9.4 Tileable Backgrounds

Most Web browsers can use a small image to construct a tiled background for Web pages. Normally the background image should be subtle enough to avoid interfering with text and other graphics, and this usually means that the image should be seamlessly tileable. Seamless means that you should not be able to see the edges between adjacent copies of the image.

Any image can be made to tile seamlessly in the GIMP. The Make Seamless   plug-in found in the Image:Filters/Map menu does the trick. Figure 9.22

  

Figure 9.22: Using the Plug-in Make Seamless

illustrates the use of this plug-in. Figure 9.22(a) shows a small image of a fish, and Figure 9.22(b) shows the result of using the Make Seamless plug-in on it. The effect of tiling with the modified image can be tested by running the Tile   plug-in (the Tile plug-in is also found in the Image:Filters/Map menu). The Tile plug-in tiles an image horizontally and vertically a specified numbers of times. The result of using Tile on the image in Figure 9.22(b) is shown in Figure 9.22(c). The image is displayed as a $2\times 2$ tiled array with some white text placed over it. The text was made using the Beta Dance font at a size of 150 pixels.

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