Create a Plaid Pattern

Here's an easy way to create a plaid pattern, and as a bonus, it requires no filters at all.  You just need PSP, any version should work, and actually, any graphics program should work I imagine.

This tut was written 11 May 2012 using PSP 9.


When I'm creating a pattern, I'm usually working with a specific palette for a kit or a project.  If you'd like to follow along with my example, you can save the palette shown below & open it in PSP.

1.  Begin by opening a new transparent canvas 200 x 200 pixels.
It's not vital that the size be the same as mine.  I tend to make my patterns small with the intention that they'll be a repeating pattern I use to fill larger canvases or shapes.

2.  Using the Paint Bucket tool flood fill your canvas with a color of your choice.  For my sample, I chose the yellow color from the palette above to use as the flood fill color.

3.  Enlarge your canvas so that there is blank space around the actual working canvas area.  You can either click on the button in the bar at the top to maximize the canvas or by clicking on one of the corners and dragging it out to increase the size so that you can see the cross-hatched design.

4.  Activate your Rectangle shape tool with the line width set to 0, and choose a new color from the palette for your Background/Fill properties box.  Draw a couple of random rectangles vertically on your canvas, extending beyond the edges of the yellow square into the blank area around it.  That's just to ensure that the color will go all the way to the edge of the working area.

5.  Continue drawing rectangles with each color until you're satisfied with how it looks.  There's no right or wrong way to do it.  Just play around with it until you have a result you like.

6.  Once you're finished with creating all the rectangles you'd like, merge the layers into a single layer.  (Layers > Merge > Merge Visible, or right click on the layer in your Layers palette and choose Merge > Merge Visible).  Yours will resemble mine as below.

7.  Now, duplicate your striped layer either by going to Layers > Duplicate or, alternatively, you can right click on the layer name in your Layers palette and choose to Duplicate it from there.

8.  On the copied layer you just created, rotate it 90°.  Direction doesn't matter; you can choose right or left.  Image > Rotate > Free Rotate.  Make sure to UN-check the All Layers box.

9.  Next, lower the opacity of the top layer to 50% by moving the slider in the Layers palette.

10.  Finally, merge the two layers into a single layer. (Layers > Merge > Merge Visible, or by choosing the same option after right clicking in the Layers palette.)  Once merged, you can save your finished pattern.

By using the same four colors from the palette and varying the width & colors of the rectangles you draw, you can get a lot of different variants on the same pattern.

As always, any results you create from the tut are yours to do with as you please.  I hope it was useful to you guys. :)