PSP 5 and 6

I think this edge border looks like folded fabric (hence the name). This tutorial will teach you how to make a template for this edge border. You can then fill the background with any color or pattern you want and you can make new "folded fabric" edge borders easily.

  1. Create a new graphic 200x100 pixels wide.

  2. Add a new layer and call this layer "Fill". Make a selection starting at the upper left corner 120 x 100. Save this selection to an Alpha Channel and call it "Fill". Fill with any color.

  3. Add another new layer and call it "Fold 1". On this layer make a selection 16 x 100 and save this selection to an Alpha Channel as "Fold". Move the selection to the right edge of the color fill (right click on the selection with the Mover tool, zooming in will help you here). Apply a cutout filter: Color: Black, Opacity: 100%, Blur: 6, Offset 0,-2.

  4. Right click on the selection with the Mover tool and drag it to the left until it is lined up with where the left edge of the previous selection was.

  5. Add a new layer and call this layer "Fold 2". Apply the cutout filter again.

  6. Move the selection to the left again, add another new layer and call it "Fold 3". Apply the cutout filter again.

  7. Now, if you deselect your selection you will notice a faint black line on the left of your last cutout application. To get rid of this, bring your selection back (hit undo and your selection will be back or load from alpha channel). Move the selection to the left so that you have the faint black line enclosed, but you are away from the last cutout. Make sure you are on the Fold 3 level when you do this. Now, hit delete.

  8. Adjust the opacity levels on the three fold layers until you get the "fold" look you want (somewhere around 50% seems to work well).

  9. Make a selection 200 x 30 some place on the graphic away from the top and bottom edges. Choose Image|Crop to selection.

  10. Save as a PSP graphic as a template for future use.

  11. To make this into a background graphic, flatten all the layers (Layers|Merge|Merge All). Add a border to the right of at least 1,000 pixels (this will make sure your edge won't tile on larger monitors). If you want to change the color of the right side of the graphic, just click on the white portion with the magic wand and fill with a different color.

Hints:

The reason for the "Fill" layer on top of the "Background" layer is that if you want to lower the opacity of your fill, with the white layer under you won't end up viewing the transparent checkerboard pattern which can be very confusing.

I added two extra layers between the "Fill" and the "Fold 1" layer one called "Grain" and the other called "Color". I really like fine grain patterns, so I keep the grain layer filled with my gray-grain texutre. I then use the "Color" layer to colorize the grain pattern. That's the technique I used on the purple grain pattern below.

The reason for creating the template 100 pixels in height is that there are a lot of seamless tiles out there that are 100 x 100 pixels. If you wanted to use one of these as the "pattern", all you would need to do is to copy the tile and paste onto the template as a new layer. Turn off the fill layer and move the tile layer under the three "fold" layers. You can now click on each fold layer and move to the left until they are lined up with the 100 x 100 tile.

You can make the folds smaller simply by moving the top two fold layers to the right. To do this, click on the fold layer. Click on the fold with the mover tool (left click) and drag the fold to the right.

Here are a few examples of what you can do with this template: