Watercolor Seamless Repeats in Photoshop

1. Making Watercolor Seamless Repeats in Photoshop: Have you ever wanted to turn your watercolor paintings into seamlessly repeating patterns? 2. Repeat Layouts and Keyboard Shortcuts: In this class we're going to look at four different types of repeat patterns. The first one, is the basic repeat that you see on the top left. This is just simple blocks stacked one on top of the other. The next repeat, below that one, is half brick. This repeat style, every other row is staggered halfway. Just like you would see a brick pattern on the outside of a house. This is the same idea. Half drop on the other hand, is the same thing. It's just done vertically rather than horizontally. Then the mirror repeat. Each block is mirrored against the block beside it. We'll do some examples of each of these repeat patterns in this class today. But first, let's look at how this plays out in an actual pattern. Here's a basic repeat pattern. On the left, you can see the final repeat all put together what it would look like on wallpaper or pillow. Then on the right, you can see what each repeat block looks like. You can see that the circle that's in the corner needs to match up with all the other corners in order to create a complete repeat. For the half brick pattern, it's the same idea. On the left you can see what the final pattern looks like and on the right, you can see how these repeat blocks are staggered. Every other row is staggered halfway. Same idea with half drop. On the left you can see what a final half dropped pattern would look like. On the right, you can see all of the repeat elements that are along the edge. Those have to match up with all the other edges. Finally, here's the mirror repeat. This is a cool repeat because you can create a really simple watercolor stripe pattern or some botanical print. Then mirror that against other repeat blocks and make a really nice pattern. Before we get started, I just want to show you a few keyboard shortcuts that I'll use throughout this class. These are really helpful shortcuts that will make your work in photoshop so much easier. If you haven't used these before, I do recommend learning these. The first one is V. If you click V on your keyboard, that automatically selects the move tool. Then you can move objects. Whatever layer you have selected can be moved around the canvas. The next keyboard shortcut is E. If you type in E, you select your eraser tool, and then you can erase anything you need. Command Z steps backward one time, whereas command option Z steps backward twice. Let's say we erase and then we erase again. We want to step back once. Then command option Z, we're stepping back two times. The next shortcut I use a lot is, command S. This saves your document. I recommend saving your documents throughout your repeat process because photoshop does tend to crash. It's good to just make a habit of clicking command S as often as possible. The next set of shortcuts I use a lot is zoom in and zoom out. That's command plus to zoom in, and command minus to zoom out. Command T is transform. What this does is allows you to change the shape of your layer. That can be the size or the width. If you hold down shift while you use this tool, it constrains the proportions. If you don't hold down shift, you can't change the proportions significantly. Then you just click enter to set that. I'll click command Z to go back. Another short cut I use a lot is command J to copy the layer. If you click command J, that makes a copy of whatever you're using. Typically when I'm working with a repeat, I'll click command J to copy an element command T to transform it. If you just hold your mouse on the corner here, you can turn these around. You can see if I was working with a repeat pattern, I could have these two pieces in the same repeat. You wouldn't necessarily know that it was the same dot because they've been changed. Another important tool is command C, command V to copy and paste. If I use my lasso tool on the left here to select something, and then I'm selecting that layer and I click command C, command V, that copies whatever I have selected. Let's say I've only selected half of this. I click command C, command V. Only half of this circle is copied. Those are just a few shortcuts that I use constantly throughout this class. You can use these keyboard shortcut cheat sheet. You can download it from the course documents or you can go ahead and take a screenshot now and just have it on your desktop. 