Content
  1. Flood fill: Graduate
  2. Colorfilter
  3. Distortionfilter
  4. Stylizefilter
In this lesson we will show you easy methods to create backgrounds and textures for homepages or other things. With only a few functions you can create nice textures and the Filters are offering you nearly all possibilities to change them.

Fillicon 1. Graduate

Please open a New picture with the size 320x240 and a white background. Doubleclick on the Flood fill tool. A requester will popup. Change the cycle-gadget to Graduate and be sure of the following values:Linear, RGB, Steps:255, Roughness:0. You need a White-Gray-Black graduate. You can change this in the Color-Manager.

Only for those, who do not know how to do that:
In the WINDOW menu you will find the Color-Manager. You must be in the RGB mode. Take the first row. The first color in this row should be white, the last color black. If you have done this click on the SPREAD button. Click on "White", hold down the mousebutton and drag the pointer to "Black", then release it. After this do the same with the RANGE button. Now your Graduate is right.

Click once into your picture. After the Flood fill color has filled it, click into the bottom left edge of the picture and hold down the mousebutton. Drag the mouse to the top right Edge and then release the mousebutton. Your pointer will be followed by a line. With this line you give the direction for the graduate.

2. Color correction

Open in the menu FILTER: COLOR the "Color correction". Adjust following values:

Function Value
Brightness 24
Contrast 80
Gamma 13
Red 127
Green -4
Blue -128

After a short time you will see the result in the prewiev window. Execute the filter. Try the same with other values and watch their results in the prewiev.

3. Distortionfilter: Twirl

The distortionfilter are an easy possibility to change a picture. In the basic version ArtEffect has three distortion filters:Caricature, Curl and Twirl. In our case we use the twirl filter. Please open it. In the requester change the value to 500 and execute it.

If you want to know more of Solarize, have a look onto our Advanced lesson 3 .		 4. Solarize

To change the color of our picture dramatically, we use the Solarize filter. Open the Solarize filter from menu FILTER:Color. Adjust following values:
Function Value
Shape 48
Brightness 59
Low 59

"Execute" the filter.
5. Stylizefilter: Edge finder and Relief

Open FILTER:Stylize>>Edge finder. Choose PREWITT and Grayscale. Execute it. After the work is done, close the filter. Open then the RELIEF filter (you find it in the same menu). Adjust following values:
Function Value
Angle 174
Height 7
Depth 94
Type Stone

Voila. That`s it.