Wallpaper

Duplicating Full Size Wallpaper Patterns

Part 3

I needed to wallpaper the bathroom on my old dollhouse which I am renovating and finishing.  I wanted to use a shell wallpaper border that is in one of our bathrooms as well as a blue and white tiled floor.  I decided to duplicate our dining room paper and alter the hue to match the tile floor and border.  As usual, my photograph of the dining room paper (Image 1)  has a huge  hot spot from my lights.  It also seems more gray and less blue than the original.  The hot spot is better seen in a gray scale image (Image 2) of the value image of this photograph.  A value image represents all the pixels in shades of gray from 0 to 255 where 0 is black and 255 is white.  I tried my best to compensate for this light variation but was basically unsuccessful.  So I just selected a smaller portion of the image with less light variation (Image 3). 

 I used GIMP for this entire tutorial.  It is an extremely powerful program and best of all it is free.  This link  is for a simple to install Windows version.  The basic GIMP toolbox is in Image 4.  The remainder of the command can generally be reached by right clicking on your image and selecting from one of the numerous submenus.  The selection tool (Image 5) can be used to cut out just a portion of the image and place into a new image to work with.  An example of the selection tool is in image 6.  Select the area, copy the area, and then paste into a new image.  Copy and paste can be found by right clicking and choosing edit- copy and then edit - paste as new. ( Image 7).  All of Gimps commands can be found by right clicking on the image and selecting from the various drop down menus.  Many of the menus lead to further submenus until you get to the command / tool you want.

The next step tool needed is the offset tool.(Image 8)  This tool takes all 4 sides of the image where they would abut a similar picture and align where they meet in the center of the new image.  This allows an easy comparison for correcting tiling problems by touching up or fixing where the wallpaper tiles will meet in the big  wallpaper image which is used to print the paper.  This tool has more options than we need so choose the Offset by button at the bottom of the window. (Image 9)  Wrap around is pressed by default.  The resultant image is shown in Image 10.

	Image 1 Central upper highlight is easily seen.
	Image 2 Value image better highlights the uneven illumination.
	Image 3 Smaller portion of the above image with less variation in the illumination.
	Image 4 Basic gimp toolbox
	Image 5 Rectangular/Square selection tool
	Image 6 Selection tool example.  The rectangle outlines the area to be copied.
	Image 7 DropDown copy command
	Image 8 Offset Command
	Image 9 Offset Command Options
	Image 9 Offset Image - Notice how the edges form a sharp line when they meet in the middle.  Also notice the bottom two squares are darker than the upper two.  All needs

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