So here’s a tip that I just found out that I thought was cool enough to pass along. Maybe you already know this, but I didn’t and it was one of those “Aha!” moments. In Photoshop, you can create patterns that you can then use to fill the background. I had figured out how to do this (not well yet, mind you- I am still working on that!).
I created a pattern and made it black an white because I assumed that was the easier way to do it, and then somehow colorize it into any color I needed for the project I happened to be working on. Well, I got distracted and went off to other things before I figured out the colorize thing. A week later I was thumbing through a book on Photoshop, trying to decide if I wanted to buy it, and low and behold. In the first 10 pages of the book, there was a tip. In Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation you can click the colorize button at the bottom and it will color the gray to black shades in your image. Cool!
I did buy the book.
I really need to take a Photoshop class 