3. Basic Repeats: Filling Up Your Repeat Center: Let's start by making a basic repeat. The first thing I'll do is click file, open and then open my original document. I just have some simple watercolor circles here, and I want to scatter these around the page and make sure the edges match up seamlessly. The first thing I'll do is open a new file. I'll click File, New, and then change my measurement to inches. I want this to be a whole number. It's much easier to make repeats when you're working with a whole number. I typically do 20 by 20 inches or 10 by 10 inches, but it really just depends on what your final uses. If you were making a throw pillow that's 20 by 20 inches, this would be a perfect size. I want to be sure my resolution is 300 DPI. Then I can click Okay. I'm just going to drag my original file out to the side here. You can see each circle is on an individual layer. If you're not sure how to do that, I would recommend going back to my first class and watching that first, and go through all the steps from scanning or photographing, cutting out the watercolors in Photoshop and putting them on separate layers. That's a really key step that you would have to know how to do before this class. So if you're not sure, go back and start with that class and then you can come back to this later. I have all of my circles on separate layers. I'm going to click my first circle in my layers panel, and then Shift click my last circle, and then drag that into my new document. I have these in the middle here, I'm going to scatter them around the middle before I start making my repeat. I'll go ahead and just close my original file, so that's out of the way. Let's start scattering these around the page. The only thing I want to be careful of is not touching the edge. I can get close to the edge, but I can't actually touch it. Let's just scatter these around a little bit and I'll speed up the video here while I play around with these. Now I have these scattered around the canvas and you can see to select each one of these, I'm clicking Command click. Then you can move around each individual layer. I want to make a few duplicates because I don't have quite enough circles to fill up my whole canvas. I'll Command click on one of these and then Command J to duplicate it. When I duplicate to make this repeat look unique and not too repetitious, I'm going to turn each thing that I duplicate, make it a little bigger. If you want to change the shape a little bit, we can even click Edit, Transform, Warp, and then just pull it in a few little places. Then it looks totally different from that original that I copied. I'll make a few more duplicates here to fill out this canvas. But I'm trying to stay pretty far away from the edge. It makes it easier if you keep everything away from the edge. Let's start with this. That looks pretty good. We can always make changes to this later so we don't have to have our final repeat right here. The first thing I want to do is start building up my top edge. I want everything I put on my top edge to match everything I put on my bottom edge. The first thing I'll do is start building my top edge and I want to stay away from the corners right now, I'll deal with the corners last. Let's just start with this top edge here. I want to put this piece here, and let's choose a few others that might look good on the top. I'm trying to do them at different levels so that one's about halfway. This one just has the tip crossing the edge. Let's do another one that just has the bottom crossing the edge. That's a good way to hide your seams as to try to keep things really varied across the seam. Let's put a few more up here. I'm going to turn some of these as I work so they're are not too similar to the originals. 4. Basic Repeats: Filling Up Your Repeat Edges: Now I have my whole top covered, I've got four circles on the top. I need to duplicate these and have them also down here on the bottom. What I'll do is Command click the first one and then Command Shift, click all the others. I should have in the end, four layers selected, the four layers that are on the top. Next I can click Command J to duplicate those and you can see there's four duplicate layers now, I just made copies of all four of those and Photoshop puts the copy directly on top of the original so you can't see it yet, but once we move it, you'll see it. I have all four of these, I want to move them down by clicking Command T and also you can do that by clicking Edit transform, but Command T is a quick shortcut. Next, you want to click this little triangle here so that you see a 0 pixel, 0 pixels, so this means this set of layers is in place, it's right at 0 pixels. But we want it to be down here, which is at 6000 pixels and if you're not sure what the size of your images, if you forget, you can click Image, Image size and then you'll see 6000 by 6000, so that tells you the height and width of your Canvas. I have all of these selected, I'm clicking Command T, and then I can enter how far I want to move these down. X is going to move them across, so I don't need to move these across because that's off my canvas. Y is up and down, so I'm going to enter 6000 and you can see that moves these down exactly 6000 pixels, so then I'll click Enter to place those four images. Now you can see some of my layers that I originally placed are overlapping, that's totally fine we're just going to move those out of the way for now. That looks great, so now we have our top and our bottom sides taken care of. I think next what I'll do is, this edge, so you can see there's not a lot of space on this edge, but there's a lot of space on this edge, so I'll put these just barely hanging off and then when I duplicate them, they'll be hanging off a lot on this