Creating Psychic BG (Patreon)

Last night I did the Psychic Terrain's Battleback. It is not terribly complicated but i figured I might show you all how it's done. 

The main challenge with Psychic Terrain visually is keeping it distinct from our various other fields in the same color-ballpark, such as : Misty field, Corrosive field, and Corrosive Misty field. To that end I decided I would use a color-gradient. Whereas those are solidly pink or solidly purple, if I fade between the two it should look distinct enough while still maintaining the usual color associations. 

Note this is still in Graphics Gale. 

To start, I pulled the base from Electric Terrain, all three of the other fields use different bases (a little smokier, or different hues in the top or bottom; electric terrain is just flatzo)

https://i.imgur.com/snC62o0.png

Then we go to Image > Greyscale to drop the color and make it easy to work with.

https://i.imgur.com/58uXFmp.png

Next, I create a new layer and just draw a gradient of solid colors over it from the palette using the rectangle tool. I check the hues to make sure each shade is roughly equidistant from the next. 

https://i.imgur.com/6PFb7l4.png

Then I select the new layer as a whole, and turn it at an angle so it's not quite so uniform.  I enlarge it to fill the exposed corners.

https://i.imgur.com/MbFOV7I.png

I then hit Image > Effects > Blur More about 15 times.

https://i.imgur.com/suZAWv5.png

Maybe 16.

Then from the layer menu, I select the top layer's properties and reduce it's opacity until I like the look of it. 

https://i.imgur.com/0dyGx58.png

But this still seems a little weak, so let's fix that. First, I jack up the contrast of the bottom layer several times, that way it doesn't lose value under the solid-color top layer.

https://i.imgur.com/BgeTYfn.png

Then I duplicate the top layer, and merge the bottom two. It looks like this. 

https://i.imgur.com/TZRuem1.png

I repeat the step before, increasing the bottom layer's contrast so that the shading isn't lost under a second layer. I do this until I like the look of it.

https://i.imgur.com/YhdJwWp.png

Satisfied with this, we just have to smooth it out for Essentials. Essentials uses a 2x style but since we've blurred and blended a gradient, this graphic is currently a 1x. I resample the image to half its size. Then, to keep it in similar color style to other backgrounds, I use All Frames > Color Depth to limit the background's colors to 256 (as all backgrounds are limited to). This gives it the painted-pixel look most battle backs have. That done, I re-enlarge the image to the proper 2x size making sure Smooth is unchecked. 

https://i.imgur.com/6fNj3En.png

Then it's done!