Technique of the...every so often

I learned the hard way many years ago not to name something "tip of the week" or "tip of the day" unless you're willing to commit to actually posting something every week or every day. With that in mind, I'm pleased to announce a new feature on my blog: Technique of the every so often.

Here goes.....

Here's a cool way to make a quick background that has lots of possibilities.

Start by painting a gradient on the background: I used two shades of the same color. Then add a new layer above the background.
Press Q to change to Quick Mask mode. Use the Gradient tool to paint a black to white gradient. You'll see a slightly visible gradual red overlay.

From the Filter menu choose Pixelate>Color Halftone. You can experiment with the settings to come up with all kind of different results. Here's the settings I used.
Here's the results of the filter in Quick Mask:
Press Q again to return to regular mode and you'll have a selection. Fill that selection with either your foreground or background color.

If you like, experiment with different layer blend modes: here I changed the top layer to Multiply.

Quick, easy, with lots of different possibilities.

Check in next week next month every so often for another quick technique.
[edit: in the meantime, to see more tutorials, join NAPP ;)]