Introduction to Pattern Design with Adobe Photoshop

1. Introduction to Pattern Design with Adobe Photoshop: Hello, this is Tricia lish, welcome to this course on how to create patterns in Adobe Photoshop. In this course, you will learn how to create repeating patterns with the help of actions, smart objects in art boards. I will introduce you to the Pattern Preview tool which was introduced with Photoshop 2021. I really love this feature and it makes it really easy to create repeating patterns in Photoshop. At the end of this class, I will have you create your own repeating pattern. If you have any questions as you work through this course material, please leave a comment and I will be happy to respond to any questions you may have. After completing this course, please post your class project. I look forward to seeing your designs. If you're ready. Let's get started creating patterns in Adobe Photoshop. 2. Customize Your Work Space: One of my first recommendations when designing patterns in Photoshop is to first organize your workspace. To start with, let's go ahead and create a new file. So I'm going to select New File. I'm going to use the dimensions of 1200 pixels by 1200 pixels. Make sure artboards is unselected. And then I'm just going to set my resolution to 300 pixels per inch. Color mode is RGB color, and then I'm just going to have my background contents that too transparent. And go ahead and click on create. By default, Photoshop has some preset workspaces that you can work with. To find these options, you're going to click on this icon here on the right. And then you will see a list of these different workspace titles. So currently we are in the essentials workspace share, but you can select a different one and you'll see that different menus will pop up depending on the workspace you are using. So if we select photography, different things will change here. So we'll click it back to our centrals. And then we are going to go ahead and open up some windows that we will be using for this course. I'm going to show you how I like to work in Photoshop, but your preferences may be different. You can customize the workspace to how you like it best. To start off with, I'm going to take my tools in. I'm going to move them from the left side to the right side. So it just selecting here you're going to drag it and then I'm just going to bring it here. That way. I don't have to go back and forth from the right to the left side. Everything is just here on the right. Next, I'm going to bring my Layers panel and I'm going to create a second column here. That way I'm more of the petals open at once and I can see what's happening. Next. I'm going to take my swatches over here and I'm going to bring it below my layers panel. While so move at color behind the swatches here. Here I like to have my patterns petal. So if I just open this up, I've got a bunch of different patterns here saved throughout, so we'll just minimize that there. But here's the pattern's panel. If you do not see any of these patterns, you can always go to Window and then you can just select the patterns from here. So the next one I'm going to select is the actions panel, which I don't currently have opened. And then I'm going to add drag this Actions panel here to the bottom. And we'll go ahead and move that to the side here. I'm going to move my properties behind my layers. So we have layers properties here. I like to have my patterns here, and then Actions. I'm going to get rid of some of these ones here so you can just right-click to close, adjustments, right clicks to close. And then we'll put R. And then I'm just gonna go ahead and close these ones as well. And then you can also adjust this here if you want it to be more space at the top one or the bottom one here. When designing in Photoshop, the mean paddles that I like to have open are here, the layers panel, the pattern's panel, and the actions panel, which currently is empty because we will be creating some new actions. And then the swatches panel where you can save your color palettes. And then also moving that toolbar to the right side. So everything is here on the right and you don't have to go back and forth from right to left. Once you get the workspace, we're at the way that you like it. You can actually save this as a new default. So we'll click back on this Workspace icon and then you can click to save a new workspace and then you can give it a title. In this case, I'll use pattern design. And then we'll click Save. In the next video, we will look at designing our first pattern. 3. Pattern Preview Mode: In this video, we are going to create our first pattern, and I'm going to show you how to use the pattern preview tool in Adobe Photoshop. This was a new feature with Adobe Photoshop version at 2021. If you are using an earlier version of Photoshop, then you will not be able to use this feature. This is a great feature in Photoshop. If you want to design patterns using Adobe Photoshop, I highly recommend getting the latest version of Photoshop to show you how to use the pattern at privy to all, we are going to create a simple polka dot pattern. Let's access the Ellipse tools from the toolbar here you can click on the tools panel here. You can right-click to select the Ellipse tool to create our circle. Just go ahead and hold down shift, click and then drag, and that will just create our circle here. Next, we will go ahead and align this to the center using the move tool here from our toolbar at the keyboard shortcut for that is the and then you can just drag it here to the center until you see those grid lines popup, going to bring up my Layers panel here. And then I'm