side. Let's place a few circles there, I'm Command clicking and then Command J to copy these, and I'm just turning these a little bit to add a little bit of variation, and you can always change the placement of these as you go, so nothing is set in stone. I've got three dots on this side, let's start with that and see how that looks. I'll click the first one Command Click, and then Command Shift Click the other two, so then I've got three layers selected and I'll click Command J to copy those. Same thing to Command T to transform and I want to move these to the right, so this is going to be our x-axis, whereas the y-axis is up and down, the x-axis is across. For my x-axis, I'll enter 6000 same number as we did before because we're working with a square and then click Enter to set that transformation. That looks pretty good, we've got almost everything except for our corners. I'm going to grab a nice large circle here for my corner, Command J and let's go ahead and turn this. Make it a little bit bigger, that looks good. The corners, you just have to remember, go in all four corners. If you put something in one corner, you have to put it in all four corners. Let's duplicate this layer Command J and then transform, will move it down the y-axis, 6000 pixels. Now we've got our top corner and our bottom right corner taken care of. Next, we need to take care of these two corners, and we can do both of those at the same time by command clicking and then Command Shift Clicking. Now we've got both corner dot selected, and I'll click Command J to have four corner dots, then Command T, and we want to move this backwards 6000 pixels. Rather than entering 6000 we're entering negative 6000, and that moves it back 6000 pixels. Now you can see I've almost got my whole Canvas filled up, but there are few little places that I want to work on. I'm just going to take a few minutes to shift these around and I'll speed up my camera here. 5. Basic Repeats: Changing Colors and Saving: I've realized that I want to move something that's on my edge. This is why this way of making a repeat is really nice because I can always make changes to my edges. I don't really like how much space there is right here, so I'm going to command click here, and then I have to find the one that correlates with that, and that's right across here, and if you're ever not sure, you can click on your ruler and drag down, and that'll show you exactly what correlates on the other side. I've got both these selected. Now I can use my move tool to shift those around, and as long as you're moving both of them at the same time, it's totally fine. The only problem is if you only move one of them. That looks good, I'm going to keep it placed there and now I can continue moving my other pieces around. At this point it's like a puzzle. I'm not trying to make this perfectly spaced. It's a abstract piece anyway. But I'm just playing around and trying to get a nice level of spacing that helps me hide my repeat edges, but also makes a nice pattern. I think that's good to go. I don't want to change anything else here. I'll click "File", "Save". Let's call this emerald dot, repeat 1. I always make a few color versions of every patterns, so I may do that later on. But for now, I just want to check my pattern, that's always the first thing I do after I create a new pattern. I'll click "File", "New". Then I want to create an image that's at least double what my original images. My original was 20 by 20. I'll make this 140 by 40. I'll go File, Place, and then select my emeralds dot, repeat one. I'm going to put this in the corner here and click "Enter", then "Command J", and if you hold down shift, it'll snap these two images together. Photoshop just naturally will snaps them right at the pixel level, right beside each other. That looks good. Then I'll select both of them, Command J, drag down and hold down shift to snap those together. I always zoom in to the pixel level and I'll double-check my repeat. This is a really important part of the process. If you got a few pixels off, it would totally mess up the repeat, so I always recommend going through and doing this check. That looks good to me, I think we're ready to call this piece finished. We can make some different color versions of this pattern, at this point I could go back to my original, and save it as a JPEG. Then we can start making some color changes. Let's call this one color changes. Then I can open my JPEG. Use the color balance tool to start making some changes to these colors, so image adjustments, color balance, and let's say we want more of a blue or purple, and you can see this color changer can bring out some nice changes in the Hughes. I like that purple that has a lot of variation. You can see how versatile this process is. I can still with my original file, go back and make changes if I don't like how that dot is spaced or I want to turn this one. I have all of my original layers here and I can make changes to these at any time. Let's go ahead and move on to our next repeat pattern. 