Q: bill, i have a trick which will get you nice results!! take a background with a pattern, reverse it and put the reversed one on a different layer. change the opacity of the reversed layer to 50% and merge the 2 layers
A: i already do that, but i usually prefer to do other things as well, such as change the size, angle, color, and also make them move. and use a slightly different composite algorhythm than simple opacity