Texturing Your Backgrounds
An on line friend said she was nervous about background color, picking it and choosing a color, say behind a tube. I love doing textures behind tubes so I thought I would show you a couple of examples of how I do backgrounds.
I pick a tube I like, and bring it up in my workspace. Click shift D to copy your tube. X out of the original. Now pick two colors. If your tube is light choose a solid light color from the tube to fill your background with and vice versa. If your tube is dark, choose a dark background color. In your layers palette or in layers at the top, choose new raster layer and drag it under the tube and fill it with your solid color. Choose a lighter or darker color dark if your solid background is light and light if your solid background is dark for your background color in your materials palette.
Here is something else that comes in handy that I will show you before we go on. If you would like your canvas to be bigger all the way around so that more of your background actually shows. 
Click on Image-Canvas size and you will get a box that looks like this. 
Your original dimensions are at the top, then the new dimensions you choose. Depending on what you are doing you can tick or untick the lock aspect ratio. For this I unticked. You can make your background color the color of your background if you have it solid or just fill after you change canvas size. Check the middle box so it will be equal on all sides. I made mine 100 pixels bigger all the way around. You can see your original canvas size is at the bottom of your work space too. When you get everything like you want it click ok. It should look something like this. Not a huge difference but if you are making a nice background you want some of it to show.
Also remember if you are working and lose the any of the colors you are working with in your materials palette you can right click on the one you lose and you will get a popup of the colors you have used recently and can get it back right away.
Now for the fun part! Choose your opposite color you have chosen to go on top of your background and go to your tool bar on the far left and find your paint brush, click on the arrow and choose the air brush.
I used these settings because I just wanted to make a light swipe across my background. You can make it as heavy or light as you like but one swipe is usually enough to make a difference when you apply a texture.
size 500
hardness 20
density 42
opacity 52
Click the eye in your layers palette so you can see what you are doing. Untick it to see if you like how the tube sits on your new color and if you don't think enough area is covered do some more. If you think it looks to solid, lower your density.
Un tick the eye so you can see what your texture is going to look like behind your tube but make sure your background is still highlighted in the layers palette because you want to texture your background instead of your tube.
Go to Effects-Texture Effects and you can use any one of these. Some of them will change the colors of your background and you will have to play with the settings. I usually use either Mosaic, Soft Plastic, Straw Wall, or Texture. The textures I have in my photos area are just some of the ones I use to texture a background and then you always have your default textures. If you want to use any of the textures I have you might make them into a seamless tile before you put them in your textures folder so when you are texturing there won't be a seam in whatever you texture.
For this I used texture and picked one of my textures in the drop down box. Another thing you might want to do is blur the texture or make it smaller so that it doesn't overpower your tube. You want the tube to be the focal point and the background to just add interest.
Click ok, right click on your layers palette and merge visible, then make the whole thing a seamless tile. 
When I used the seamless tile effect, I made the transition 100 to make the flower look less solid. I also made the whole tile smaller, by going to image resized it to 300 ticking the aspect ratio so it wouldn't skew the picture. I find that 300 on a side makes a nice size for a background. If you want to make a tag you can make the background seamless and leave the flower un seamed to make it your focal point. Also you can put a drop shadow on your tube to make it stand out more. Effects-3D-Drop Shadow.
This tut is copyrighted to the tut owner(me-Red), it would be nice if you want to use it to ask permission, just a thought.
I pick a tube I like, and bring it up in my workspace. Click shift D to copy your tube. X out of the original. Now pick two colors. If your tube is light choose a solid light color from the tube to fill your background with and vice versa. If your tube is dark, choose a dark background color. In your layers palette or in layers at the top, choose new raster layer and drag it under the tube and fill it with your solid color. Choose a lighter or darker color dark if your solid background is light and light if your solid background is dark for your background color in your materials palette.
Here is something else that comes in handy that I will show you before we go on. If you would like your canvas to be bigger all the way around so that more of your background actually shows. Click on Image-Canvas size and you will get a box that looks like this. Your original dimensions are at the top, then the new dimensions you choose. Depending on what you are doing you can tick or untick the lock aspect ratio. For this I unticked. You can make your background color the color of your background if you have it solid or just fill after you change canvas size. Check the middle box so it will be equal on all sides. I made mine 100 pixels bigger all the way around. You can see your original canvas size is at the bottom of your work space too. When you get everything like you want it click ok. It should look something like this. Not a huge difference but if you are making a nice background you want some of it to show.
Also remember if you are working and lose the any of the colors you are working with in your materials palette you can right click on the one you lose and you will get a popup of the colors you have used recently and can get it back right away.
Now for the fun part! Choose your opposite color you have chosen to go on top of your background and go to your tool bar on the far left and find your paint brush, click on the arrow and choose the air brush. I used these settings because I just wanted to make a light swipe across my background. You can make it as heavy or light as you like but one swipe is usually enough to make a difference when you apply a texture. size 500hardness 20
density 42
opacity 52
Click the eye in your layers palette so you can see what you are doing. Untick it to see if you like how the tube sits on your new color and if you don't think enough area is covered do some more. If you think it looks to solid, lower your density.
Un tick the eye so you can see what your texture is going to look like behind your tube but make sure your background is still highlighted in the layers palette because you want to texture your background instead of your tube.
Go to Effects-Texture Effects and you can use any one of these. Some of them will change the colors of your background and you will have to play with the settings. I usually use either Mosaic, Soft Plastic, Straw Wall, or Texture. The textures I have in my photos area are just some of the ones I use to texture a background and then you always have your default textures. If you want to use any of the textures I have you might make them into a seamless tile before you put them in your textures folder so when you are texturing there won't be a seam in whatever you texture.
For this I used texture and picked one of my textures in the drop down box. Another thing you might want to do is blur the texture or make it smaller so that it doesn't overpower your tube. You want the tube to be the focal point and the background to just add interest.
Click ok, right click on your layers palette and merge visible, then make the whole thing a seamless tile. When I used the seamless tile effect, I made the transition 100 to make the flower look less solid. I also made the whole tile smaller, by going to image resized it to 300 ticking the aspect ratio so it wouldn't skew the picture. I find that 300 on a side makes a nice size for a background. If you want to make a tag you can make the background seamless and leave the flower un seamed to make it your focal point. Also you can put a drop shadow on your tube to make it stand out more. Effects-3D-Drop Shadow. This tut is copyrighted to the tut owner(me-Red), it would be nice if you want to use it to ask permission, just a thought.
