Seamless Top Scroll

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This is a tutorial for PSP6/7 that examines techniques for creating images that will scroll horizontally with no visible seam.  Part One will look at three techniques for creating the image, including the clone tool, and Part Two will incorporate the use of a Top Scroll Script by Edgar V. Poirier.

Let's get started:

Sometimes, an image was "born" to be a top scroll, and it doesn't even know it. Take this one for example: Without any tweaking in PSP, this image will make a perfect seamless top scroll. When this happens, it's a wonderful thing, but more often, you'll find something that you think would make a nice scroll, but the edges won't match up. 

The techniques taught in this tutorial will actually work for any border scroll when you have edges that won't match up nicely on their own.

Let's go:

1. Open an image that you think might make a nice top border scroll. You can use this one if you want, just right click and save as. I don't know who the artist is, but I think it's very pretty.

2. Resize the image so that the height is not more than 280, and preferably less, since too large a top scroll leaves very little room on a single viewing area to write your message, and your image may become a little overpowering to your viewer. Don't forget to do an Image/Sharpen/Sharpen if your image looks the least fuzzy after resizing.

3. I've resized my image and it's now 230px x 159px. Open a new image the same height but twice the width, background white. Mine measures 460px x 159px.

4. Click on your original image, Edit/Copy, change back to your new image, Edit/Paste as a new selection. Line it up as exactly as possible to the left hand border and the top and bottom.

5. Edit/Paste as a new Selection again, this time lining it up with the left hand side of the remaining white area, again lining it up top and bottom.

6. From here there are several ways to go. Let's look at a few.

A. Image/Mirror. Check your images for alignment and see what you get. It's usually something pretty neat. 

1. You'll notice that there are a few extra pixels of white over there on the right hand side. Double click on your selection tool and note the sizes listed for your image. We are going to shave off the right hand side, one px at a time. Here's how I set up my selection screen
2. If you got all the white at the right on the first try, choose Image/Crop to selection. Otherwise repeat the #6A1 until you get the last of the white edge off of there, reducing the right side number by 1 px each time. Usually you won't have more than 4 or 5px to shave off, if that much. Even a 1 px line will spoil your seamless look.

Here's what mine looked like after I got rid of all the white.

B. Harm's Tile, FM Tile Tools, Other Paint Shop Pro Plug-Ins: These programs make doing it the hard way seem like a silly thing to ever do. You open your image, apply the effect and whoosh, your image will flow seamlessly....but sometimes there is distortion or edging that isn't exactly what you wanted... and in that case, you can still have a lovely seamless effect, using the... 

C. Clone Tool Make another new image the same height as your original and twice the width. Edit/Copy your image, click on the new image and Edit/Paste as a New Selection, lining it up to the left and top margins, then Edit/Paste as a New Selection again, lining it up to the right edge of the first image and to the top. 

1. You see that the right edge of the first image and the left edge of the second image don't match up very well. We're going to fix that. 

2. While your second pasted image is still selected, point your mouse directly over the second image. It should change into a four pointed cursor. If it doesn't, click on the mover tool and it will. 

3. Move the right side image (holding down the left mouse button) so that it overlaps the left side image  

It still isn't matched up perfectly, so Selections/ Select None, then click on the clone tool and set the Tool Options dialogue box to these settings:

 

The clone tool is a very useful tool in Paint Shop Pro. It allows you to copy one area to another in the same image, or to another image, if you want to do that. The settings given in this tutorial may need to be adjusted to accommodate your images. The best way to perfect this technique is to spend time practicing with it.

4. First we need to work on the seam between the two images. Go to View/Zoom in By One and move the sliders so that you can see the seam between the two images from the top. RIGHT click once just to the right of the seam and then LEFT click directly on the seam. Left click several more times along the seam and then RIGHT click again in a different spot and go back to LEFT clicking the seam. Be careful to avoid the edge of the flower (if you're using my image) but you want to eliminate the seam completely.

5. Move back and forth across the seam area, RIGHT clicking to change the position of the area you are copying and LEFT clicking to place the clone. You may find, as I did, that I changed the shape of some of my flower petals a little, but managed to keep them looking like flower petals. Now go to View/Normal Viewing.



