Here’s a quick little tutorial on creating large RIP ready files for your solvent printer. We’ll be using Adobe Photoshop ($600) and Alien Skin Eye Candy 5 Textures ($99). Alien Skin Eye Candy 5 is a Photoshop plugin to create the fills you’d see in clipart cds and magazines such as reptile skin, animal fur, carbon fiber, wood, etc. This little plugin is extremely useful when you need to wrap a car all in diamond plate or leopard fur before adding any logos or text.

If you don’t have the time to work with Eye Candy 5, Aurora Graphics sells a great clipart DVD called Monster Wrap Fills ($300) using the Alien Skin plugin. Monster Wrap Fills and other titles can be purchased through any good sign equipment supplier.

1. We’ll start by making a blank document. We’re going to print it on 54″ media running color bars so we’ll make it seamless at 50″ x 96″.

2. Next we’ll open the Eye Candy Textures 5 plugin and select ‘Animal Fur’ and select Cheetah Medium Spots from the Settings Tab.

3. Check the Pattern Tab. Here is where you can tweak some of the settings for each texture. Check Seamless Tile.

4. That’s it. Let Photoshop render the file and save it as a .TIFF and it’s ready to be sent to your solvent printer.

Here are some other examples of fills using Eye Candy 5.