Tile Tutorial

Here’s one way to fake-tile an image to seamlessly rotate the tile grid. Note that your picture must be square. 1. Open your picture in an imagemanipulation app. (I used Photoshop Elements 2.) Grow the canvas to 500% the length & height of the picture.

6. Duplicate each layer three times. You should now have 20 layers: the original five, and three copies of each. Rotate the first copies 90° right, the second copies 180° around, and the third copies 90° left.

2. Copy, paste, and line up the picture until you've tiled the canvas. If you merge as you go along, you should have to copy and paste just six times to get full coverage.

(If you want your animation to go counter-clockwise, rotate the first copies 90° left and the third copies 90° right.)

3. Merge all to one layer and make four duplicates, for 5 layers total.

If your picture is rotationally symmetrical about 180°, you will need only 10 layers: the original five, and a copy of each. Rotate the copies by 90° right.

4. Free-transform each layer around its centre, by the amount in the table below.

If your picture is rotationally symmetrical about 90°, you will need no more than your original five layers.

Make sure to link vertical and horizontal scaling. (If you want your animation to revolve counter-clockwise, make the angles negative.) 5. Shrink the canvas down to 60% its current length and height, towards the centre.

Layer Angle

Scale

1

0°

100%

2

18.4°

94.9%

3

33.7°

83.2%

4

56.3°

83.2%

5

71.6°

94.9%

7. Arrange your layers into animation order a n d s ave a n animated GIF. You’re done! love, Rafe