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How would I go about making a simple, tiling texture with Acorn for Mac? Is there a tool, or a function or something I can't find, or can it not be done with such a simple application? If you know of a way to do this in Photoshop, there's a good chance it will work in Acorn.

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2 Answers

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There are many tutorials for how to do this on the web.

Here's a good one straight to the point.

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No, I meant, as the title states, from scratch. IE, I would start with a white canvas. – tkbx Apr 9 '12 at 12:25
@lucase.62: The principle remains the same; produce your texture/artwork first, then make it repeating. You'll need to be more descriptive with what sort of texture you're trying to produce if you want step-by-step instructions. – Kit Grose Apr 10 '12 at 0:59
@lucase.62 …for instance you can make a linen texture with noise and the motion blur filter applied to two translucent layers in perpendicular directions. It wouldn't make sense for me to describe that for you unless you wanted a linen texture in the first place. – Kit Grose Apr 10 '12 at 1:00
@lucrase.62 People often start by taking a photo of something with the texture they want (or sometimes, scanning). Where possible, real beats fake. You can also buy and download stock texture images taken by pros which have just the right lighting, evenly distributed (google.co.uk/search?q=stock+textures). If you need to fake a texture, how to do so will depend on the type of texture it is - there are lots of tutorials out there for most common types of texture. – user568458 Sep 5 '12 at 13:35
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Start with a square of document, make a texture.

Make a new document the same size.

Make a square selection exactly 1/2 the size of the square in each dimension (so 1/4 square).

Copy the upper left quadrant and paste it into the new document, placing it as the lower right quadrant.

Copy upper right quadrant and paste it into the new document, placing it as the lower left quadrant.

Repeat with the two remaining quadrants.

You now have the same texture, with the outer edges as the center lines of the document.

fudge the edges until the center lines blend.

In Photoshop, there is a filter/tool called "offset" which will swap the quadrants for you.

Test the tile by exporting it and using a simple html page with the texture name as a repeating background.

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