TUTORIAL 6 - GRID PATTERNS

MAKING A GRID PATTERN STEP 1: Open a new project - whatever size you want. Go to the channels window and create a new channel. Using the marquee tool, create a square about 20 to 25 pixels wide and high. Go to the drop down menu and select edit > fill and fill the square with white. Do not deselect the marquee yet. STEP 2: Go to the menu again and select > modify > contract. Change the contract by: box to 1 pixel. The larger the size the bigger the grid line. STEP 3: Once you've contracted the square, fill with black. If you zoom in you will see you now have a black square with a white border. Do not deselect the marquee yet. Using the arrow key and the marquee tool still selected, move the box up and to the left by 1 pixel. To make this easy to see, zoom in very close so you can see the box move. After you've done this, go to edit > define pattern. Now you can deselect the marquee around the box. STEP 4: Here's the fun part. Make a new channel. Select the paint bucket tool and open the options window. Set the contents option to pattern. Go to the new channel and fill it by clicking in the center of the new channel layer. If you've done everything right the channel will fill with a grid pattern. STEP 5: Once you've filled the channel, drag it down to the load channel as selection box. Now, go to the top of the tool box and switch your view to layers instead of channels. Create a new layer and select fill > pattern to make the grid pattern fill the layer. Now you have a grid to do with as you want. STEP 6 (optional): At this point you can add a picture underneath the grid layer and do some adjustments (soft light/overlay etc.) to make the grid blend in with the picture the way you like it. Here is a sample of what you can do with a grid pattern over a picture. tutorial index