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You can select a tessellation configuration by the menu option File / New, or press Control+N (Mac users press Command+N). A dialog presents several categories indicating the basic type: triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon, spiral, circle or non-periodic. Select one of the categories with the mouse and click OK; you can also double-click a category. Another dialog appears with the possible tessellations for the selected category. The greyed images can not be selected for unregistered users. For the polygon categories, below the image is a code being the so called isohedral type of the tessellation. (More details about tessellations given a isohedral type can be found on the websites of Alain Nicolas and Tom McLean.) The image indicates the symmetries with different kind of arrows. For the spiral category, there are no isohedral types; the caption describes the kind of spiral. After selecting a spiral type a dialog asks details about the spiral: just accept the defaults and click OK. Some parameters can still be changed afterwards. Furthermore, the documentation page explains details about the spiral parameters.
The substitution method is applied to generate non-periodic tessellations. The number of iteration steps can be chosen at creation and afterwards. Some of the non-periodic tessellations are aperiodic.

In the beginning, the basic tile has an outline of straight line segments. You can add points to a segment so that each time a curved segment (red point) is added or a linear segment (blue point) is added. Just click near the grey outline, or farther away from it. Points are automatically added to corresponding edges according to the symmetry rules for the tessellation. You can also delete or move a point. For deleting a point, select the point by clicking on it, so that a small box appears. Then, delete it by clicking the Delete icon (scissors), or selecting the Edit / Delete Point menu option. You can move the point after selection by clicking at the new location. You can un-select the point by clicking the Unselect icon.
Note that editing points may lead to an invalid outline that crosses itself. You have to recognize yourself such a situation and solve it by editing one or more points.

The corners of a tile can be moved after clicking the Edit outline or frame icon: straight edges between the corners appear. Select a corner with the mouse, and then click at another location.The tile will change in a certain way, such that the characteristics of the tile are preserved. Selecting another corner may change the tile in a different way. Just try and see what happens. If you are not satisfied with a move action, then simply undo it (Control+Z). In this way you can also scale and/or rotate a tile. Clicking the Edit outline or frame icon again allows you to return to the mode of editing the segment points.

With the menu option Tessellation / Save Outline Image you can save the outline as an image of type PNG. Before doing that, it is recommended to save the project, so that you can re-open it (after returning from the painting activity). (In fact this is so important that Tissellator saves together with the outline image the current project in the user directory with date and time as prefix.)

Initially, the size of the outline image is 960 x 640 pixels. You can enlarge this size by changing the view settings, that is especially interesting for owners of a 4k monitor. Via menu option Extra / Settings a dialog appears where you can set the View width and View height. These settings must be in line with the maximum resolution of your monitor screen. Note that for big enlargements of the View width and View height you have to restart the Tissellator program.

In this step you continue with the image saved in step 3. The goal is to use the outline in that image to paint the interior of the tile. Tissellator has no painting support at the moment, so you must use your own favorite paint program. The outline shows the boundaries for painting. But, it does not matter if you paint outside the outline: Tissellator will use the original outline as mask. Preferably, you use a paint program with layers, so that you can save the painted result without the pixels of the outline. Painting can be done in a cartoon like style; or you can use a photo to fill the interior.

Beware that the painted image keeps its original size; so, do not scale the image in the painting program. Also, do not move the outline in the painting program. If there is a need to scale or move the outline, then you should do that in Tissellator.

The painted image of step 4 is loaded as background: select menu option Tessellation / Load Background and choose the painted image. You can see the background by changing the fill mode: press Control+F several times, or select the menu option Edit / Toggle fill. The outline and the painted image should be in line with each other, just as in the image at the right. If not, then you have to redo some work; refer to step 3 and step 4. You can open the project corresponding to the outline; that project was saved by yourself, or it was saved by Tissellator in the user directory.

Select menu option Tessellation / Create Tessellation to let Tissellator generate the picture. It firstly asks in a dialog the size (width and height) of the picture. For unregistered users that dialog is skipped: the size is fixed to 1250x960 pixels. After some time depending on the size of the output image, a dialog asks the place where to store the output image file. For unregistered users the output image contains a watermark.
Now go in your file browser to the place where you saved the created tessellation and open it with an image viewer.

You can also create a tessellation with tiles filled with multiple painted images. The number of painted images and their pattern depends on the type of tessellation. Select menu option Tessellation / Load Multi Background where a number of filenames must be entered. Fill in the names of (different) painted images (or browse to them), and click OK.

Select menu option Tessellation / Create Multi Tessellation to let Tissellator generate the picture. It firstly asks in a dialog the size (width and height) of the picture. For unregistered users the size is fixed to 1250x960 pixels. Secondly, it asks the place where to store the output image file. For unregistered users the output image contains a watermark.
Now go in your file browser to the place where you saved the created tessellation and open it with an image viewer.

Enjoy the created image!