going to duplicate this layer. So let's go right-click Duplicate Layer. And then we'll just click on OK here. And then zooming out, I'm going to go Command or Control Minus key. And then we are going to turn on our Pattern Preview mode. So to do that, you're gonna go to you and then you're going to select Pattern Preview. And then you'll start to see the repeat of our simple circle here and with our second layer here. And let's just go ahead and drag that out to the corner. And then you'll see the guides show up here to show that you are aligned with the quarter. And then we can see our simple polka dot repeat pattern here. To define this as a pattern, you're gonna go to edit, define pattern. You have the option to give your pattern a name and then just click on, Okay. And then what you see here in our patterns paddle is we have our newly created a pattern. Let's go ahead and test out this new pattern. So I'm going to create a new document. I'm going to go File New. This time I'm going to use the dimensions of digital scrapbook paper, which is 3600 pixels by 3600 pixels. In this case, I'm going to have artboards selected with our original document. We selected art-boards because if you want to use the pattern preview feature, it does not work with art boards. So just keep that in mind that when you're creating a pattern, you want to make sure artboards is unselected if you are planning on using the Pattern Preview tool. And then we're just going to set our resolution to 300 pixels per inch, color mode, RGB color. And then we'll leave our backyard content set to transparent. Then just click Create to test out this pattern, I'm going to use an adjustment layer in our Layers panel here at the bottom, you're going to select this icon and then select pattern. This will bring up our pattern adjustment layer. So currently it's bringing up my last selected pattern. From here you can hit the drop-down menu and you can see it. Select your pattern here with this dialog box open, you have the option to change the angle of your pattern. I typically don't use this feature because I find that it just slows my computer down. I'd rather create a rotated repeat and then define it. Instead of creating that rotation within this dialog box here, you also have the option to scale it. So let's go ahead and scale it down to 50 percent here just so we can see our repeat there. When the dialog boxes open it, you also have the option to move your pattern around. So if you don't like the way it's a reasonably position, you can always change it here. If you want to get back to how it was originally, just click on to snap to the origin and then you'll get your original orientation there. So we'll go ahead and click on Okay, to change the color of my pattern, I like to use Color Fill Adjustment Layers. So we'll select this icon again and we'll select a solid color adjustment layer. We'll go ahead and leave this set to black for now. And then I'm just going to click on Okay. And then this is going to be the color of our polka dot pattern here. So I'm going to create a clipping mass. So you can do that by right-clicking and select Create Clipping Mask. Or you can hover between the two layers and then hit the option key for Mac users or Alt key on a PC, just told that key and click and it will create a clipping mask to add change the color here you can always double-click it. Select a color from the color picker. With this layer selected, if you have colors in your swatch pedal here, you could always select a color to choose from. Then it will automatically change the color there. And then let's go ahead and add a, another color fill layer for our background layer. So we'll select solid color here. I will go ahead and just select another color from my color swatches here and then just clicking on Okay, I'm going to drag it to the bottom layer. Now we have our color of our pattern here. Clicking back on the color here. If you find a color that you like, you could always save it as a swatch. So from this panel here you click to add to swatches. And then it will create a new swatch here. And then you could just click Okay, and then you'll see it show up in your swatch panel there. In the next video, I'm going to show you how you can improve your workflow using actions. 4. Using Actions: In this video, I'm gonna show you how to improve your workflow by using actions in Photoshop, jumping back in it to our original document, we are going to create some actions. The first action that we are going to create is an action to turn on and off the pattern preview mode going to our actions panel a here. Here, let's create a new folder for our actions. We're going to create, we are going to name this set pattern of tools. And then just clicking on OK here. And this is just a folder where you can save different actions to it. We're going to create our first actions, will click on the plus icon here. I'm going to name this action. We're going to do Pattern Preview on and off. Here it is under our patterns tool set and then a four color, I'm going to hit the drop-down menu and then I'm just going to select a color. In this case, we'll use green. And the color is important when it isn't mode. And I will show you what Button Mode looks like. For now. Just click on Record to access our Pattern Preview mode. Again, we had to go to Mu. If you want to add an action that uses this top toolbar, you need to first click on this icon here, and then you're going to select Insert menu item. And then from here you can select View, pattern preview. And then you'll notice that it shows up here in the dialog box and then you can just click on Okay. And then from here we