Adobe Illustrator for Surface Pattern Design ✶ Free Mockup Download

1. Introduction: Adobe Illustrator is one of the most popular design application that is used in the Surface Pattern Design industry. Creating repeat patterns in Illustrator is pretty easy. But designing a seamless repeat pattern that is aesthetically pleasing and saleable at the same time is what we need to focus on. And upgrading our technical skills is one of the most important steps towards it. Hi everyone. I'm geetanjali, an artist, illustrator and surface pattern designer based in Goa, India. Welcome to the third part of the series, how to take a creative approach to patterns. If you are new to Surface Pattern design, check out my first-class An Introduction to Surface Pattern Design. And if you want to learn Illustrator, checkout, my second class, Learn Adobe Illustrator. In this class, I will take you through the step-by-step process of Finding Inspiration, Sketching out Ideas, Drawing Motifs. and Creating a Repeat pattern in Illustrator using the two most common ways, the Manual or traditional way. and Using the Pattern Option Tool. We will also explore Recolor Artwork to create Multiple Color Variations of our design. Including the latest Generative Recolor feature in Illustrator. And last but not least, we will be using a beautiful Premium Mockup offered by Creatsy to Learn the process of creating professional mockup and see how our design will look on fabric. This class is suitable for all skill levels. However, you must be familiar with Adobe Illustrator to take this class. If this sounds like FUN, grab your favorite cup of tea or coffee, and Join me in this creative journey. 2. Class Overview and Project : Hi everyone, Welcome to my class. In this class, I'll take you through the different steps in the Pattern design process. We'll start with Finding Inspiration and Choosing a theme. Creating the Moodboard, Creating the Color Palette. Sketching Ideas using Traditional and Digital mediums. Drawing and Digitising Motifs. Creating a Repeat pattern using the Manual or traditional way. Creating a Repeat pattern using the Pattern Option Tool. Editing, Resizing, Saving, and Exporting a Pattern Swatch for web and print. Working with Colors in Illustrator, Creating Multiple Color variations with Recolor Artwork. The latest feature that is Generative Recolor. Creating professional mock-ups for your design using Adobe Photoshop and Photopea. A big shout out to Creatsy for offering this beautiful Fabric mock up to the students willing to create a project for this class. You can download it from the resources. These are the basic steps involved in the process. But depending on your workflow, you can choose the order of these steps. This class is designed for all the aspiring Surface Pattern Designers, And if you want to learn more about the Pattern Option Tool, Recolor Artwork, and how to create professional mock-ups for your designs. Your Project for this class. Follow the Design process and Create a vector pattern using either the Manual method or the pattern Option Tool. Your final pattern should be Seamless, well composed, and engaging. Make a few Color Variations of the pattern using the recolor artwork. Create one or more mockups using the Creatsy mockups from the resources. When you're ready, begin uploading your process work and the final pattern to the students project gallery. I can't wait to see what you create. Without any further ado. Let's get started. 3. Finding Inspiration: Inspiration is literally everywhere. Everything you see around can be designed into a Pattern. Some of the things that have helped me immensely, are daily Sketching, traveling, and reading books, Make a routine of sketching something every day. It doesn't have to be very detailed and should not take more than five-minutes. Just a quick sketch of anything you see around objects, people, pets, or nature around you. If you can do more, nothing like it! But here consistency is more important. I started doing this last year and it made a huge impact on me. It not only helps improve your Sketching skills and observation, but also when you struggle to find new ideas, just look through your sketchbook. Traveling is another hobby that inspires me the most. Exploring nature, new places, culture, visiting Art museums and galleries brings a lot of joy. I feel inspired and full of new ideas every time I come back from a trip. Books are again, one of my favourite source of inspiration as they are full of information and beautiful visuals. Looking at other artist's work whom you admire could also be really helpful. Though you need to be extra careful. Just get inspired and do not follow. And last but not least, Internet is an unlimited source of inspiration. However, you need to be more careful to not get influenced or overwhelmed. For this class, I'm taking inspiration from my latest Himalayan trek. I have so many ideas which I can convert to patterns. After you find your source of inspiration, choose a theme. This could be based on a client's projects. Or your personal preference. Some of the most common themes are holiday, conversational, abstract, woodland, geometric, florals. You can choose anything based on your choice. Once the theme is decided, you need to start looking for references. The best references are always personal. Like photos that you click, sketches, you draw life or from memory. You can refer to books also, especially when you're creating something inspired by historical event or era, like Art and Craft or oriental. Finally, you can use Internet when you are looking for something specific. I will be using some photos of the flowers that I clicked along the trail as my reference. Next step in the process is Creating the Moodboard. A mood board is generally a collage consisting of photos, illustrations, and other graphics. It is helpful in organizing the Inspiration around a project and keep the style and aesthetic consistent. For, Creating the Moodboard. I'll be using Adobe Express. If you have Creative Cloud subscription, you can try it too, or you can use other application like Pinterest or Canva. These have ready templates that you can follow. And are pretty simple to use. This is totally optional and you can create it manually on Illustrator as well. Select your Templates. Start putting the inspiration images that you have saved on your computer. or use the Explore option to