What are the knotwork templates for?
The knotwork templates were created for people who want to make  knotwork designs like those on this site (see the Knotwork Design pages). My creations started out the same way - with a plain two-colour graphic of the knot. With a bit of work in a graphics editor the templates can be transformed into attractive designs.

How were they made?
All the knotwork templates in these pages were created using Goldcup Software's Knotworker. They were each exported as Windows bitmaps, converted into two-colour paletted graphics in Corel PhotoPaint and saved as transparent GIFs.

How can they be downloaded?
To save a template to your hard disk right-click the template and choose either 'Save Image As...' (Netscape Navigator) or 'Save Picture As...' (Internet Explorer) from the pop-up menu. Then specify the directory you wish to save the file in.

Save the template at the right to your hard disk using the process described above, then open the file in PhotoPaint. (If you have Marquee Visible selected you'll see that the foreground colour of the image is selected, showing it to be a transparent GIF.)

The first thing we need to do with the image is change it to a full RGB colour graphic, so select Image/Convert To/RGB Color (24-bit). You should see a larger palette become available.

We'll need the knotwork as an object against a white background, so set the paper colour to white by double clicking the Paper swatch in the status bar and choosing a white colour (RGB 255, 255, 255 will do).

Select Edit/Cut to remove the knot, then Edit/Clear to give an empty white background.

Choose Edit/Paste/As New Object to paste in the knotwork object.

Enlarge the paper size by choosing Image/Paper Size and setting the width to 140 pixels and the height to 120 pixels, with placement Centred and paper colour white.

We want the knot red so select Image/Adjust/Hue-Saturation-Lightness and set Hue to -180, Saturation to 100 and Lightness to 0. Click OK.

Select View/Roll-Ups/Objects and select the Single editing mode in the Object Roll-Up. This allows you to apply effects to the object only.

Choose Effects/Render/Lighting Effects and apply the Texturize style to give the knot depth. Select Image/Flip/Horizontally then Image/Flip/Vertically to give the impression of a light source from the top-left. (Note: Flipping seems to give better results than rotating by 180 degrees.)

Apply Object/Drop Shadow with the settings Offset bottom-right, Horizontal 9, Vertical 6, Feather 3, Opacity 30, Direction Middle, Edges Linear and Color Black.

Select Object/Combine/All Objects with Background

In this example I then cropped the image slightly with the Rectangle Mask tool and Image/Crop/To Mask, converted it to a 64-colour optimised paletted image and saved it as a CompuServe GIF file for inclusion in this web page.

Save the template at the right to your hard disk using the process described at the top of this page, then open the file in Photoshop.

The first thing we need to do with the image is change it to a full RGB colour graphic, so select Mode/RGB Color.

We'll need the knotwork as a layer against a white background, so set the paper colour to white by clicking the small black and white Default Colors icon in the toolbox (this sets the foreground colour to black and the background colour to white).

Apply Select/Color Range with the colour picked (sampled) from the light-blue knot and with Fuzziness at 0.

Select Edit/Cut to remove the knot. Select/All, then Edit/Clear to give an empty white background.

Choose Edit/Paste Layer and click OK to paste in the knotwork as a new Layer.

Enlarge the paper size by choosing Image/Canvas Size and setting the width to 140 pixels and the height to 120 pixels, with placement centred.

We want the knot red so select Image/Adjust/Hue-Saturation and set the Master Hue to -180, Saturation to 100 and Lightness to 0. Click OK.

To give the knot depth choose Filter/Render/Lighting Effects and apply the 2AMSPOT style with the texture channel set to Layer 1 Transparency.

Now we need to create a drop shadow, so select Edit/Paste Layer and click OK in the dialog. Choose Image/Adjust/Desaturate then apply Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur with radius 2 pixels.

To send the shadow behind the red knotwork open the Layers Palette from Window/Palettes/Show Layers (you may need to double-click the Layers tab once or twice to open it fully), then drag Layer 2 in the Layers Palette to below Layer 1.

Position the shadow down and to the left of the red knotwork by clicking the Move tool and dragging on the image.

In this example I flipped the image via Image/Flip/Horizontal then cropped it using the Rectangular Marquee tool and Edit/Crop. I chose Mode/Indexed Color, flattening the layers, and set 8-bit resolution, adaptive palette and diffusion dither. I then saved the image as a CompuServe GIF file for inclusion in this web page.