6. Half Brick Repeats: Filling the Center and Sides: So let's go ahead and make a half brick repeat pattern. So I'll open Photoshop and click 'File,' 'New.' Let's use the same size, 20 by 20 inches at 300 DPI. Then I'll click 'File,' 'Open' and open my original file. So this is just a simple swatch painting with a lot of different colors. I've gone ahead and already removed the white background. So you can see if I remove my background layer, there's nothing behind these. This is just watercolor silhouettes with no background. So I'm going to click this and drag it into my new document and then close my original file. So I'm just going to set this in the middle for now. I may change the placement or the size of the spot. I just want to start by setting it down here and making some decisions about how we'll set this up. So since this is a half brick pattern, the left and right sides will match up side to side as normal, but the top and bottom will be staggered. So if you were looking at this in individual blocks, this would be one block and the next block would be staggered halfway. The same thing for the next block. So what we want to do is create our edges so that the left and right are perfectly side to side and the top and bottom have half of this side and half of this side of our repeat. So I want to start out with this not touching the edges. I want to have a little bit of room on the edge because I want to be able to fit at least one row on the edge. So let's start like this. I do see a small issue here where this looks a little bit curved. If you click on your ruler and just drag out, you can get a guide here. I don't really like how that's curved, so I'm going to pull a few guides here and try to adjust this a little bit. So let's click 'Edit,' 'Transform Warp,' and just do some little tiny pulls to move this into place. It doesn't have to be perfect. This is an abstract pattern anyway. I just want to make it close to perfect so it doesn't look too curved. Okay, so that looks good. I'll click 'Enter' to set my transformation. Then I can just use the move tool to pull these guides out of my way. So next, I'll go ahead and create my repeat on the left or on the top and bottom. So let's start by getting this close to the edge. Then let's find a row here that looks really good. So I think I like this row here. So let's go ahead and copy that row. Okay, Command C, Command V to copy and paste. I'll remove my original. Then just go through with my eraser tool to remove some of these. I want to be sure I've got a hard edge brush, not a soft edge brush. A soft edge brush could accidentally remove some of my watercolor edges. So I'm going to make sure I'm grabbing a hard edge brush. Okay, so now I can reveal my original image again. Let's just move that to the very top here. I think that looks pretty good. I think what I will do is move this down a little bit. Then if you look at this row, it looks a little bit curved. So I think I'll get my Warp tool and just move this up a little bit. Let's move these down a tiny bit and these up to even it out. Okay, that looks good. So I'm just trying to get my top layer here to match up with that new layer nicely. I'm being sure to leave enough space on this side and this side. So that looks pretty good. So now we need to make sure this edge is matching up in a half brick pattern. So I'll click on that top layer and click Command J to duplicate it, Command t to transform. Then we'll use our y-axis to go down 6000 pixels. So now that we've gone straight down, we also need to go to the right, halfway across this image. So I'll enter 3000 pixels and click 'Enter.' So now this row is exactly 6000 pixels down, 3000 pixels to the right. So I can click 'Enter' to set that transformation. Next, I want to do the same thing, shift it down, but shifted to the left this time. So I'm selecting my top layer Command J, Command T. Then we're going down 6000 pixels. To the left, which will be -3000 pixels. Click 'Enter.' Okay, so that looks good. So now we can start working on filling up these edges and this space down here. 7. Half Brick Repeats: Filling the Top and Bottom: For this space, I think I'll copy this. Let's see. We could fit two nice rows there. Let me find two rows I like. okay, I like those, so that's the second, the third, and the fourth row. Let's erase everything except for the third and the fourth row. I'm selecting that and clicking Command V, Command C, Command V. Then I have just those two rows that I liked. I can use my eraser tool here to go through and erase all these extra pieces. Okay, now I can move that new layer down to here. You can see it isn't quite perfect, there's a little bit of extra space there. I have a few options. I could click Command T, and I could just link these a little bit. I don't think that's going to be a problem for the overall pattern. I could do that or I could increase the size of both of these just a tiny bit. Let's increase that one, move this down and increase it a little bit. With something like this that's really abstract, you really have a lot of options. You may want to try your first repeat with something abstract so you can really play around with all the options. I'm just going to grab my warp tool