search online. Play around with the arrangement and alignment of the images. You can add some keywords that define the theme and mood of the pattern. Now this is only to get a starting point. We can always make changes along the way. Next step is creating a color palette. Once the images are in place, we can choose Color Swatches. I will create a basic color palette with six Colors. Using the Color Picker tool. You can keep it anywhere, between 2-8. Limiting the colors is always good. If you want to create Multiple Color variations of the design later. Make sure that the colors are harmonious and work well with each other. Export the, Moodboard as a JPEG or PNG. And we will be referring to it throughout the process. In the next lesson, we will start sketching out ideas and work on Motifs 4. Sketching Ideas and Motifs: Sketching from Live reference or drawing from memory is always the best choice. But it's not always practical. So we can take pictures of the motifs and use them as reference for our Sketching. Refer to your Moodboard to follow the direction and stick to one theme. For this project, I'll be sketching out some flowers based on the pictures in the Moodboard. You can either make your sketches as final Motifs. If you are using Traditional mediums or a drawing tablet. I'll just make some rough sketches which will help define the style of the illustration that we will be using. For The style, you can keep it loose, flowy, edgy, or any other style as you wish. But make sure to keep it consistent throughout the pattern. A drawing tablet delivers pretty much the most natural drawing experience you can get digitally. If you use Illustrator or any other computer program to draw art, Getting a Wacom tablet is worth the investment. I've shared the link in the resources. You can check it out. Once the sketches are complete take pictures from your phone or use a scanner and save them on your computer. Next step is finalizing Motifs. Let's start with creating a new file. I will keep it 12 by 12 inch and name it as Motifs. For this project I'll be using the Essentials Classic workspace preset. You can use the same or choose any other as per your preference. Place the Moodboard and create your color swatch group To do that draw few rectangles. Now using the Color Picker, pick and drop each color from the Moodboard. Now select all and click on the Group icon in the swatches panel. I will select and delete the default swatches except black and white. As I like to keep my workspace clean. This is totally optional, as we will be discussing about Colors later in this class. Now place the rough sketches as Template layer and use them as reference to trace over and create the final Motifs. Start tracing over the sketches using the drawing tools you are most comfortable with. I want to give it a hand-drawn and uneven feel. So I will use the pencil tool to draw my motifs. I like to draw outlines of the Motifs first, then color them. To apply Colors and refining the shapes. I will be using the Shape Builder Tool. Once all the Motifs are drawn, use the colors from the group and check if you need to add extra color or remove some Colors. This is not the final color palette, but this will definitely give us an idea of the overall pattern. In case you have Hand Painted, your Motifs or created your final Motifs on iPad or sketchbook. You can use the Image Trace feature and vectorize the Motifs. To do that, select the image and go to Window. Choose Image Trace. Choose a preset depending on your artwork style. Now selector the Color Mode. And choose the number of colors. Choose. Ignore White if the background is white and you want to exclude it. There is an additional feature now where you can ignore any other color. By selecting it. Adjust all the settings. And once you're satisfied, click Expand. Here. You don't need to adjust the colors as we can do it later. Once you're happy with the Motifs, make few copies, reflect and rotate them so it doesn't look too repetitive. Make some design elements, small, medium, and large, play around with the placement and Color Balance. Before we get into the different ways to design a Pattern, let's understand the pattern swatch. Here. Is that a presentation of a Pattern Swatch from a bird's eye point of view. Every pattern has three layers. The top layer where all the motifs are placed. Then we have in the background layer. And the bottom most layer, which has the bounding box with no fill or stroke. This is the rectangle that defines the Swatch dimension. It could be a square or rectangle. There are two most commonly used ways of creating a seamless repeat in Illustrator. Traditional or Manual way. and using the Pattern Option Tool. In the next lesson, we will learn how to create a Repeat pattern using the traditional 5. Creating the Repeat Pattern using Manual Way: To Create a seamless repeat pattern. We will first create an artboard that is going to be the size of the Swatch. It could be a square or rectangle. For example, if I want to create the pattern swatch eight by ten inch, I will create an artboard of that size. I like to keep all the process work at one place. So I will just add another artboard to the same document. To do that, select the Artboard tool. And now in the Properties panel, click on this plus icon to add another artboard. Edit the Dimensions here to eight inch width and 10-inch height. Click Exit. And here we have our second artboard. You can create a new document if you want. Select the Motifs. Now hold Alt on PC or Option key on Mac and drag to make a copy of the Motifs. You can choose to add a background color at this point. or you can do it later To do that create a rectangle in the same dimension. Now go to Arrange and choose Send to Back. So the Motifs are on top of the rectangles aligned to the center of the artboard and fill it with the background color. I will lock this rectangle for now. So it stays in place when I'm moving my Motifs. The Basic concept of a pattern swatch is that whatever intersects the left axis needs to match everything on the right axis. Everything on top needs to match everything at the bottom. Motifs in the middle can be arranged in any order. This can be done two ways. First, fill the center part and then arrange the sides and corners. Or First, arrange the sites and corners, and then move to the center. I will arrange the sides and corners first. To do that Place some of