How To Make A Tiling Image

Chapter 7: Tiles and Issues with JPEG Images

First, I started with a JPEG image. While, I'll be the first to admit that it's not a particularly exciting or attractive image, it's not especially noticeable that the image contains Edge Effects:



Next, I used the techniques in Chapter 2 to create a tiling image:



Now, you can see (look carefully at the above image), the Edge Effects are starting to visibly emerge. If you look closely at the image, it looks there's a very faint plus-sign-pattern superimposed on that image (in this particular example, the horizontal bar of the plus-sign is especially noticeable).

Even this isn't the end of it. Although you probably won't notice it just looking at the one tile above, there are even more Edge Effects along the outside edges of each tile.

So, when we put a whole bunch of these images together to form a solid background, all these Edge Effects start to become even more obtrusive. You should be able to see (look carefully) a grid pattern superimposed on the image (again, in this particular example, the horizontal bars of the grid are especially noticeable):



(Click here to see this image in an full browser window).

• Either, start with a GIF or PNG format image, and stay in that format.
  
  
• Or, cut out the middle part (away from the edges) of your JPEG image and paste into a new GIF or PNG format image, and then continue working in GIF/PNG from then on.
  
  
• Or, you can try: Cut out the middle part (away from the edges) of your JPEG image and paste into a new JPEG image saved with a higher Quality Setting. Sometimes this idea works well, sometimes not.