Fred, could you tell me how to do this in Flexi to add a transparent background?
The only way you will have a transparent background is with vectors surrounding the fills. I haven't used Version 10, but as late as version 8.6, Flexi doesn't do an adequate job with transparency support such as you would expect with PNG or PSD formats. Here is how to work with solid textures in Flexi:
1. Create a new color palette. View > Color > New Table
2. Open a seamless texture tile. In this case I am choosing a stainless steel texture such as you might find on a hot dog cart.
3. With the texture tile selected, go to View > Color > Define Pattern and click it. Choose New Table in the dialog that follows. The texture has now been added to the swatch palette table. Save the palette table by going to View > Color > Save Table. Give it an appropriate name.
4. Enter some text or draw or import a shape. Size it for your layout.
5. With the object selected, click the texture on the palette to fill it.
6. With the object still selected, double click the texture on the palette to open the Advanced Settings dialog. With "Proportional" checked, adjust the Tile Size setting to arrive at the scale you like. In this case I reduced the size of the tile from 12" to 3".
7. Add whatever effects you like.
8. Close the saved palette so that it won't open automatically the next time you launch FlexiSign. With large bitmaps such as my tiles, this can add significantly to your launch time. I also limit how many tiles I will store in a palette to 10 or less ... again due to the time it takes Flexi to read the whole palette before it will be available for use.