Tileable Photo Textures: by Jeff Frazer                   page: 1 2 3 4 5

If you want to see just how easy this is, try out your texture. Select all (CTRL-A) and then define it as a pattern (EDIT -> DEFINE PATTERN). Now open a new file (CTRL-N) where the width is double that of the texture. Now select the paint bucket tool and set the contents option to pattern. Click somewhere in the new file and you should see your texture tiling almost perfectly horizontally. Big Board Teture
Vertical Tiling:
Unfortunately, vertical is a different story but, we can fix that. Close the test file that we created and go back to the texture file. When working with a texture like this, I have found that it is easier to separate all of the boards into different layers. So, what we'll do is to use our rectangular selection tool to select each board, cut (CTRL-X) and paste (CTRL-V). Try to cut where the two boards meet. I name every layer to make things less confusing. I started at the far left with "Big Board 1" and finished with "Big Board 5". (CTRL-S)
click to enlarge
Now we're going to take care of the vertical tiling issue. This might get a little confusing so, forgive me. First, hide (THE LITTLE EYE IN THE LAYER PALETTE) all of your layers except for "Big Board 1" and the background. Make sure that the "Big Board 1" layer is selected. Using the rectangular selection tool, select the top of the board (about 225 pixels), cut (CTRL-X) and paste (CTRL-V). Name the new layer "Big Board 1b". Now we want to move "Big Board 1b" down to the bottom of the canvas. A few little tricks make this less painful. Hold down shift as you drag the layer to restrict the movement (kind of!). Also, click on the info tab in the navigation palette and watch it as you drag the layer. This will tell you how far you've moved the layer. Now move "Big Board 1" to the top of the canvas.

More texture fun

click to enlarge