A patterned image is one that has an underlying pattern to it. Creating a tileable patterned image is not as easy as creating a tileable non-patterned image. For this example, a brick texture will be created. The brick texture example in this chapter was obtained using a digital camera. The first step is to crop a region of the image that repeats. This will form the basis of the texture. Try to choose a square region that repeats. The repeating region will usually not be a perfect square and the image will need to be resized to make it square. Image resizing was covered in Chapter 2. Figure 3.7 shows the brick image squared.

     Once the brick image is squared, the offset filter should be applied. This will show how the seams will appear. The offset brick tiles are shown in Figure 3.7.

Figure 3.7: Bricks with Seams Exposed

    Look at the seams. You can see that the colors of the bricks do not exactly match. There are also lines where the brick mortar lines up. The bandage tool is generally not helpful here. The bandage tool will damage the pattern of the bricks. The seam would be removed, but the image would no longer look quite like bricks.

    The smudge tool is a good choice to fix this image. The smudge tool looks like a small finger pressing down. Use the smudge tool to even out the color differences and remove the brick lines. Figure 3.8 shows the bricks with the seams removed.

Figure 3.8: Bricks Without Seams

    Now that the seams have been removed, the offset can be removed. As discussed in the previous section, the offset is removed by applying the exact same offset that was first applied. The two cancel each other out and the image returns to its regular state. The brick texture is now ready to be saved and uploaded to Second Life.