People use lots of different types of backgrounds on their homepages.Most work well, adding depth and color to the page. But many pages havetextures that detract from the overall appearance, that make it virtuallyimpossible to read the text written on the page. These backgrounds eitherhave too much detail, or have poor contrast with the webpage author's chosentext color. This effect gives simple pastel color backgrounds that providegood contrast with most text colors, but which still have interesting variationsof shading to enhance a page.For this technique, start with a photographic quality picture. Youcan use one that you've found on the Web, in a clipart collection, or evenone that you've scanned yourself. Using the Area Select tool, pick outa small section - about 150 x 150 pixels will do - and copy it to the clipboard(Edit:Copy.) Pick an area with lots of color and texture variations. Thesmall section that I use here is from an imagefile called "img0064.pcx"that came with my copy of Paintshop Pro 4. After you copy your chosen sectionto the clipboard, Go again to the Edit menu, and paste it as a new image.You can now close your original photo.
