I'm trying to make a background tile with a texture in it. I'm probably missing
a step somewhere but here is what I'm doing:

Open up a new documement 200 pixels square

Select the square with vector selection tool (this may be the wrong step but
I can't figure out how else to turn this into a vector image so I can use the
textures in the properties panel --otherwise that panel is not available)

make sure it's 200x200

fill with desired color with paint bucket. (I used #cc9966

go to properties panel and choose "smoky" for a texture (i want a sandy gravel
tile)

Lighten it up by clicking on Filters/adjust color/hue saturation (I set Hue at
+9)

This looks just like what I want,

However after saving the image as a .gif it turns very grainy.

Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Dont save it as a .GIF. Use a better lossless format like PNG32. The reason
the .GIF looks "grainy" is because the .GIF format can only have a maximum of
256 colors in any given frame. To make color banding not so appearant on .GIFs
they use whats called dithering to soften the edges between colors. If you
dont have to use the .GIF format then don't. There are other, better formats
to use for textures.

thanks for that tip.

How about the way I'm making this tile? It seems to me I'm not going about this right. Even starting with the vector shape tool it leaves a dark border around the tile.

Lorva wrote:
> thanks for that tip.
>
> How about the way I'm making this tile? It seems to me I'm not going
> about this right. Even starting with the vector shape tool it leaves
> a dark border around the tile.


Here are a couple of tutorials that might be useful.

http://www.projectseven.com/tutorial...iles/index.htm
http://www.projectseven.com/tutorial...iles/index.htm
http://www.projectseven.com/tutorial...les2/index.htm
http://www.projectseven.com/tutorial...unds/index.htm



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Linda Rathgeber [PVII] *Adobe Community Expert-Fireworks*
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try the .jpg format. Let me know how it goes

tutorials are really of any ?