Textured Backgrounds

Special Note: For those of you who are looking for Blogging Startup Edition Part 2, I do apologize.  Due to my recent travels, I was unable to get it typed up and pictures taken.  As a result, it will be next week's Tutorial.  Thank you for your understanding.  If you need help before next week, please do not hesitate to email me and ask.

If you would like a textured background similar to the one on the right (which is available to you for use if you'd like to borrow it), here is the basic run-down of how I made this one:

1. Take a favorite article of clothing or some other textured item which matches the texture you are wanting.  Photograph this item.  (I used  a favorite coat, which is why there are "wrinkles" in it)
• Insure that you only take a photo of a small portion of the item, unless you are needing the entire thing for your background for some reason.  The options here are pretty much endless.
2. Upload the photo to your computer and crop anything un-necessary.
3. Now that you have the portion of the item that you want, start editing it in the ways you would like.  For the above photo, I wanted to have it be two different colors.  In order to do this, I changed the hue and saturation along with brightness and contrast.  Play with this until you have what you want.
4. If you want the same texture throughout the piece (note how the wrinkles in mine flow together, despite the change of colors/layers), here's how:
• Use the techniques in #3 and resize the photo to the appropriate size (I generally start out with 1200 width and 900 height in pixels; of course, these calculations may change throughout, though they should become higher rather than lower to fit a blog or MySpace).
• In your Layers Window, add a new layer which will be over the first.  Now go back to the first layer.
• Take the center portion of the graphic using the Standard Selection tool (should look like a square made up of dashed lines).  Once you have the area selected, click copy.
• In your first layer, paste what you've just copied, move it to the center.
• Select the new layer (the one you just pasted the centerpiece in) and repeat #3.
5. To create the border lines, I used a couple of fonts that I had downloaded from DaFont.com.  If you need help installing these, no worries, I will be posting a tutorial on these as well.
6. Be sure to merge your layers prior to saving.  I recommend saving as a .jpeg or .png image.  My favorite for a completed image is .jpeg, although if you have areas of the photo you wish to be transparent, I recommend .png.  Just know that if you are using transparency in your blog background, that area will appear white unless you set a background color. 

If you have any questions, ask away.