Squares on Squares Background
This is my first 'official' tutorial and is hopefully easy enough for a PSP beginner to follow. I often just fool around with blobs of paint on a square or selections from my main graphic with different filters until I find something I like. I change my mind so often I can never remember how I got to the end.
While playing around with ideas for a background today I came up with the tile used for the outer background of this page. It was so simple and I was struck by how it could be used in many ways and to create many different looking backgrounds. Most importantly, I remembered how it was done, so I decided to share it.
As far as I know, this is an original concept, although it is based on many other ideas I've learned from others. I am so grateful for all of the fantastic tutorial writers out there who continue to amaze me with new ideas for creating with PSP. Any duplication of another tutorial is purely coincidental.
So, let's get started.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
Paint Shop Pro (It was created using PSP 7.04.) Get it here.
Simple Filters - A free filter - Get it here.
1. First, choose a dark color (color #1) you wish to use in your background tile as both your foreground and background colors. Now, left click on the background color in the color palette and use the drop down window slidebar of the background color window for the 'light' setting to select a lighter shade of that color for the contrast as shown below. Just click on the down arrow, then holding the left mouse button down, slide your cursor to the right until you reach the shade you desire and release it.
2. Next, choose a different color (color #2) you wish to use in your background tile and do the same with it as you did above in #1. In my example, I used two shades of grey-green and two of a yellow-gold. As we proceed you will be able to switch back and forth between these four colors by right clicking on either the foreground or background color window and selecting the one you want to use next from the most recently used colors shown. Here is how it looks.
3. Open a new image 150px X 150px in size and floodfill it with the lighter shade of color #2.
4. Select your paintbrush and set it on square shape, size 50px, hardness 100, opacity 100, step 25, density 100. You may find it helpful to zoom in a time or two and using the Grid will provide handy guides for placing your color. If you aren't familiar with using the Grid, for this tile select File/Preferences/General Program Preferences/Rulers and Units. Use the settings below. Turn the Grid off and on by choosing View on the Menu bar and clicking on the word Grid. It is very important to paint the squares exactly in place or we will not be able to select them properly later on. Keep zooming in until you can clearly see that edges are where they belong.
5. This is how your tile will look with the grid in place.
6. Now we will begin to paint our first colored squares. Set the darker shade of color #1 as your foreground color as described in step #2. In this example, I floodfilled the tile with the light yellow, and would now use the darker grey-green. Place your paint brush in the upper left corner and click once to paint that square. Next, do the bottom right corner. Finally, add the middle square that connects the two. It should look like the tile below.
7. Now, change the foreground position on the left to the lighter shade of color #1. Using the same paint brush settings, paint a light colored square in the upper right corner and lower left corner as shown below.
8. Next, we will choose the darker shade of color #2. In this example, the dark yellow. Paint the dark squares as shown in the enlarged section below. They should be two 10 pixel spaces on the grid from the outer edges of the tile.
 
9. In our final painting step, we will select the light and dark shades of color #1, placing the light color in the foreground and the dark in the background boxes. Select the paint brush tool again and change the brush size to 30 pixels.
We shall now place a square in the lighter color one 10 pixel square of the grid from the edge of the darker colored square in the upper left and lower right corners (light green on the dark green in this enlarged example of the area below). Switch to the darker color and do the same in the top right and bottom left corners. These squares will overlap the darker squares of color #2. We need to save this tile to use again as you will see below. I have a folder for background tiles I can convert to different colors. I'll leave the name and location to you.
 
10. And now we work some magic! Choose Layers/Merge/Merge all (flatten). Then go to Effects/PlugIn Filters/Simple and apply the Diamonds Filter for the result below.
11. Next, let's explore some other things we can do with this tile. I had chosen these colors from an old texture tile I saved long ago from some free source. With that tile open in PSP, I changed my foreground Styles to Texture and selected that tile. Now, I opened the tile I saved to use as a pattern in the future and selected the light yellow areas of the tile. Next, I floodfilled the selected areas with that pattern. Selections/Select None. Then Layers/Merge/Merge All (flatten). Now, apply the Simple Diamonds filter to this tile for the effect below.
12. Or, the same graphic pattern applied to the darker shade of color #2 of the tile could result in a background like this.
13. You can also obtain different effects by using different filters. Here I applied the Simple Diamonds filter, then applied the Funhouse Xaggerate filter with the default settings. You can find the Funhouse filters here.Try some other filters you have for even more effects. If your tile isn't balanced after applying them, just apply the Simple/Quick Tile filter and they will tile perfectly.
14. If you need a tile with different colors, just select the colors of your saved tile and replace them with new colors of your choice for something like this. Here I used two shades of pink with white and grey, then spray painted the white tile with the darker pink. I resized this tile to 100 px square and am showing it here as a sample tiled background.
I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and were able to follow the directions. Please contact me if you have any questions.
HAVE FUN!!!
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