Converting a Corel Painter Paper Texture into a Pattern

Load either the Pattern Pens Plus or Pattern Pens Glow brush library, and select the WYSIWYG Paper Extractor variant from the Brush Selector.

In this example, I have selected the Contrasty Random Cracks paper from the Extras> Contrasty Textures paper library. If you don’t already have this library on a Painter Application install disk, the resources can be downloaded from the Corel website.

For the purpose of conversion to a pattern, it is important to note that the tile dimensions change as the paper scale value changes. In this example, increasing the paper scale to 115 percent (the default is 100 percent), the dimensions of the tile have changed to 294 Rows (equivalent to 294 pixels high) and 294 Columns (equivalent to 294 pixels wide).

The appearance of the resulting pattern will be the same as that depicted in the Paper Preview Window. Prior to capturing as a pattern, it is also possible to invert the paper (dark areas become light, and light areas become dark), by clicking on the Invert Paper button in the Papers palette. It is also possible to adjust the paper contrast and brightness values, using the respective sliders in this palette. Remember though, that as the Source for some of the Pattern Pen Plus variants is Pattern As Opacity, corresponding white areas in the brush stroke will remain transparent to the underlying pixels, giving a possible preference for a high contrast texture.

Using the Rows (pixel height) and Columns (pixel width) values from the Papers palette, create a new document in Painter, in this example 294 pixels width and 294 pixels hight at 72 ppi.

For the above screenshot, I have used the WYSIWYG Paper Extractor variant at default settings and painted the currently selected paper texture directly onto the canvas of the previously created document. It is now possible to see the small sample area of the original texture represented in the Paper Preview Window which has been transfered to the new document.

Note that when painting the texture, please be careful to ensure that the texture has been transferred completely, right up to the edges of the canvas. Paint over the same areas repeatedly if necessary, to ensure coverage.

With the texture painted document open, choose Capture Pattern from the Patterns palette flyout menu.

In the Capture Pattern dialog, use a Bias setting of 0 percent, name the pattern (I have chosen to use the same name as the original paper), before clicking OK.

In this screenshot, I have painted with the new pattern texture using the Pattern Chalk 70 variant from my Pattern Pens Plus library.

When using the WYSIWYG Paper Extractor variant, please note that the main color will be automatically set to white, and the additional color to black by default. Therefore when you select another variant to paint with, you will probably need to choose a different main color in the Colors palette.

Although I have added this custom pattern to the default Pattern library, it is a good idea to create custom pattern libraries and move your custom patterns to these via,. the Pattern Mover dialog (please see my separate post ‘Working with Painter’s Pattern Mover’).