fill shape with a pattern

Dear all

I am new to this and I need to know if for example how to fill a van with leopard's skin without actually losing the shape and contours of the van. Or if a person sitting on a sofa can be painted with the same pattern of the sofa?

I hope this doesn't sound too confusing. Please help!

luigi

The thing is you can make a selection around your van or person and fill that selection with a pattern - if you play with the blending modes you may even keep the shadows and highlights of your original object. However for a good pattern fill you need to know first what your goal is - do you want just the pattern and not the colors? - In which case the heal brush in PS7 would do nicely...
or perhaps you need to make your van appear as if it had leopard fur- in which case you may use a number of soulutions ranging from the apply image filter / the displace filter... a combination of the above - there are a lot of other things you could also do... could you get more specific?