There are two major products that came from Berkley: LSD and BSD. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
The GIMP image manipulation program offers a Plasma plug-in that renders a cloudy smokey colored texture; unlike the nearby Solid Noise plug-in, however, it does not offer the option to create a tileable pattern, which can be useful as a base for textures for various uses.
It is possibile to render a plain Plasma, and then make it
tileable with Filters -> Map -> Make Seamless but the results
are not optimal with this kind of hard-to-retouch images.
This tutorial present a different way to get a plasma-like texture
using tilable Solid Noise, basically generating the three RGB components
on independent layers.
Tutorial
Start a new image of the desidered size, with a white
background. Create a new layer, you may call it "red", now use the
Filters -> Render -> Solid Noise... plug-in, check
the Tilable option and experiment with the rext; hit
OK. Now use Filters -> Colours -> Colourify,
select the red colour and hit OK. Lastly, set the layer
Mode to Difference: this will be the (inverted)
red component of the plasma.
Now, repeat the same operations: new layer called "green",
render a Solid Noise with the same options, but a different
Random Seed, Colourify in green and set
the layer as Difference: you'll have the green inverted
component.
Repeat once more and Colourify in blue for
the blue inverted component and you're done: a plasma pattern that
can be tiled.
You may control the hues of the image by fiddling with
the layers Opacity, lowering the components you want to
give prevalence to. You can also invert the plasma by using a black
background instead of a white one, or give it a pattern with a greyscale
background of your choice.