are going to stop this action. So if we click on this action here and then we hit the Play button, we can see that it turns off our Pattern Preview mode. What you'll notice now that we have turned off the pattern preview mode is that our original object is no longer repeating in the corners. To access by mode, you'll click on this icon here and then select Button Mode from the top. And now we see a green button so we can click on this button. And it will automatically turn on or off. When designing patterns you are going to be using the Pattern Preview mode a lot in actions is just a way to speed up your workflow. That way you don't have to go to view a pattern preview every time you can just click it on or click it off with the click of a button. So we'll go back to our button mode here. Let's go ahead and turn the pattern preview on against. Well, just hit the play button here. The next action that we want to create is to easily define our pattern. So clicking on our pattern tools here, let's create a new action. For this action, we are going to call it to find patterns. We'll give it a another color. Let's select blue this time, and then just click Record. Again. We need to access this top menu. So we will need to click here. We'll go Insert menu item, and then we will go edit. Define pattern. Again, we can see those options selected here and then just click on, Okay. And then let's go ahead and stop this actually in here. So let's go ahead and create a, another pattern here. So let's delete this top layer here. We have our original circle here, and then let's just extend it up, make it a little bit. Baker will align it to the center again. And then let's go ahead and select that change there. Let's duplicate it. Right-click Duplicate Layer, and then just dragging it to the corner till we get it to align in. So let's save this new pattern. So we have our action selected here. We'll just click Play. And we see that our new pattern here is in our pattern's panel there. So if we switch over to our button mode again, you'll see are two patterns that we have created here. We have our pattern preview mode to turn it on and off. And then just a quick, and then just a quick way to define another pattern. Actions are a great feature of Adobe Photoshop and a must have tool when creating patterns. In the next video, I'm going to show you how to use smart objects to help with your pattern design process. 5. Smart Objects: In this video, I'm going to introduce you to Smart Objects and how you can use them to help with your pattern design process. In our document here, let's go ahead and delete this second layer here with our object. Here, we are going to convert it to a smart objects. So to do that, you're going to right-click and you're going to select Convert to Smart Objects. What this does is it basically creates a document within this document. So if I double-click this icon indicates that it's a smart object. If I double-click here, it will open up another tab here with our original object. Jumping back into our original document here. With this smart object, we can now make adjustments to it and it will not affect the original. If I hold down the Shift key and I now flat in this object. And then I go to click on this smart object again, we still have our original circle preserved within this smart object. So Smart Objects are a way that you can make nondestructive changes to your object. Let's go ahead and close out of this smart object. So the keyboard shortcut for that is Command or Control W. So let's go ahead and undo that change. So let's go Command or Control Z and will, you will get our original object back. And so let's go ahead and duplicate this layer again. So you can right-click, go to duplicate layer or you can hit the keyboard shortcut, which is Command or Control J. And that will automatically duplicate that layer. And then we'll just drag again this to the corner here. So now we have our original object that we converted to a smart object and we duplicated that smart object. So let's click back in to our smart object here. I'm going to turn off the visibility of this layer. I'm going to create a new layer and then let's access our shape tools here. I'm going to switch this back to default by just clicking and D on the keyboard. So we're working with black. And then just right-clicking on the Shapes tool, let's try to create another object. So I'm going to use the polygon tool here. Appear in the toolbar. I haven't set to. The number of sides is set to five. And then with this gear icon, I'm going to click down and I'm going to change the star ratio here. I'm going to bring it to 50 percent Index. I'm just going to drag out a shape here. And we have a star holding Shift and dragging on the corners here, we'll just scale it using the Move tool V on the keyboard. I'm just going to bring it to the center here. And we have a star shape. So I'm going to now save it. So I'm going to go Command or Control S. And then I'm going to go Command or Control W. And what we see now is that we haven't updated in the corner as well. So that's one of the benefits of using smart objects when you are using repeating elements is that when you make a change to that smart object document, it will automatically update it in the other instances of that repeating objects. So now instead of a are repeating, poke it out. We now have a repeating star pattern. So with our action to find what pattern, we can quickly create a new pattern out of our repeating stars here. Clicking back over into the layers panel here, I'm going to right-click on this layer here. And I'm going to select New Smart Object via Copy. So this created