the Motifs on the left and on top edge of the rectangle. Now select everything that intersects the left edge and go to object, choose transform. And select Move. Press Shift Command M or Shift Control M on your keyboard. Now the rectangle size eight inch in width. So we will move the objects by eight inch horizontally. Choose copy to duplicate the selection. Similarly select everything that intersects the top edge of the rectangle and move it vertically by ten inch. As the rectangle height is ten inch. Choose copy to duplicate the selection. If you have objects intersecting the right edge, you can move and copy them to the left. But in this case, enter the value as minus eight. If we want to move something from bottom to top, enter the value minus ten in the dialog box. Once the edges and corner motifs are placed, spend some time arranging the center Motifs. You can duplicate, rotate, and reflect few Motifs so they don't look identical. When your pattern has only one or a few large Motifs. Place them at a distance and preferably diagonal to each other. So the Repeat doesn't look too obvious and has a good balance. Since this method creates only a basic repeat type. Once you're happy with the arrangement, we will move ahead with Creating the pattern swatch. To do that first, unlock everything. And now we need to create the bounding box. And as I mentioned earlier, that the size of the bounding box will define the Pattern Swatch. And it is placed behind all the motifs and the background. In this case, our bounding box will be same size as the background rectangle. So we Will just make a copy of the background rectangle and paste it at back by pressing Command C and Command B for mac. Control C and Control V for PC. Now, Make sure the fill and stroke color are set as none for the bounding box. Now select everything and drag to the swatches panel. And your pattern is saved. To Check, draw another rectangle and select the swatch from the panel. Use the scale transformation to scale down the pattern to get a better view. One thing to note here is that if your background rectangle is bigger than the bounding box, It's fine. But in case they are the same size as it is in this case, do not move the rectangle even by a pixel, or you will get a line in your pattern. You can also use this as a tip. If you struggled with this issue, Make your background rectangle slightly bigger than the bounding box. If you're not sure of the background color at this point, you can choose to delete this rectangle and save your pattern with a transparent background. In the next lesson, we will create a Repeat pattern using the Pattern Option tool. 6. Creating the Repeat Pattern using Pattern Option Tool: To Create the pattern I will be using the same Motifs. However, we cannot add the background color in the pattern editing mode. So I will change the off-white color of the flowers to a darker color, so it does not merge with the white background. Since this is a global color. If we change the value it will automatically update the Artwork with new color. Here we will be creating a transparent pattern and we will add the background color later. Select the Motifs, and now go to Object, choose pattern, and select Make. If a message appears saying the pattern has been added to the Swatch Library and any changes made will be updated in the Swatch. Click Okay, and continue. Now the biggest advantage of using this tool is that you don't need to decide the swatch size in advance. You get to choose different Repeat types. You also get to see the real-time preview of the final pattern while creating it. And the bounding box is automatically created, depending on the tile size and Tile Type selected. Let's understand this while creating the Pattern. As you can see in the Pattern dialogue box, the numbers are quite random. So we need to adjust these values first. By default, the width and height value is the dimension of the artwork selected. When we increase or decrease these values. Either extra space will be added around the selection. Or the artwork will overlap. If you want to change the unit in the Properties panel, you can change the settings Based on the size of Motifs and the spacing that we want between them. I'll make a rough arrangement of the Motifs. and This will help us decide the tile size. Make the tile size values close to round number. So it's easy to remember and Resize our pattern later. To do that hold Shift on your keyboard. And now when you click up or down arrow, it will change by a certain value. In this case, I have selected inch as my document unit. So the value will change by 1 ". If I press the keys without holding Shift, it will change by 0.125 inch. You can also enter your own value here. Remember, this is also the final swatch size. If we stick to basic Repeat as the tile size and the swatch size for basic repeat is same. Whereas for other Repeat types, the swatch size will change accordingly. For example, if I choose brick by row, the Swatch bound is updated. And you can see this as the blue dotted lines. Once we have the tile size, adjusted, choose the Tile Type or Repeat type. This is really important and can make a huge difference in the entire look of the pattern. You can choose from grid or basic. Brick by Row, Brick by Column, hexagon by column, and hexagon by row. By modifying these Repeat types, you can also get scale, Ogee and stripes Repeat type. I have explained the ten Repeat types that you can create in my first-class of the series. You can refer to that. While Choosing the Repeat type, what you need to keep in mind is the composition and the scale of the pattern. Especially in case of tossed patterns. When your pattern has too many elements. And you are designing for a wallpaper or a product where you want the Motifs to be big and bold. Go for basic repeats, the real-time preview helps a lot in Choosing the Repeat type. Once this is decided, you might want to adjust the tile size a bit or move them Motifs around. To adjust the spacing. You can choose to make copies, scaled, reflect, and rotate your Motifs in the Editing Mode. And sometimes you might notice that some parts of the Motifs are missing on the other side. The simplest way to fix that is select everything and make a group by pressing Command or Control G on your keyboard. If there are Motifs overlapping on the edges, make sure to check the overlap option to choose which tile