on your image.

The image below was created using a masked graphic rather than a tube.  20-20 or Circle Fade Mask work well.