Very nice mansion Pat! You can see every stripe in the awnings!

Here is a butterfly (with smoothing turned off) and newly
recalibrated monitors, using transparent background.

Hello,
a few pictures with transparent
Pattern and 256 shades .

Best wishes

much lighter, with the recalibrated monitors, nice !

very nice outcomes, hardy

Thank you Animicule and Dinasset for your kind comments. Both of you do so brilliantly on your images.

Hardy: Yours are very precise also. Precise, and good colors.

How are you making a "transparent" background?

Open a new file, set size to 64x64pixels (it doesn't matter what size really 8x8 is fine too)
use the option transparent, or if you didn't, just add alpha channel and delete the white or black....

Just so you have a transparent block.
Then export as, name transparent.pat < make sure to use the .pat extension
after enter, it will ask for a description (this will be the name you see when you browse your patterns
in gimp). use something easy, like "transparent"

Save it to your gimp patterns file and it will be ready to use next time you restart gimp.
It doesn't add texture or color, but sometimes it is handy.

Another thing sometimes that is fun, check the size of your subject,
export it as a .pat file, restart gimp, open your subject file and run TexturizeByAreaByColorArea using
the subject pattern that you made, you can desaturate it before saving also for a different look, or
colorize it, use curves, or whatever you have fun with!

Another fun one is running the filter on the subject, create new from visible and make a .pat file
from the outcome and run the file on the subject again with the outcome pattern.

Try running the outcome pattern from one subject on a different subject...

For me its fun to obtain unexpected results!

City from Pexels, hopefully not too dark
RGB552set

What is the purpose of the transparent background if it does not add anything to the image?

Just "quantize" the image and chisel the colour areas.
Personally I prefer to use in any case a pattern to texturize

For my taste, sometimes the texture/color doesn't work well with a poor subject photo
so the transparent may produce acceptable output.

A couple of nature for fun!

Those are really nice, Animicule! I have another question if you don't mind. How do you get all the colors on 1 texture? I tried desat. at first then applying another color, overlay mode but I lose the texture.

With the Wood137 set, (on page21 post 205) the wood pattern was desaturated and alpha channel added.
then with the brightness and contrast I found a setting that looked good. Then I used
the select by color tool with the setting low (like 3 or 5) and removed some of the "fill" keeping
the pattern lines. This was the only layer. When it looked good to me, I saved the xcf file and
continued by adding a new layer below the pattern layer and with a list of colors by Name and
Hex values I used the background/foreground color tool and typed in the Hex code of the color and then filled the layer below the pattern with the new color. With both layers "on" I could see what the result would look like. To adjust the amount of color, I would play with the opacity value on the pattern layer.
Then exported as pattern using the color name and hex value, and adding the pattern description
(don't remember what exactly was used at that time, but now I would have used WOOD137, I may have used MYWOOD at that time). I did each of the colors by hand and adjusted the opacity as needed (most were fine, some around the same color as the pattern and very bright or very dark may have needed adjustment). For some very light and very dark colors I copied the pattern layer and used brightness/contrast tool to darken or lighten the pattern copy, then just turned the "eye" on the
pattern layer that looked best with the color layer below it, adjusted the pattern layer contrast and exported as pattern with it looked good. Also, made a pat file from just the pattern layer (maybe 3 with the different contrast values) and liked the results on some subjects with only the patterns with transparency in them (which is where the idea of entirely transparent pattern came from). I hope this answers your question, but if I misunderstood, please ask again!

This one took many tries and may not be so nice,
but it looks interesting to me, although the steps
have been forgotten. A "tight" ripple pattern was
used.

I like that one, Animicule. Yes, you answered what I was asking. I must not be using a stong enough pattern for I have tried several ways with the color above and below. Will try to get a more pronounced texture. Thank you.

A few tests

regards Hardy

Hardy111: Those are beautiful. You have mastered the technique wonderfully.

for fun
a lot of colour



animicule's colours, texturized in leather

original from Deviant Art

another one
more delicate colours, different texture
same source for image (DA)

Hardy111 good outcomes!
and Dinassett the patterns are nice and tight!!

Pat, are you using brightness/contrast to extremes for your pattern layer?
Have you tried this? From your de-saturated pattern layer make 2 duplicates.
name one "for dark", the other "for light".
have your layers at opacity 100% while enhancing
On the "for dark" layer, adjust the brightness contrast so the whites are strong and bright.
On the "for light layer, adjust same so the darks are strong and black.
(just leave the original for now, but you can adjust it later)
You can use Curves, or even threshold if you like.
then just have "eyes" on one pattern layer and a white or black layer below it.
this will give you a good idea of what it will look like.
If you like it enough, you can make a few color patterns and test them.
One mistake I made in the wood137 which led to horizontal lines was
I first was making them 1024x1024 and had tested to be certain everything was correct.
Then while making working on adding colors, I resized them a few times before picking the final size. Not certain exactly what happened, but they all had a 1 pixel border on top and bottom just a faded thing (maybe all sides but they don't show on the vertical). Also, since then I added a white2 and black2, which are more white and more black, with more contrast in the pattern, and you do see the difference and Dinassett's filter will pick the white2 and black2 over the white and black which are picked now in darkgray and offwhite areas. Anyway, probably best to choose the size and stick with it.