appears on top. Spend some time to get a good balance between the motifs. You can play around with the copies and Dim Copies setting to get a better preview of the pattern. Once you are happy with the Pattern. Click Done To save it in the swatches library. To check, draw a rectangle, and select the swatch from the panel. Use scale transformation to check the scale down preview. Now to add a background color to your pattern. Either add a color fill layer below the pattern fill in the appearance panel, or add a new layer below the Pattern Fill layer in the Layers panel. You can create multiple repeat options using the same set of Motifs by choosing different Tile Type and just moving around and adjusting the Motifs accordingly. In the next lesson, we will learn how to Edit, Resize, Save, and Export a Pattern as Swatch and Tile 7. How to Edit, Resize, Save and Export the Pattern as Swatch and Tile: Whichever way you chose to create your pattern, it will be saved in the swatches panel. There are two ways to edit a pattern that is created using the Manual way. First one, Edit or rearrange the Motifs in the layout and save it again as a Swatch. Keep in mind, while moving the motifs that are on the edges and corners. You need to select both the copies and move it simultaneously. Motifs in the center can be rearranged in any order. Once updated, drag to save it in the swatches panel as a new swatch. To Edit the pattern is by double-clicking on the Swatch and entering the Pattern Option Tool Editing Mode. You can edit the name, rearrange the Motifs, and adjust other settings here. But here are a few things we need to keep in mind. When we create pattern using the Pattern Option Tool, the copies of Motifs and bounding box are automatically created. So we cannot add the background here as it becomes another motif. And it can be overlapped only on two sides. And it is not possible to send it behind all the copies of the Motifs. Whereas when we create our pattern manually, we have copies of our Motifs on both sides and top and bottom. So when you enter the pattern Option Editing Mode, you will see multiple copies on the Tile Edges. And to move the Motifs placed on the edges, we need to move the copies simultaneously. Motifs in the center can be moved around in any order. Once updated, click Done to save the changes in the current Swatch. Or choose Save a copy to save it as a new swatch. To edit a pattern created using the Pattern Option Tool. Simply double-click on the Swatch and make the changes. Choose done to update the changes, or Save a copy to save as a new swatch. Now to save as Swatch, that is editable as a Pattern also, here are a few things you need to keep in mind. If you design your pattern using the Manual method. You already decide the tile size at the beginning. So just draw a rectangle with that size and fill it with the Swatch. This is your final tile. And the Swatch dimension. To Resize. Use the scale Option or the Properties panel with the proportions locked and enter your new value. With the rectangle selected, go to object and choose artboard, and select Fit to Selected Art. This will resize the artboard. You can save for export this artwork as JPEG, PNG or other format with the Artboard selected. When you're using Pattern Option Tool to create the pattern. It might seem a little confusing as the tile size and the swatch size are different for all the Repeat types except for the grid repeat. So to find the exact pattern swatch, you might need to do some calculation based on your tile size. There is another way which works for both the methods and all the Repeat types. Double-click on the Swatch. And if you need just the tile size, you can find that in the Pattern Option Tool window. As the width and height dimension. Some websites like spoonflower offers different Repeat types on their website. So in this case, draw a rectangle with the tile size and fill it with the Swatch. Now go to Object, choose artboard, and select Fit to Selected Art. Here is the final editable file ready. You can Resize, Save, or export this as a JPEG or PNG. You can upload your Tile on spoonflower and select the respective Repeat type from the list In case you have chosen a Repeat type that is not available and want to upload the pattern swatch, which will always work in a basic repeat. In the Pattern Option window. Use the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle along the blue dotted line, which is also the Swatch bound. It's easier to remember if the tile size is close to round number. Check the dimensions in the Properties panel. Now, click Cancel and close this window. Draw a rectangle with the size and fill it with the pattern swatch. Go to Object, choose Art board, and select Fit to Selected. Here is the final editable file ready. You can Resize, Save, or export this as JPEG or PNG, Another way which I would like to share. is Something really important in my workflow. And understanding this will be really helpful for our next class, where I'll be sharing different workflows to create patterns in Illustrator. Drag the pattern swatch from the panel to your artboard or Canvas. Now ungroup everything. Select the background rectangle or the bounding box with no fill and stroke and bring it to front. In case you're pattern has a background fill or the pattern is to complex and it's hard to find the rectangle. Choose Outline preview mode. By pressing Command or Control Y on your keyboard. It's easier to spot the bounding box this way. Select the rectangle and bring to front. Return to preview in Color mode by pressing Command or Control Y. Now select everything and press Command or Control 7 to Create a clipping mask. Go to Object, choose artboard, and select Fit to Selected Art. This looks exactly same, but this is not editable as a Pattern Swatch. However, you can edit individual elements and export it as a JPEG or PNG. for uploading on websites or POD sites. To add this to swatches. You can crop the artwork. To do that makes sure all the shapes are expanded and it does not have any stroke effects, or brushes, open Pathfinder, and choose crop. You will notice everything that was outside the bounding box is deleted. And now you can drag this to the swatches panel to save as a Pattern Swatch, which can be scaled and edited. These are some of the possibilities, and knowing them will help you understand and customize your own workflow. In the next