Creating a seamless, tileable texture in GIMP

PICTURE AS PAINT

Article from Issue 58/2005
Author(s):

Graphic artists often face the problem of turning a photograph into an image that will tile over a larger surface. This task is not as easy as it sounds, but if you’re up for the challenge, this tutorial will give you a first-hand look at some advanced tools in the GIMP toolkit.

Most magazine articles written on the subject of GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) start with the basics and don’t get much further. In this article, we’ll take you past the first steps and show you how the experts use the GIMP to address a very practical problem: turning a simple photograph into an image you can use to tile a surface. From Photo to Tile One of the most common defects in photographs is the presence of uneven brightness in the image. In Figure 1, for instance, the right part of the image is brighter, and the left part is darker in comparison.

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