Repetition is Key: Create a Half Drop Repeat Pattern in Photoshop

1. Introduction: everyone. My name is Sharon. L and welcome to repetition is key in this class. I'll show you how to design 1/2 drop. Repeat with the use of photo shop. Well, what is half property? Half drop is where the icons in a pattern literally dropped down half a step as its repeating this as a whole new level of interest here. This class is for you. If a you're familiar with creating square repeats but haven't mastered 1/2 yet or B you wanna streamline your design process? The best part is that you can use a pre existing pattern you've already created, or you can create a whole new one altogether. So grab your supplies and let's get started. 2. Supplies: before we get into the fun stuff, let's talk about supplies first. You'll need photo shop, and secondly, you'll need your icons arranged in the square. Now, if you're using a pattern you've already created, you want to make sure you're using your original square, where none of the sides are repeating. If you're creating a new pattern, go ahead and use this time to lay out and color your just be sure that one of the icons are touching the edges of the square. Once you've got those two items, it's time to move on to our next step. 3. Preparing Your Square: to prepare our square. The first thing we're going to do is merge our layers so we can offset the vertical pixels . The offset filter can only be applied toe one layer at a time. Make a note of your documents pixel size. Then divide that by two and that will be your vertical offset. Set the horizontal offset to zero and be sure wraparound is selected. Next, we're gonna turn our square into a smart object under layer, go to smart objects and select convert to smart object. This not on Lee becomes a file within a file, but it will allow our square to snap into place when we expand our canvas. Double clicking. The preview of the smart object opens up a separate file. Within that file. Any changes made can be seen with in your main file, which is pretty cool. If you ask me Now it's time to move on to our next step 4. Expanding the Canvas: Now let's expand our canvas and fill in the middle. Under image. Select canvas size. Go ahead and change the measurements to percentages change the width and the height to 200% . Now we're gonna anger are new canvas size from the left hand center box. Select Okay, and you'll see that our new canvas has expanded around three sides of our original square nets Drag guidelines around the borders of that square. This is going to guide us as we begin forming are half drop creepy. Copy your original layer and drag it down so that it's in line with that first layer because it's a smart object will snap into place. Then make another copy of that original layer and pull it to the top above your original square. Next. Well, you guessed it. We're going to make another copy of that original square with copy number three. We're going to move it to the top right hand corner so that the entire square is within our canvas. And one last time we're going to make our final copy of that original square and pull that one to the bottom right hand corner, staying within the guides fill in the middle of your pattern. The amount of space you have to fill will be dependent on the pattern that you created. As you can see here, I don't have much that needs to be filled in. So I'm just going to bring in color one additional icon. - Because our squares are smart objects. Now would be the time to go into that smart object file and change anything that you feel needs to be tweet. Once perfected, we can move on to our next step. 5. Crop and Offset: next, we're gonna merge all of our layers. Then we're going to crop our image, leaving on Lee the image area between our top and bottom guidelines. Now we're gonna go to filter other and select offset again, Just like last time. We're going to set our vertical pixels toe half the size of the original document while keeping our horizontal pixels at zero. Depending on your design, you may now have a new large gap with in the middle of your image. Take this time to yet again adding some more icons where they're needed. Just be sure to stay within the middle of your image. Select the marquee tool, change the style to fixed size, then change the width and the height to the pixel size of your original document. Now, when you click on your document, you'll see that a selection area off that fixed size appears within your canvas. Move the selection area so that it roughly falls within the middle of your image area. With that area selected, click the crop tool and crop that image area. Now, while our half drop repeat is intact, our work here is not done. You'll see that if I leave it like this when I go to define my pattern are seems, don't actually line up yet. In order to get them tow line up correctly, we have one more step that needs to be completed old. 6. Creating The Final Repeat: as the title states, repetition is key. So what are we going to do? We're going to expand our canvas one last time to create our final repeat. Go to layer smart objects and convert your layer to a smart object once more, just like last time, Go to image canvas size. Change our anchor to the center of the left hand row and change the width and height to 200%. Drag out those guidelines again next copier layer and drag that first copy directly below it. Next, drag your second copy above the original layer. Drag 1/3 copy to the top right hand corner again, making sure the entire square is within the canvas and your fourth and final copy to the bottom right hand corner. Now you can clear your guides and let's see how our pattern looks. Select all then go to edit defined pattern and give your pattern and name. After that, feel free to test your pattern in a new pattern. Phil Layer or you contested out in a new document altogether. You'll see that now we not only have our half drop intact, but that all of our seems lineup as Well, so there you have it. A beautiful half drop Creepy. Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I'm looking forward to seeing all of your beautiful patterns in the project area.