here and bring this down a little bit so it has a little less of a gap there. Okay, that looks great. Let's stick with that for now. Now, we need to work on our left side and our right side. What I'll do is go ahead and merge these two layers. I've got these two middle layers here that work well together. I'll select them both and then click Merge. Then let's get the lasso and choose a nice row top to bottom that looks good. let's see. I think I like this row here. Let's copy that. Command C, Command V. Then I'll erase all of these extra pieces. Then I can move this out to the edge. I just want to be careful about where I'm placing this. I don't want it to overlap with anything here. I think I will click Edit, Transform, Warp, and just move this over a tiny bit so there's less of a gap. Then on this one, I'd like to have a little more gap so I'll move that and click Enter. Now, this row, we can move directly over to the left. Let's click Command J, Command T to transform. We want to go backwards to the left. On the x-axis, that's negative 6000. Click Enter. We have a little issue here, there's a tiny bit of an overlap, but that's no problem. I'm just going to Command, click on this layer, which is my main layer. Then I'll use my lasso to circle that piece. Click my move tool. I can just scoot that over. I may want to do that with a few others if there's anything that looks just a little bit off, it's really easy to adjust an abstract a pattern like this. Okay, I think these three look like they are a little bit too far to the left. Let's do the same thing. Actually, let's get all four of these. Okay, that looks nice for now. We can always go in and adjust things later. But I do want to take care of this little area here. We have this corner, the right corner and the middle, those are all pieces that will be connected. Let's choose a nice piece here. I like this piece in the very middle. I'm going to use my lasso to circle that. Command C, Command V. Then V to get my move tool. Let's move this up to the corner and just eyeball if you think that will match up. If this will match up here and if there'll be enough space for this piece here. I think there will. Let's check it. If there's not, we'll get a smaller swatch. Command J, Command T. I want to move that over to the right, 6000 pixels, because we need our left and right sides to match up perfectly. Then I'll also click Command J, Command T. I want to move this down 6000 pixels and left, negative 3000 pixels. I want that to go in the very center there. That looks good. It ended up fitting really nicely in both corners and in the center. I think this file looks good. Let's go ahead and test it. I'll click File, New, and choose 40 by 40 inches, which is double the size of our image, and I'll click File place and choose our image that we just created. You can see there's these little black dots in the very middle of this image, that's exactly at the center. If you click on your ruler and drag over and hold down your Shift key, Photoshop will automatically lock right in the middle of that image, then you can take your finger off the cursor and you have a perfect ruler right in the middle of the image, that'll make it really easy to create our half dropped pattern here. If I click Command J, I can hold down Shift to lock that in, then select both patterns, click Command J again, and I can check that out here. I'm going to zoom in all the way and I'm just going to use my arrow keys to go up and down to just check and make sure everything looks good at the pixel level. That looks good to me. I think everything is in line. Okay, I think we're good to go. This pattern is complete. We could use this repeat block to upload to a site like Spoonflour or we could make our own repeat and upload to Society6, Redbubble, or also use this for personal projects like greeting cards or anything like that. Let's go ahead and move on to the next repeat. 8. Half Drop Repeats: So now that you've got the general idea of the repeat, let's just do a quick half drop repeat. It's going to be the same as the half break, but turned 90 degrees. I've got a set of roses here. Again, these don't have a background. They're just isolated watercolor images. I'll just click, and drag those onto my document. Let's just arrange these here in a scattered pattern. So you can see these are all on the same layer. So the first thing I would normally do is separate these onto separate layers. I'm just using my lasso tool to circle a flower, Command C, Command V. You just have to be sure you're on your original layer when you click "Command C, Command V." So I'll copy each of these. So now I have all of my flowers on individual layers. Let's close my original and then just scatter these around. Again, I'm just trying not to get close to the edge. I want to leave a little bit of breathing room around the edge. So that looks good. For this one, our top and bottom edge will be the same and the left and right edge will be staggered. So we could go ahead and start with our top edge to make it simple. Let's put one here. Again, when I copy something, I try to make it smaller or bigger