Importing textures into your Design Live program is one of the best things you can do to improve the quality of your designs and offer a more personalized experience to your clients.
The first step in importing a texture is finding the texture you want to import. You can import any image you have taken with your camera or images you have saved from the Internet.
Finding an image from the Internet:
- Go to your preferred search engine.
Note: If you’re looking for a pattern or material texture, it’s best to include the words seamless texture with your search. That way the texture will tile very nicely within the program.
In this example, we are looking for a texture for a backsplash.
-
Tips:
- Square images work best.
- The bigger the image, the more detail will show in the program. The smaller the image, the blurrier the detail will be in the program. Choose one that is higher than 500x500 if possible.
-
- Locate the image you want and save it to your computer.
- Right click the image and click on Save Image As.
- Name the image you are saving and click on Save.
The image is now saved on your computer and can be imported into the Design Live program. - Open the attributes of the item you would like to assign this newly saved texture to.
Note: Since we are working on a backsplash, we will go to the attributes of the surface we added to the wall. - Go to the variables tab.
- Click on the texture box to open the texture selection window.
- When the texture selection window opens, click on User Texture Library at the top.
Note: This will serve as your own personal catalog of textures you imported into the program. - When you want to add/import a new texture into the program, click on the icon that looks like a folder with a plus sign next to it (the icon that has an arrow pointing to it in the image below).
- Find the image you have saved.
- Select it.
- Click Open to import the image into the program.
- Select a format.
- If the image is for a small item (cabinets, handles, decorative items) click on Normal.
If the image is for a large item (walls, floors, countertops) click on Large.
Note: The image we have imported is for a wall (backsplash), therefore we will select Large. - Scale the image.
Note: How big would the image be in real life? - Put in the dimensions you believe the image would be in real life and then press OK.
- Click Apply to confirm the changes.
- Check the perspective.
- Image is now imported into the program and assigned to your item of choice.
Reduce the size of the imported image
When you import a texture that is larger than the size allowed, you will be prompted with two choices:
• Normal (Recommended)
• Large. The longest edge of the image will be resized to 2000 pixels while keeping the quality.