lesson, we will learn about Working with Colors in Illustrator 8. Working with Colors: Color is one of the most important element in a design. Learning to work with and have a good eye for Color is really important. As it can make or break a design. Your choice of color will determine the mood and feel of your design. I have explained about the color wheel and the basic color schemes in my first-class. You can refer to that for more details. In this lesson, we will learn the different ways of creating a color palette and saving them into our swatches document. To create a color palette based on your color board or Moodboard. Simply draw a few rectangles and fill each with a color using the Color Picker tool. Create a set of four to eight colors. Now select all the rectangles and click on Create New Group icon in the swatches panel. And save them in the Swatch Library as a Color Group. In the window. Enter the name, choose the color type, whether you want to make it global color. Keep in mind, a global color is automatically updated throughout your artwork when you edit it. You can also create a palette based on an existing Artwork. Select the artwork and now click on the create Color Group icon and choose selected artwork. It will save the colors in the swatches. If you want to try out different themes. You can also use Adobe colors or other online applications like Color Hunt, grabient pigment, Canva, and more to create palettes based on different color schemes and images. I will be using Adobe color. It is completely free and very easy to use. Open Adobe color.com and choose from Create, explore, trends and library. When you choose Create. You get to select from multiple sources like Color, wheel, extract theme based on an image. Extra ingredients, and accessibility tools where you can check the contrast ratio between two colors and if the color has enough contrast and won't create confusion for colorblind people. Upon selecting the color wheel, you can choose a color scheme based on color harmony. Use the eyedropper tool, or drag to change the colors. To save it in your library. Select the library, enter a name, and click on Save. Now you can access it in your Illustrator Library. Right-click and choose Add theme to swatches. To add the color group to your swatches library. Choose the extract theme Option to create a color palette based on an image. Simply upload the image from your computer. And It will automatically pick and create the color palette. With the extract gradient option, you can create a gradient swatch based on the image Colors. Adjust the colors by dragging the color stops over the image. And move the slider here to adjust the number of stops. Additionally, you can also use the explore and Trends search to choose from popular themes and get ready palette and save them to your library. In the next lesson, we will learn how to Edit Colors in a pattern using the recolor artwork feature 9. Recolor Artwork: To Edit or Apply a new color to a pattern. You can use the Edit Color feature in Illustrator. When you add in the essentials classic preset, you can simply click on the Recolor Artwork icon in the control panel with the artwork selected. or Go to Edit, select Edit Color, and choose Recolor artwork. We will use some sample designs to understand these Settings. Here I have a pattern with just two colors, one for the motif and other one for the background. I have made a copy to compare them side-by-side. Select the artwork and choose Recolor Artwork. In the Options window, you can choose a color library from the drop-down menu. Once you select a color group, the pattern will be updated with new colors. Use reset to restore the original Colors. or Click anywhere outside the window to return to artboard, and the pattern will be updated with the new Colors. Next you can choose the number of colors from here. Below that you can see the Color Theme Picker, using which you can click or drag to extract and apply Color Themes from a reference image or artwork. For this one, I will use another Artwork. And here are a few themes I would like to use. First, I have a reference image. Next is a Color palette created using the blend tool. You can also draw a few rectangles and fill them using color picker. Here is an Artwork with a completely different color schemes. Keep in mind these rectangles. or the Artwork should be grouped before using the Color Theme Picker. or else It will only pick one color from the Artwork. Now select the artwork. Click on the Color Theme Picker. And now click on the image, the pattern will be updated with the new colors. This is really random. Sometimes you can get amazing results, but you cannot control the choice of Colors. Click Reset to restore the original colors. or click outside to update the changes. Now using the Color Theme Picker, Click on the color palette and it will update the Artwork with new colors from the palette. Similarly, you can try it with the other palette. And the Artwork which has a different color scheme. Below that, you can click on this icon to change the color order randomly. Next icon is to change the saturation and brightness of colors randomly. You can also change the colors by moving these handles. Click on this icon to link or unlinked Color harmony. When you have Link harmony selected, all the colors move and change simultaneously on the color wheel. When you change one color. In order to maintain the color harmony rule. Unlink it, If you want to change the selective color. In the bar below, you can drag to adjust the amount of color that is prominent in the Artwork. Lastly, there are two small icons at the bottom. When you click on the first one, you can add just the brightness and hue on the color wheel by dragging your cursor over this bar. With the second icon, you can adjust the saturation and hue on the color wheel by dragging your cursor over this bar. These are some of the basic settings to Edit and recolor your artwork. In the next lesson, we will discuss the advanced settings in the recolor artwork 10. Recolor Artwork Advance Settings: Select any shape or Artwork to enable the recolor artwork feature. Click on the Advance option to open the recolor artwork window. This window displays all the features at one place. Let's see how we can create a color palette. In the Settings window. Select the preset from the menu based on the harmony rules. Let's choose the high