Teapot - thank you.
@PixLab Re my 'frivolous material” image - thanks for your kind comments and asking “... how did you do it?”.Well, as usual with Gimp, it is all about exploring and experimenting.
So yes, to get such a result on the “ground floor” one can use the Gimp Mosaic Filter in the following manner, as it does have some really flexible parameters. I typically use a canvas of 1500 x 1500 pixels, for which the settings/processes below are applicable.
1. Choose your base colour for tiles/pavers and fill a layer with it.
2. Open the Mosaic filter and set the following parameters as shown
1. Tile Geometry – either Squares, Hexagons or Octagons – it really does not matter as we are about to distort them anyway
2. Tile Size 130
3. Tile Neatness 0.3 – this is the distorting factor
4. Tile Color Variation 0.8 – this will automatically give you a range of tile shades from the base colour
5. Tile Spacing 4.0 – this fits well with the tile size and allows easier manipulation of the grout colouring (below)
6. You could if you wanted invoke 'Rough tile surface' parameter, but I use other methods, again below.
7. Leave all other parameters at default value
8. Press OK to create a multicoloured mosaic tile layer
3. OK now for the 'clever bits!!' that allows customisation of the tile colouring, grout colour/material and tile edge bevelling.
4. Create a new transparent layer above the new mosaic layer; make it the active layer
5. Call up the Mosaic filter again and using the changed settings as in 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 2.5 above, and leaving all others at their default values, press OK to run the filter.
6. Because of the layers transparency, the result will actually be an outline of the tiles i.e. just showing the grout (spacing).
7. Now with these two layers available, it is easy to either select a colour from the first mosaic or selected tiles from the outline layer and on a new layer, change the colour, or texture by using colour fill, a gradient (say with Shape = Shaped Spherical), or noise or even a brush to your desire.
8. You can easily also add noise or other texture with these selections
9. Steps 7 and 8 can be repeated as required
10. Again to assist in providing a relief effect to the mosaic, using the outline layer you can easily obtain a selection of all the mosaic tiles/pavers and apply a bevel to them using Filters>Decor>Chisel or Carve.
11. Similarly using that same selection and then inverting it, you can modify the grout colour and texture.
However, to be honest, in the above 'frivolous material” image, to create the mosaic floor, I actually copied a texture from the web.