EZ Basic Plaid Without Filters
tutorial by Whisper

This tutorial was created and put on this site on August 15, 2003.
It is property of and ©2001-2003 to Whisper's Web Works.
Please do not copy or place this tutorial or any of the graphics on any site, email or elist without written permission directly from me.
If you would like to share the url for this tutorial, you may do so without writing for permission, but I always welcome a "who, where" email.
Thank you.

For this tutorial you will need:
Paint Shop Pro 8  ~ download a trial version.

Open a new image:
10 x 100 pixels
Transparent
Raster background
16.7 Million colors

Duplicate this image by holding down the Shift key and hit the D key three times.
You should now have four images that are 10 x 100.

Minimize one of the images.

The other three we are going to fill with the colors you pick for your plaid.  One color per image.

I am filling mine with:
#F3DEBD
#833B39
#265644

Move these filled images to the side of your workspace and maximize your empty image.

How wide you make the stripes for your plaid is completely up to you.
I will let you know how wide mine are and you can adjust you what you like.

Flood fill your empty image with one of your three colors.  I will fill mine with the light tan.

Image > Add borders > these settings:
Pixels
Symmetric UNchecked
Top 0
Left 0
Bottom 0
Right 5 (this is the only number we will be working with)
One of the other colors of choice.  I will be setting mine to the red.
(You ask why I have you set up those other images, right?  All you need to do is move your cursor to the image filled with the color you want for your stripe, click it and your border color will be set at that color.)

Image > Add borders > these settings:
Pixels
Symmetric UNchecked
Top 0
Left 0
Bottom 0
Right 5
One of the other colors of choice.  I am using the green.

This is how we are doing so far:

Continue to add the stripes in a random color/width way.
I will list what color and pixel width I added my stripes in.

(Watch the upper left corner of the Add Borders box for the size of your image.
You want to end up with an image that is 100 x 100.)

Red 3
Tan 3
Green 10
Tan 10
Red 10
Green 7
Tan 5
Green 3
Red 5
Tan 8
Green 5
Red 3
Tan 3
Red 4
Green 1

I try not to end with the same color I started with.

Once you have all your stripes set and the image at 100 x 100 you can close the color filled images.

In the Layer Palette right click on the Background layer and Promote Background Layer.

Right click again on this layer and Duplicate.

Image > Rotate > Free rotate > Right, 90, all layers UNchecked.

In the Layer Palette lower the opacity of the top layer to 25-50 and the bottom layer 50-75 ( it all depends on how bright you want your plaid.)

I set my top layer to 25 and the bottom layer to 50.

Right click on either layer and Merge > Merge all flatten.

Your plaid tile is ready for use!

Try experimenting with colors and adding textures.

Page 2 for other examples.

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