contrast 2 For now. Below we have two options, Edit and assignment. Click Edit And here you can see all the six colors on the color wheel. Now you can change the view mode from smooth Color Wheel, segmented color wheel or color bars. To change the color in the bar mode. Click on this bottom icon and select it from here. You can change the color and saturation order by clicking on these two icons. To add a new color, go to the color wheel view mode. And here you can click to add a color tool. And now click anywhere on the color wheel. It will be added to the swatches. Similarly, click on the Remove Color Tool and click on the color handle to remove it from the palette. Use these two icons to adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness of the entire palette. You can also specify the mode of color by clicking on this menu. On the right, you can limit the Color group by choosing a color group from the swatches library. Once you're happy with the palette, enter a name for the Color Group, and click on the Group icon to save your color group to the library. Click Reset to restore the original Colors in case you don't want to recolor your artwork. If you want to update an existing color group, click on this icon. To delete a color group. Click on the delete icon here. Now let's check the assign options. This gives you a lot more control to change and Edit Colors in an artwork. As you can see here, it displays the number of colors that have been used in the Artwork as current Colors. On the right, you can see new. Below that you can see all the colors as bar. To change the current Color, click on one and you can adjust its value by adjusting the values in the settings. To Update the new Swatch. Either use the Settings below, on double-click on the New Swatch and use the Color Picker to update. You can drag the colors up and down to change the order of the colors. To assign colors from an existing Color Group. Simply click on a group on the right side. The new swatches will be updated with the colors from the group. Now what if we want to reduce the number of colors in the swatches? For example, this Pattern currently has nine Colors. To reduce the number of colors in my artwork. I can combine two or more colors and replace it with one color. To do that, simply hold and drag one of the color bars on top of the other. Or select the two rows while holding Shift. And click on this merge row icon. Now we can right-click on this new Swatch and select remove the color. You will notice the number of swatches on top is now reduced by one. Similarly, we can also combine these three to make one. You will notice the number of swatches reducing on top. To separate colors into different rows. Select each part and drag to separate. Or click on the left to select the entire bar or hold Shift and select each part. And click on this icon to separate colors into different rows. In case you have few colors in your artwork that you don't want to be recolored. Click on the color bar and select the exclude Color from Recoloring in black and white are automatically excluded from re-coloring. In case you have black or white in your artwork and you want to edit them. You can click on this control icon and now click on the new swatch area to add a new swatch. We can also add more colors to a palette. To do that, click on this Add row. I can now use the settings to choose the right color. To keep a color scheme on the new swatch, simply drag the current color to the new Swatch side. When you are using a saved Color Group to recolor your artwork. If the current number of colors is more than the number of colors in the new group. It will automatically merge few colors to fit in the new palette. Whereas if the new group has more number of colors, it will pick and choose the current number of colors randomly out of that group. Next, we can use these settings to randomly change the order of color and saturation in the artwork. Another option is the search icon, which helps you find where a particular color is being used in the Artwork. Select the current Color Swatch, and click on this icon. And it will highlight the shapes that use this color in the artwork while everything else is dimmed. Now you can adjust the values here to change the color. With all these settings, you can get accurate control over Choosing and Editing individual Colors. There are so many different ways you can use this tool to achieve some amazing results. In the next lesson, we will learn about the Generative Recolor option and some more color editing features in Illustrator 11. Generative Recolor: Generative Recolor is one of the latest feature that you find these days in Illustrator. It uses AI or artificial intelligence to recolor your artwork. You can generate Color variations based on a detailed text description. The new feature can be opened through the Edit menu under the Edit Colors and available on the latest public version of Illustrator. In this case, you enter a prompt or detailed description and click on Generate. And it will show some variations you can choose from. This again, I feel is very random, but sometimes you might get great results. It also offers some sample prompts to choose from. It's currently in beta and likely to improve with time. Apart from these, there are a few more features that you find in the Edit Color option. With the artwork selected go to Edit Colors. And here you can choose adjust Color Balance. Keep the preview on to see the change in real time. Play around with the settings to change the color balance of the entire artwork. Next option is really helpful in creating color blends. When you have an artwork with simple path and shapes choose blend front to back to create a blend of colors. You can also use blend horizontally or vertically to blend colors smoothly between two different colors. Next option is to convert the color mode. Or if you want a gray scale version of your artwork. Few more options include Invert Colors and saturate that you can adjust the color saturation. In the next lesson, we will learn what is a Mockup and how we can edit them 12. Using Creatsy Mockup Templates: Mockups are a great way to showcase your artwork in lookbook, portfolio website. And they also help your clients and customers visualize your Art on their products. Professional, high-quality mockup will allow you to put your design on any surface. And will add elements as