6. At this point, you may want to go in with the paint brush set fairly small and touch up a few pixels. Just View/Zoom in By One and do some clean up, matching your paint brush colors to the colors in your image. The idea is to get the side-by-side images to blend together.

7. You'll notice that we have some white over to the right again that we need to eliminate. You can use the selection tool like we did before, or you can try this little cheater method that often works: Using the Magic Wand tool and click in the white area to the right. Go to Selections/Modify/Expand and put 1 in the quantity box. OK. Then choose Selections/ Invert and Image/Crop to Selection. With any luck at all, it will get all of the white on the first try.

Now we need to test to see if we eliminated that white line. This is NOT the final test for seamless. You will see a very huge seam and it will look like a mistake and it IS NOT. We are only checking to see if the white line is gone before we go to the next step. I'm very big on testing things as you go. Getting the image correct before you try to put it into a stationery will save you tons of "fooling with" and "trying to fix it" time.

TEST: Check the image size (View/Image Information). Make a New Image, the same height as your image and THREE times the width. Using flood fill, fill this new image with the one you just did all the cloning on. Then go to View/Normal Viewing and make sure that you cannot see a vertical WHITE line at the border of your images. If you do not see a vertical WHITE line, you can close this test image. If you do see a white line, you need to hit the undo button and return to the cloned image to remove the traces of the white line, and then test again.

OKAY, Everybody take a deep breath....

The easiest way to do this next step is by using an eyeball estimation. We are simply going to look at our image and find the repeating pattern. First thing to do is minimize or close everything except the image you've finished cloning. Hold down the SHIFT key and press D. A copy of your image should appear and I'd really like it a lot if you would minimize your hard work, and use the copy for this next part.

In my image, there are four complete flowers that are visible. Two are facing to the left, and two are forward facing (the ones with 5 petals). I am going to use the selection tool and make a selection from the left most edge of the first forward facing flower, full height to the left most edge of the other forward facing flower, without overlapping. Here's what I mean:



Now, choose Edit/Copy, Edit/Paste As a New Image and you should get something like this:



Now you will have to test it for seamless. Check the image size and then open a new image of the same height and three times the width. Flood fill with this newly cropped version of your cloned image and check to see how accurate your eye is. There is a tremendously complicated mathematical equation that can be used for this selection, but I find it harder than just doing it by eye. This final selection took me three tries, but here it is:

The image that you used to flood fill this last test strip is technically finished.  You can save it to your default stationery folder now and use it in a script, just like it is.  Most of the time, I think it looks prettier to add an edge to the bottom of the image.

Open your image.  Make the background color white and add borders to this image of 30px symmetrical.  It should look like this:  One note, however:  If you're planning to use a medium to dark background tile, you might be more pleased with your end results if you use a color from your background tile as the added borders color.  

With the selection tool , select an area at the bottom of the image, wider than your actual picture.  Kind of like this:

In this selected area, you can do whatever you like to create your border.  Use a solid color, use a selection from your image and do a flood fill, open a PSP plug-in and see what happens.  It's up to you.  I opted to flood fill with a solid color and a paper texture, and then do an inner bevel.  Here's what it looks like before and after the inner bevel:

Then I added a drop shadow, using the dark purple from the flower center for the shadow color, like this:

Then I trimmed it up, removing the excess from the sides, and then testing to make sure that I had no vertical white lines on my edges.  It's important to build an edge using a technique like this, because if you make an edge selection exactly the same size as your image, the inner bevel effect and the drop shadow, as well as many other effects, make distinct changes in the outer edges of the selected area which can ruin the seamless effect that we've been working toward.  Here's what it looked like after I trimmed it up:

Additional note:  If you are planning to use a dark background tile for your stationery, you will need to crop the bottom of your image fairly close to get all of the white out of there, or else you may have a distracting white line separating the border from the body of the stationery.  If this is the case, you can either re-do the edge treatment using a darker color for the added borders, or choose a lighter background tile and it should minimize the appearance of any white line. (Thanks KarenM for this hint)

After you're finished with adding any special touches that you want, save the image you used to make the test strip to your default stationery folder.  Give it a name that you'll remember.  You might want to go ahead now and make a background tile and choose a nice midi, because we're ready for Part 2.  Save both the background tile and the midi to the default stationery folder as well.