a copy of our original. Let's go ahead and turn off the visibility of the original. I'm going to add double-click in this smart object layer. With this polygon layer selected, I'm just going to select a color from my swatches here. And then I'm gonna go ahead and save this Command or Control S, or Command or Control W to exit out. And now we have a copy of our original Smart Object. So that means it didn't cause the other star to update as well. And so this is a great way if you want to change the color of one of your repeating elements, you can make a copy of the original Smart Object and then you can make changes to the new one and not habit affect the original. Smart Objects are definitely helpful when creating repeating elements in Adobe Photoshop. In the next video, we are going to look at how you can use art boards to help with your pattern design process. 6. Artboards: In this video, I'm going to show you how you can use art boards in Photoshop to save multiple images at what? Jumping back into our second document where we tested out our pattern. Let's go ahead and zoom out. I'm going to go Command or Control with the minus key. In our layers panels. You see we have our first art board here and the contents of this art board. We'll go ahead and move this to the site to access the artboard tool. It is underneath the Move tool you can right-click and then you can see the artboard tool. You can also access this tool by going shift B, and you'll see that it moves to the Artboard Tool. When you click on the outside area of this art board, you'll see these icons pop up. If you click on one of them, it will create a second art board right next to it. I'm going to go ahead and undo that Command or Control C. Another option, when you have the art board selected here, you can click the option key for Mac users or Alt key for PC, you're gonna go Option or Alt click, and then you can drag it to the side and it will create a duplicate copy of your original art board. If you ever want to move your artboard around, just hit the Command or Control key, and then you can drag it to the location in which you want. Under Properties, you can always resize your artboard here also if you like. So let's go back to our layers here. Let's go ahead and create multiple versions of this art board. So we'll access the art board tool here again, Shift V. And then I'm just gonna go Option or Alt click and drag it down. And then it lets go ahead and do that when we're at time 4 here. And now we have four copies of this art board in the layers panel. Let's go ahead and organize these art boards here. So clicking on this next one. So we have our first art board here. I'm going to go ahead and rename it, just going to go polka dots. And then let's bring it to the top. And then we'll click on this second one here. Let's go to polka dots. And then we'll bring it up. Then we have our third or an a here. We'll just go through. And then finally, we'll bring our less or they more or less art board for polka dot. The benefits of naming your artboards is when you go to save your file, that will be the name of the individual files for each of the art board. So, so it's a good step to name your artboards here. That way the files will already be named the way that you want them to. I, Let's go ahead and change up some of our colors here. So I'll just pick some predefined swatches I have here. And then we'll just create a little collection here of different papers using our polka dot pattern. One more here. So we have our pattern or polka dot pattern here, and we have a different color variations. And now to save this, you're gonna go to File Export, Export As well. You'll notice here on the left side are the different art boards here you can choose to de-select them or select them all here if you go Shift-click, you'll see that they are all displayed here in the window. Under suffix here you can add as something else. So say we want a tag on the word brights to the end of it because these are bright colors. And it will automatically add that to the end of the filenames. Here on the right under File Settings you could see format. You can choose the format type. You have option a, PNG, JPEG, or GIF. In this case, we are going to leave it as JPEG. In this case, I'm saving this as digital scrapbook paper. So under quality, generally you want a high-quality, so you can choose to bring up the quality here. The higher the quality, you'll notice that your file size increases. Here we have image size, canvas size, metadata, and then under color space, I like to click Embed color profile. And then just click to export. Go ahead and select the file where you want to save it and then just click on Open. And then it will save that. And then let's go ahead and bring up that file here. Under the file here you can see that each of those artboards was saved to its own a file. And then at the end, we have that extra word brights that you added to the end of there. And then you can just see the different files saved here. So our boards is a nice feature where you can work with multiple artboards and then just save them quickly to their own file all at once. 7. Class Project: Okay, Now it is your turn to the class project for this course is to create your own a repeating pattern using photoshops, shapes. Go ahead and create a repeating pattern and post it in the class project section for this course. I look forward to seeing the patterns you create. If you have any questions about this course, be sure to leave me a comment and I will be happy to answer your question. Thank you for watching this course. I hope you enjoy and designing patterns as much as I do.