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| This is a very neat effect and is great for creating backgrounds if you want a side border. It makes the image appear to be seen through horizontial blinds and can be applied to any image you want. |
| This tutorial will require:
- layers, - the "shapes" tool, - the "magic wand" tool, - copying, - pasting and - cropping. |
| Step 1:
Open up your image. Any image will be suitable but if you want to create a side border, a narrow image is best. Here is the image I will be using. |
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| Step 2:
Set your foreground colour to black and select the "shapes" tool. Enter these options: - Shape: rectangle - Style: outline - Outline Width: 1 Create a new layer by clicking "layer - new". This is done so that you can edit your blinds without affecting your image. Draw a rectangle over the area you want. This will represent the area of the image that will be visible through the blinds. |
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| Step 3:
Now you need to continue this process until you fill the entire section of the image you want. To keep the shape of the blinds consistent, you can select the first rectangle with the "magic wand" tool set to 0 tolerance. Then copy and paste the shapes evenly down the image. You can zoom in so that you get the spaces right. |
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| Step 4:
Use the "magic wand" tool and select the area outside of the rectangles. The space around all the rectangles should now be selected in this layer. Merge the layers by clicking "layers - merge". This will select the same area but include the background image. Now click "edit - clear" and all of the selected area should be the colour of your background. In the example below, the background colour was set to white. If all went well, you should now be left with an image divided into several rectangles as if it were seen through blinds. |
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| Be creative with this technique. You don't have to use horizontal blinds. Try vertical blinds and other shapes to see what kind of effects you can create. As mentioned earlier, this is a great way for making side borders for your homepage because the image is simply a repeated pattern. |
