Plaids are very versatile and come in many colors and designs. If you want a plaid to accent a photo you have, you can simply use that photo as a starting point. And with a single photo, you can also generate many different plaids, so enjoy the process.
Choose a photo
You can use any photo you have, whether it is one that you want to showcase or a stock photo whose color palette appeals to you. This can also be a great way to use "bad" photos since you don't need to recognize anything on it.
We will use this photo and I resized it to 1000 pixels. If you use a very large photo, you will end up with either a very large plaid or fewer color variations.
Select your favorite section
With the Selection tool set to a Rectangle, make a very thin selection on your photo. It could be vertical or horizontal. Try to find a section that has the colors you would want to show in your plaid design.
Copy (Ctrl-C) and paste that section as a new image (Ctrl-Shift-V). If your section is closer to 1 pixel in thickness, you might end up with an error message in PSP2023. To avoid that, make sure your selection is not TOO THIN. We will trim it again after.
Trim your image to 1 pixel
Instead of using the selection tool, we can go to Image > Canvas size and enter the height of 1 pixel. You can leave the width as it is originally, or you can reduce it to a rounder number. In my case, my image was 565 pixels, so I trimmed it to 500. You don't have to do that if you want the full width of the image you created.
Stretch this image
Now that we have an image that is a single pixel in height, let's stretch it to make a square image. For that, we go to Image > Resize and choose to Resize by pixels.
We want to make a 500x500 pixels image (since our strip was 500 pixels). However, by default, the width and height will be linked so they would change proportionally. We need to change that. On the bottom, you have to have Advanced and AI-Powered Settings checked so you can access additional settings. If the Resample shows the AI-Powered mode, change it to anything else. For some unknown reason, the AI-Powered resampling does not allow you to change the other settings. Here I chose the Bilinear, and I get the setting for Lock aspect ratio. I UNCHECK it. Then, I have the option to change the Height value, on top, to 500.
Once this is done, we get this type of image. Notice how the vertical lines are perfectly even, from top to bottom. This is what will make the design seamless. I could not get those even lines if I had worked on an image that was more than one pixel.
If you wanted, you could use this design as a striped pattern for your larger paper. You know it will be a perfect match for your photo!
Make the plaid
To make the perfect plaid, you will need the same stripes in the other direction. Let's duplicate that layer by right-clicking on it in the Layers palette, and choosing Duplicate. Then, go to Image > Free Rotate and select to rotate by 90 degrees. Make sure the Rotate All layers is UNchecked! It will then look like your image is now showing horizontal lines. But that is just the top layer.
In the Layers palette, reduce the Opacity of the top layer to 50%.
And the resulting pattern will be a nice plaid.
Use this pattern
Since this tile is perfectly seamless, you can now use it as a fill for your larger paper. In the Materials palette, under the Pattern tab, find this tile that is currently on your workspace.
Plaids are often more interesting when they are at an angle of 45 degrees, so you can change that Angle value too.
Now, you can fill your full-size paper, with this seamless pattern. See how well this plaid matches the original photo!
More variations
If you use the same photo and select different sections, you will end up with a variety of tiles that will still match your starting photo.
This process is quite easy but if you want or need to create many plaid patterns, or if you just want to go even faster, you can use a script that will generate up to 10 different tiles in one execution. You can find this Plaid Maker script in the store.