and turn it a little bit so it looks a little bit different than it did before. I can get close to the edge, but I can't get right on the edge. So let's start with just those two. I'm going to pull that one down and this one up. It looks a little bit more varied. I'll select both of these by clicking the first one Command, clicking the second one Command J to duplicate and Command T to transform, and then let's go down 6,000 pixels. So you can see we've got a little issue there. Let's change these two. Lets do a trade. That looks better. So now we can do the same thing on the left and right. Let's start with our left edge Command J. I'm just trying to space these out so nothing looks too similar and nothing's too close to each other. So I think that's a pretty good start. Let's start with that and see how it looks. I'm going to select both of these Command J, Command T, and I want to move this 6,000 pixels to the right and 3,000 pixels down. You can see I've got a little bit of an overlap issue here. So to keep things simple, let's go ahead and delete that rose for now, and we'll come back to that space later. So now we need to do the same thing, Command J, Command T, copying both of these layers. We're going to the right, 3,000 or 6,000 pixels. We're going up, which will be negative 3,000 pixels. Then we just have this little piece to skewed over. So that looks pretty good. That's a simple half drop repeat. I do want to add one more small flower there. So let's copy this one and move it down and fit that in. That looks pretty good. Let's go ahead and check this pattern and see how it looks. So I'll click "Save," roses half drop, and file new. Let's double the size of this image, 40 by 40 inches. Click ''File Place". So we're going to do the same thing we did with the last image, but instead of putting our guide in the middle vertically, we're putting our guide in the middle horizontally. I'll click "Enter," click "Command J." Then when I pulled this down in place, you can see these two flowers match up right here. That looks good so far. Command J on both of those layers I'm holding down shift to snap those in place. Again Command J to fill that out. That looks pretty good. I'm going to probably adjust a few of these to remove some of these white-spaces, but you get the general idea. As always, I scroll down to the pixel level and check everything, check every flower, and go in to the original and make changes if needed. 9. Mirror Repeats: The last repeat type we'll look at is mirror repeat. This one's really simple to make, but it's really rewarding and you'll see how there are so many different things you can do with this, if you're into creating geometric patterns or just interesting swirling patterns you can get some really beautiful effects with this one. Let's make a new file 20 by 20 inches and then I'm going to place really simple watercolor pattern that I did a long time ago. I just had a little section of it cut out for collaging and putting this in a mirror repeat right now it doesn't look like much, but once you get the mirror repeat, you'll see how this totally transforms. I'm going to click Command J to duplicate this layer. Then I want to make a mirror image of this top layer. I'll click edit, transform, flip horizontal. That flips the image so they're exactly back-to-back like one is looking in the mirror at the other. Now I want to select both of those layers; Command J to duplicate both and edit transform rather than horizontal, this time I'm doing vertical because I want to mirror these two pieces against each other. I'm going to zoom in and just make sure that I'm getting this right on and that everything looks good. If I don't like how some of this turned out, I might go through with my smudge tool and adjust little things like that. For example, if I don't like that tiny little spot there, I can get my smudge tool and just smudge it out. Those are things I can work on later. I'll click the first layer shift-click the last layer, Command T, and make this a little bit smaller then Command J to copy. I'm just going to play around and see how this repeat looks. That looks pretty good. I think this is probably something I could use for wallpaper or throw pillow something like that. You can see how quickly you can make a mirrored repeat and you may want to just play around with your watercolor paints, do some different swirls or patterns and see how those work together in a mirror repeat. 10. Wrapping Up: I hope that after watching this class, you're excited about turning your watercolors into seamless repeats. I would absolutely love to see your finished repeats and answer any questions you have about the process. You can share your finished repeat with the class as a repeated image, just like we mocked up in Photoshop, or you can apply your image to products using a site like Society6, Spoonflower, Roostery, Redbubble, or Zazzle and take a screenshot of those images, or you could post a link to your shop so we can see all of the products you created with your seamless repeats. Thanks so much for joining me, and please reach out if you have any questions. Bye bye.