Prompt 1: Amber
Prompt 2: Topaz

For a number of years now, I've been tweaking background tiles to create new ones. Most of them came from the now-defunct GRSites.com; and I used their software for some of the modifications, along with Microsoft Picture Manager. In particular, I have been working on one called (on that site) brown128.jpg. I think it's fair to say that it's the most productive background tile I've ever played around with—though it's also possible that that has something to do with the fact that I've been manipulating it for over a decade, and am now on the umpteenth generation.

This is the original graphic. If you click on it, you can see what it looks like when tiled to cover the whole page:



I've made many variations, some of which have already been used on my website. At first, it was more a question of intensifying and slightly colour-shifting the original using the doohickey on GRSites. Here are three that all are a similar blend of shades that produce an amber effect—tan, rust, brown, gold and so on. (I've displayed them at a smaller size so that I can fit them all side by side.) Again, you can see how it looks if you click on the graphic. Even apparently slight changes can make a difference when the background is tiled over the whole webpage.




Then, I started using the filters/etc. in Microsoft Picture Manager to refine the variants. For instance, you can affect the boldness of the pattern in a variety of ways.



Then, for a while, I went in the opposite direction: I tried to get "solid" patterns, where the overall impression was of a single colour rather than a combination, but where the original feathery pattern was still clear. This is a lot harder than you might think! Look at the ones below: versions like the first one came fairly readily, but have a definite light-and-dark quality. The subtler pattern on the last one all too easily lost clarity.



More recently, though, I've managed to get the graphic to shift in more malleable ways. Some of the results have been downright startling. Even so, the original feathery pattern is always clearly discernible. Here is a selection. Since I'm doing this for both Amber and Topaz, I've added some with yellow tones as well: