Lacy Tile

I own the intellectual copyright for the written tutorial.  What you make is yours, but please do not take my tutorial.  Share only my link.

This tutorial is intended for beginners to learn how to create a lace tile.  If you have any questions, please feel free to Email  me.

To do this tutorial you will also need Paint Shop Pro.  I wrote this with  Paint Shop Pro X2, but the steps may also be done in any version.  You may download a free trial at Corel.

You will need a brushtip of your choice (preferably one that is filled in and not an outline)

Remember to save as a psp file often!

1.  Open new, transparent image, size 500 x 500

2.   Flood-fill the image with white

3.  Effects > Textures > Tiles.  Apply these settings:  Hexagon, Angularity = 75, tile size = 15, border size = 3, smoothness = 40, depth = 1, ambience = 0, shininess = 50, color = white, angle = 315, intensity = 50, elevation = 30

4.  With the magic wand click on the black  lines to select the black grid.

5.  Layers > New Raster Layer

6.  Flood-fill the selection with a color of your choice. 

If when you fill, you end up filling the holes like the image below, then you've selected the wrong thing.  Click undo and get rid of the color.

Then Selections > Invert.

Then flood-fill with the color of your choice.  This is what it should look like -- you filling in the black grid (on a new layer)

7.  Selections > None

8.  Choose the rectangle selection tool, set to square selection.  Carefully draw a selection.  You want the left top corner to start so that it starts on the top of a hexagon horizontally and in the middle of that hexagon vertically.

9.  Draw the square out so that again you end in the middle of a hexagon column.

10.  Image > Crop to selection

11.  In the Layer Palette, right-click on the bottom layer and choose Delete.  You should just have the lace grid left.  Save this lace grid as a pspimage so that you can use it in later projects without having to redo this lesson.

12.  Now we need to know where the middle is, so let's check the image information.  Image > Image Info  .  You can see in mine that the dimensions is 461 x 463 pixels

13.  Choose the paintbrush tool and pick a brushtip of your choice.  Set your size to HALF what the width was in the image information (so half of 461 was 230).  Hardness = 100 ,density = 100, thickness, & opacity = 100.  Blend mode = Normal.

14.  Layers > New Raster Layer.

15.  Foreground color should be the same color as your grid color.  Carefully, left-click once with the paintbrush in the top left corner to place the brush.  You do not want the brush extending off the image.

16.  Right-click on the brush layer and choose duplicate.

17.  Image > Free Rotate.  Right, 90 degrees.

18.  Right-click on the top layer and choose Duplicate

19.  Continue Steps 17 & 18 until you have the image placed in all four colors. 

20.  Now I had a large opening in the middle.  So I opened a new layer.  Layers > New Raster Layer and placed another shape in the middle.  I used  a custom shape rather than a brushtip this time.  Either one is fine.

21.  In the Layer Palette, hide the bottom layer (grid) by clicking on the eye.

22.  Right-click on the top layer and choose Merge > Merge Visible.

23. Image > Resize.  33 PERCENT  Be sure Resize All Layers are UNCHECKED

24.  Move the shrunken image into the top left corner. 

25.  Right-click on the top layer and choose Duplicate.  Move this one next to the last one

26.  Right-click on the top layer and choose Duplicate.  Move this one next to the last one.  You should now have 3 in a row.

27.  Right-click on the top and choose Merge > Merge Visible.

28.  Right-click on the top and choose Duplicate.  Move the duplicate so that the image is on a second row of your tile.

29.  Right-click on the top and choose duplicate.  Move the duplicate so that the image is on a third row of your tile.  You should now have 3 rows of 3 blocks of the brushtips.

30.  UNHIDE the grid layer.

31.  Right-click on the top layer and choose merge > Merge Visible.

32.  Image > Resize  50 PERCENT.  Be sure Resize all layers is checked.

33.  Save this tile as a pspimage for use in future projects.  File > Save As

34.  Layers > New Raster layer

35.  Slide the blank layer to the bottom.

36.  Flood-fill the bottom layer with a color a shade darker than the lace pattern you made. 

37.  Save this as a JPEG.  File > Export > JPEG Optimizer

 Please do not remove this tutorial from my site.  Share my url.