shadows, bends, textures, etcetera in such a way that it will look natural. Mockups are extremely easy to use when you get them from professional sites like Creatsy. You don't have to design each element separately. They come with everything. Just add your design in Photoshop or Photopea with smart objects. For this class, Creatsy has offered us a beautiful Fabric mockup. You can use it for the class project and download it from resources completely free. I'm really grateful to Creatsy and do check out the other freebies. I'm premium mockups at creatsy.com. All the mockups are built and organized in the same way. When you get familiar with one, you will cope with all the others. Creatsy offers a whole section dedicated to paid mock-ups. So be sure to take a peek if you need something special. You can also check out the freebies section and use them for your designs. completely free. And To use these mockups, you will need a minimum of Photoshop CC 2020 version, or Photopea, which is a free online editor. To get started, it's essential to understand Mockup Templates, folder structure. When you purchase a mockup from Creatsy. Or if you download the Mockup file from the resources you will find a zip folder. Double-click to extract the files. These usually include the following documents. Layered editable .PSD file, blank JPEG file with the preview of the template. And a PDF user manual that explains how the mockup works. Let's see how we can create the Mockup using Adobe Photoshop. Please note that the file requires a minimum of Photoshop CC 2020. In older versions, smart object warping won't work correctly, resulting in distorted applied designs. You can also use the free trial version using the link in the resources. In case you are getting the error message that 3D features are being discontinued in the latest version. Here is a quick fix to it. All you need to do is go to Photoshop preferences. Now choose technology previews and select, de-activate native Canvas. Now quit Photoshop and restart again. And this should work. Open the .PSD file in Adobe Photoshop and have a look on the Layers panel. If you don't see it, go to Windows, choose layers. You will see multiple layers. It might look confusing, but we will check each layer one-by-one and how they work. In all the mockups, you will generally find these types of layers, color changing layers to change the color of the product and the background. Smart object or Design layer to apply the Design on the product. Adjustment layers. Like Color, effect, filters, which is applied to the entire scene. More shadows group. You can show it and play with its opacity to add more realism to the image. In addition, there are layer groups for object shadows, background shadows, and scene lighting setup, all of which can be hidden if necessary. If you're having trouble finding a certain layer, simply click the eye icon to switch its visibility. In the next lesson, we will learn to Edit mockups in Photoshop using the Premium Fabric Mockup by Creatsy 13. Editing Mockup Templates in Photoshop: Using Adobe Photoshop to create a Fabric Mockup by Creatsy. Open the .PSD file and open the Layers panel. The first layer includes an image with text, delete this layer to use the file. You can choose to delete or hide this layer to view the Mockup. The second layer contains the Creatsy logo. Next layer that says color boost is an adjustment layer. You can choose to view or hide this layer. Below that is a layer with group named as Blue tint. Selecting this will add a touch of blue tint to the entire image. The next layer is a blank layer. These blank layer works as separation between the important layer groups. Then we have two groups where you can choose to view or hide the measuring tape and needles. Below that is another blank layer. Next layer is more shadows. As I said earlier, it adds realism to the image and works best for darker or more complex patterns. Next group is the most important layer that says overlay layers. And it mentions don't Edit. This is the layer that creates the shadows, textures, and bends. So do not edit it. The next three layers are the smart object layers to add our design, you just need to Edit one layer and the other two will be automatically updated. To Edit, double-click on the Smart Object thumbnail. By doing this, a new Photoshop window will be opened. And it will only show the artwork that needs to be replaced, which this sample design layer. Let's replace it with the new Artwork. Open the artwork in Photoshop, and simply drag and drop it to the new open window, which is .PSB file. Then transform it to fit the canvas. After Editing, Save and Close the .PSB file. The source file will be updated with your design. To Edit the Design scale or placement. Double-click on the smart object layer again. And repeat the steps. Another way that I prefer to use while adding repeat patterns. Before creating the Mockup. Open the Pattern Artwork and go to Edit, select, Define Pattern. This will save the Pattern as Swatch in the Photoshop library. Now open the smart object and create a new Pattern Fill layer. Just above the sample layer design. Select the pattern fill from the saved list of patterns. Choose the pattern and now adjust the scale and placement by dragging over this bar and moving the image around. This not only fills the entire area at once, It's also easier to scale and transform the Design this way. The best thing is to change the artwork. Just double-click on the layer and choose another pattern from the saved list. After Editing, Save and Close the .PSB file and the source file will be updated with your design. The last layer is to choose the color of the fabric. Turn off the Smart Objects Layer, and now double-click on the solid color fill layer. Adjust the color value and click Okay to update. This is really helpful while creating a fabric collection where you want to offer a solid color option that complements the collection. Also, when you are using a pattern swatch with transparent background. In that case, Make sure the sample design layer is hidden or deleted before Saving the .PSB file. Keep the smart objects layer on. And now double-click on the solid color fill layer. Adjust the color value and click Okay to update Adjust the lighting, shadows and other settings if you need. Go to file. And here you can save or export your file as JPEG, PNG, or other format for print and