Faded Lines, creating images with faded lines.

An example of making an image with faded lines, seen often on corporate websites

This example uses COREL PHOTOPAINT version 9.0

1. We need to make our stripes. A way to do this is to open Corel Photoshop with a new RGB document size 5 pixels by 5 pixels in height and set the color to be the background color, white. Edit the image so that the top row of three pixels is the foreground color, gray or 50% black leaving the bottom two white. Save the image in an appropriate folder like Corel\Custom\Tiles

2. Open a new document with a white background. For our example make a document 1280x200 pixels and set resolutions 96dpi. Recommend that the height of the document be in the same increments as our tile, divisible by 5, so that the tiling is symetrical.

3. Set the Edit the "Current Fill" so that the flood fill tool will use the we created above (can double click on bottom right current fill, then bitmapfill icon, then edit, then load). Then use the flood fill tool to flood our new document and now the new document has uniform stripes.

note, for viewing, image width cropped

4. Now if we want a faded effect on the background we can use the transparency tool on an object. Use "Object" "Create" "From Background" to make everything an object. The select the Object Transparency Tool and play around and select the area to make transparent. Use "Combine all objects with Background" to see effort. Here is an example of setting one point about 300 pixels in with the fade point on the left:

note, for viewing, image width cropped

4. Now we pick a picture to use with the faded stripes. Note you may decide to go back and use a color other than gray for the foreground stripes. For our example we will use eddie with his fish: eddieandfish.jpg.

5. In Corel PhotoPaint and create a new document with same height and a lot wider, 1280 x 200 pixels.

6. Import the eddieandfish.jpg and it can be above on same layer or on a layer above the white rectangle. Note you may have to reset size to 288x192 pixels because Corel may want to blow it up to match printer resolution. Place the eddieandfish.jpg over the left side of the image and combine with image.

7. Use the "Rectangle Mask Tool" and select a column of a couple pixel on the right side of eddieandfish. Then take masked area and make it into an object using "Object" "Create" "Cut Selection." Next use the picker tool to grab the right middle edge of object and stretch all the way to right edge of document. Apply the transform and combine all objects with background.

8. Now it is time for magic. Go back to the afore created document with the stripes and with nothing selected do an edit copy to put all into the clipboard. Now back to the document with the right side of eddieandfish stretched and "edit - paste special" the clipboard as an object over the background.

9. Now that the stripes are an object above the background we can use opacity tricks. Try with the Objects Docker Window to set the opacity at 40%.

To change the overall transparency of an object
1. Open the Object/Mask Tools flyout, and click the Object Picker tool.
2. Select the object.
3. Click Window, Dockers, Objects.
4. Type a value in the Opacity box in the Objects Docker window.

10. When you think you have the object effect the way you like, you can use a mask to erase the effect form parts of the left side of the photo. Try with the eraser with nib transparency set to about 90 to swipe from left to right swipe across the area of the object we want to lessen the faded line effect. And after you combine all objects with background you may get something like this:

11. So in finish, we used a flood fill to create the stripes from a smaller prepared bitmap, prepared and image and stretched the right side out, placed the stripes as an object over it, and used eraser tool to lessen stripes in areas, then combined all to get the result.

We hope the above was useful.