Create a Houndstooth Pattern

Happy New Year!  Thought it was time to start using this blog and share an inaugural tutorial.  This tutorial was written 1 January 2012 using PSP 9.  It should work in other versions of the program.  The only filter needed to do this tutorial is Simple Filters - Diamond which is a free filter.  It's available here if you don't already have it.

This is my first attempt at writing a tutorial so feedback would be great - good, bad or otherwise.  Need more screenshots or less?  More explanations or less?  Thought I'd write this one up first since I used this same method to create the background on my blog here.



1.  Begin by opening a new blank canvas at 200 x 200 pixels.  Any size canvas is okay, but it should be square and able to be divided into 4 equal square sections.

2.  Select 2 colors you'd like to use in your materials palette.  A dark & light shade of the same color work well, but again, any colors are fine.

3.  Choose your Selection tool, then the Custom Selection button at the top of the tool palette (as shown in the screenshot below).

 

4.  In the window which opens, enter the following values.   Top: 0;  Left: 0;  Right: 100;  Bottom: 100 and hit the Okay button.  That should select the upper left quadrant of your canvas.

5.  Using the Paint Bucket tool, fill that selection with your darker shade.  (Again, for my example I've used two shades of the same purple color, but use whichever color you've chosen in your materials palette.)  Select none.

6.  Choose your Selection Tool once more, and hit the Custom Selection button.  In the window that opens, enter the following values.  Top: 100;  Left: 100;  Right: 200;  Bottom: 200 and hit the Okay button.  That should select the lower right quadrant of your canvas.

7.  Using the Paint Bucket tool, fill the selection with your lighter shade (or your second color if you're using different colors than I am).  Select none.

Your 200 x 200 pixel canvas should look similar to mine as shown below.

8.  Now open a new canvas 100 x 100 pixels.  This is where we'll create the portion to fill those two open sections in the larger canvas.

9.  Fill the entire smaller canvas with your darker shade.  (Or if using totally different colors, just use whichever one you used to fill the upper left section of your larger canvas.)

10.  Use your Selection Tool > Custom Selection again, and enter the following values.  Top: 0;  Left: 50;  Right: 100;  Bottom: 100, and hit the Okay button.  That should select the right side of your smaller canvas.

11.  Fill that selection with your lighter shade.  (Or if using totally different colors than I am, just use whichever one you used to fill the lower right section of your larger canvas.)  Select none.  Your smaller canvas should look similar to mine as shown below.

Your 100 x 100 pixel canvas should now look similar to mine as shown below.

12.  With your smaller canvas still active, go to Effects > Plugins > Simple > Diamonds.

Your canvas should look similar to mine below.

13.  Then, under your Image menu (in PSP 9, not sure if it's in another location in other versions), select Mirror.

Your canvas should look similar to mine below.

14.  Copy this small canvas.  You can either do that under the Edit > Copy menu, or right click on the header bar for the canvas and choose Copy from there.

15.  Make your larger canvas active once again.  Add a new raster layer to the canvas and make sure this new layer is the one which is active in your layers palette.

16.  Choose your Selection Tool > Custom Selection button once more and enter the following values.  Top: 0;  Left: 100;  Right: 200;  Bottom: 100 and hit the Okay button.  The upper right quadrant of your canvas should be selected now.

17.  Go to Edit > Paste into selection (or you can right click on the canvas header bar and choose the same option from the right-click menu).  You should see the dark small corner pointing into the center of your canvas with the light small corner pointing to the upper right corner of the canvas.

Your canvas should look similar to mine as shown below.

18.  Duplicate the layer you just added with the angled stripes.  Now, flip & mirror that duplicated layer.  Both options are located under the Image menu.

After doing both the Flip & Mirror options, your canvas should look similar to mine as shown below.

19.  Once the larger 200 x 200 pixel canvas is filled like shown above, just merge all your layers together, and you can now save the file in whatever format you'd like so that you can use it as a pattern fill.

I hope you've learned how to do something new from my tutorial and that it was easy to follow.  Again, any feedback would be much appreciated since this is my first attempt at actually writing a tutorial to explain how I create something.  There may be other, easier ways to create this same thing, but this is just the method which I use.  Any results you create from my tutorial are yours to do with as you please.  Any similarity to another tutorial is coincidental & unintentional.