web purpose. In the next lesson, we will learn to Edit mockups in Photopea using two different mockups from Creatsy freebies section 14. Editing Mockup Templates in Photopea: Let's see how we can create a Mockup using Photopea online editor. Photopea is a web-based photo and graphics editor that is used for image editing, making illustrations, web design, or converting between different image formats. To explain this, I will be using two free mockups from the Creatsy freebies section. One with a placement print, and another one with a Repeat Pattern. Open creatsy.com, and click on freebies. You will find different mock-ups for various products. And you can download and use these completely free. All the freebies are free for commercial use. I have downloaded this Fabric role Mockup, where we can use three different repeat patterns and a Mug in Hand mockup for the placement print, open Photopea online editor. The User interface and workspace is very similar to Adobe Photoshop. So We will repeat the same process. Open the .PSD file for the Fabric Rolls Mockup. And the three repeat patterns that you would like to use. Now open each pattern file and go to Edit and select, Define Pattern. Save all the three artworks as patterns and close the window. Now in the .PSD file, hide or delete the first layer that includes the text image. Keep the Sunlight group layer, to add some extra brightness. Next layer is a color adjustment layer. You can choose to view or hide it. The layer below that is add light adjusts light coming from the opposite direction. Next we have a blank layer. The group named as object includes the layers that control all the settings and adjustments related to the object and Artwork. First, we have more shadows layer. Use this on darker patterns to add more realism. Do not Edit the overlay layers as it contains all the important elements, like shadows, bends textures and more. The next layer is a solid color fill layer. By double-clicking on the color thumbnail, you can change the color of the paper Rolls. Using the next three layers, we can edit the first pattern. Double-click on the Smart Objects thumbnail, that is named as design role one. By doing this, a new window will open. And it will show three layers. First layer group called sample Design. Open it to edit the text on the selvage. You can add your brand name or logo here by individually Editing these texts. Next layer is for changing the selvage Color. If it's completely optional and you can choose to hide these layers. The third layer, named as sample design is where we will add our artwork. To do that, either drag the artwork to this layer and click on Transform controls. The bounding box will appear. Simply drag the corners to adjust the size. or You can create a Pattern Fill layer on top of the sample design layer. To change the Pattern, open the properties panel, and choose from the list of saved patterns. Adjust the scale and placement. If you're pattern is transparent, make sure to hide or delete the sample design layer. Go to File, choose Save Smart Object. Now close this window and the source file will be updated with the new design. Use the color fill layer to add a background color for the transparent pattern, or to create a Fabric with solid color. Repeat the same steps for the design roll two For the Design Roll three. You will see there is an extra layer named Color roll three. This is to show the back of the fabric. For the third Pattern. Choose a color that complements your Pattern color by double-clicking on the thumbnail. Add your Pattern by double-clicking on the smart object layer. Choose a background color by double-clicking on the layer named Color roll three. To Add a background color for the transparent pattern or to create a Fabric with solid color. The last layer in this group, which is named as Color all Rolls, use this to apply the same color to all the three rolls in case of creating a solid color Fabric. or Using transparent patterns. Drop shadow layer projects the Fabric Rolls shadows, giving it a more realistic look. You can view for hide this as per your requirement. Lastly, the background group includes Scene Shadows and background color. Adjust the shadow Settings by adjusting the hue saturation layer. And double-click on the color fill layer to choose a color that will compliment the patterns. Once you're happy, go to File. And here you can save or export your file as JPEG, PNG, or any other format for print and web. Now open the second file named Mug in Hand Mockup. And for this we will use a placement print. The first few layers are same as the previous files. So we will focus on the object layer group. Double-click on the Color Fill to change the color of the rim, inside and the handle of the Mug respectively. Double-click on the smart object layer named as design to add your artwork. By doing this, a new window will open. Now simply drag and drop your artwork. Transform to Edit the size and placement. Save the file and close this window. The source file is now updated with the new Artwork edit the Color Fill layer below to change the color of the Mug so it compliments the artwork. Adjust the background color, lighting, shadows and other settings if you need. Go to file, And here you can save or export your file as JPEG, PNG or other formats. I hope you found these lessons helpful. Thank you so much for your time. 15. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I hope you found the lessons helpful. If you have any doubts or questions, please feel free to drop them in the discussions page. And I'll be more than happy to help. If you liked the class, do leave a review and share with your friends. Follow me on Skillshare to get updates on my upcoming classes. Designing patterns becomes much more fun when you have understood the process and have mastered the technical skills. Of course it will take time. and there's always more to learn. The best way to learn more is create more. So create as many beautiful patterns as you like and do share them in the students project gallery. I would love to see them! You can also share them on social media. And don't forget to tag me at geetanjali.b So I can like and comment on your designs. In the next class, I will be sharing Five different workflows of creating Surface Pattern Design using Adobe Illustrator. I'm super excited for this one and hope to see you soon. Till then. Happy creating