iOrnament Pro: A Beginners Guide for Illustrators and Surface Pattern Designers

1. Introduction to iOrnament: Hi, I'm Priscilla, and welcome to my Skillshare class. In this class, I'll be giving you an in-depth overview of the iOrnament Pro app, an incredibly powerful pixel-based design app that I use to create seamless repeat patterns in my design workflow. Whether you are a beginner digital artist wanting to learn new techniques, or an experienced designer wanting to streamline your workflow, this class is for you. In this class, I take you through all the tools in the app step-by-step, so that you can create professional print quality designs from basic motifs to multi-layered patterns in a range of color ways, and how to do this in a fraction of the time it takes using most design programs. The designs you create can immediately be used on print-on-demand sites or in a myriad of ways. For example, in mockups for accessories, or as motifs for coloring books. The most incredible feature of this app is how it eliminates the frustration of figuring out how to place your elements seamlessly, because the program has over 20 different repeat orientations that you can activate and all your strokes are automatically placed in repeats as you create. A little bit about me. I'm a trained teacher with two bachelor's degrees in science and arts, a masters in teaching, and over a decade of experience teaching in the classroom. I'm also a surface pattern designer, and owner of Cardwell and Ink, where I create and license unique original designs for fabrics and accessories. The designs that I have created using this app have been featured on the Spoonflower website, Holiday Magazine, and Instagram pages. In this class, I want to share all the tools I use to simplify my design workflow using this incredibly fun but very powerful design tool. I also hope to demystify to me one of the best kept secrets in the surface pattern world. I'm so excited to share this class with you because this is the class I wish I had had when I began my surface pattern design journey. I've incorporated all the tips and tricks that I have learned along the way. To take this class, all you will need is an iPad, the app, iOrnament pro, and a stylus or your finger. I will be using the Apple Pencil. Enough talking, let's get started. 2. Class Project: Your class project will be to create a seamless repeat pattern or mandala using any of the skills learned in this class. You can do this at any stage in the course. If you get to a lesson and create a great effect, I would love to see it. You can post your class projects in the project gallery just underneath this video. You will need to be in a web version of Skillshare, not the app to do this. Let's dive in with an overview of the app. 3. The Workspace: To begin with, I'll take you through the process of going to the App Store to download the iOrnament Pro app. Now the iOrnament Pro app has a blue icon. As there have been significant improvements in the pro app from the original app, which has a pink icon. On the App Store, as well, are a few videos that really show the extraordinary capabilities of this design tool, and they are well-worth a look to see the ways in which you could potentially use this in your design workflow. I have already purchased this app so as I tap "Open", it will open up straight away for me. There's usually a basic tutorial that this app will start with. But once you click out of it, you will see a blank canvas with a menu bar on the right-hand side. I will start with a basic overview of the menu icons and the interface. At the very top, there are three dots that allow you to hide or display the entire menu bar. Then starting from the top, I'll go through each of the icons briefly, but we'll expand on these in the lessons. First the color palettes, then the brush and stroke settings. Next you have the layers panel. Symmetries and tiles is underneath that. Your background options and textures will come up next. Then the effects menu. The next icon with the question mark is the Help Center. Then are the global settings. Under that are the grid lines. Next is the shape tool. Then the eraser tool. The undo and redo buttons. The export menu and last is the trash can. Let's dive into these one by one with the color pallets in the next lesson. 4. The Colour Palette: Let's dive into how to use the color palettes and how to create a color palette of your own using three different methods. The first icon at the top of the menu bar is the color palette. Tapping on it will open up its menu. Inside it, you will see a default color palette of mainly primary and secondary colors. You can always tell the color you are working with by the white circle around it. One important thing to note is that when you open the program, the colors will look a bit deemed. This is because the default setting for saturation and brightness in iOrnament Pro is at about 80 percent. In iOrnament white is a default stroke color and the default background color. Lower saturation and brightness makes white strokes appear gray and allows strikes to be seen so that you don't accidentally make strokes on your Canvas without realizing. I generally turn these sliders right up to 100 percent when I open the program. Tapping on any color in the color palette will select the color, and your stroke on the Canvas will automatically be in that color. For pre-made palettes, you can tap on the eight circle icon under the palette, to open up a range of pre-made palettes. There are also empty palettes that allow you to create your iOrnament. Pro tip, another way to access existing libraries of palettes is to swipe left or right on the main palette to reveal other options, and this took me forever to figure it out. How do we create our own color palette? There are three ways that you can create a color palette in iOrnament Pro. The first way is to create one using a color wheel. To get into that, first, use the palette icon underneath your main color palette, scroll down to an empty palette, and then tap the rainbow ring on the main menu. This will open up a new menu and color wheel, which will initially look black. The slider on the right-hand side will adjust the brightness so that you can see the colors in the wheel. Tap the first black box in the dark palette underneath the wheel, and then adjust the color in the circle to your preference. Once you have chosen a color, tap the next black box to choose the next color, and so on. This is the first method to select colors. If you have a particular hue, saturation, and brightness code or RGB codes, the second method allows you to tap the next icon, which looks like sliders, and then select your colors by tapping an empty box and then moving the sliders to the codes that you choose. The third method is by far, the easiest, my favorite, and most beginner-friendly. That is by using the color picker tool to extract colors from an image or directly from a design on your Canvas. The key to any great design is a cohesive color palette. We have the benefit of platforms like Pinterest to choose cohesive colors that resonate with you. I have created a Pinterest board that you can access, linked in the resources section below that you can browse through, and when you find a color palette that you like or even an image that you like that has colors within it, take a screenshot and come back to iOrnament, and we will go through how to extract the colors. To take colors out of an image, first, I will briefly jump to the background icon in the main menu, which looks like two papers on top of each other. Once the menu opens up, you can tap on the triangle to open a hidden menu. In this menu, there is an icon with an arrow, which allows you to insert a background image. Tapping it opens your camera roll and allows you to insert an image which will then appear on your Canvas. Heading back now to the color palette icon and the rainbow ring, I'll show you how the color picker tool works. As we did before, tap an empty square in the palette, and then the color picker icon, and then the image you have inserted, and the color that you tap one will be selected. Repeat, tapping another square, the color picker icon, and then your image, and it will select another color. Continue this until you pick all the colors that you want in your image. Once you are happy with the color palette, you can tap the text that says, use palette, it's a little text button. Once you tap on it, you can see three options that will pop up, either create a new palette, overwrite the current palette, or cancel. Creating a new palette, we'll put it into an empty palette that is in your palette selections. Overriding it will mean that the colors that you have already in your palette. If you didn't use an empty palette to start off with, the colors that you had in the palette would be overwritten by the colors you have selected or cancel to go back, if that's not what you intended to do. Once your color palette is selected, you can tap the color palette icon in the main menu to close the color wheel menu. Then to remove the image from your Canvas, tap the background menu and the triangle, and then the trash can to remove the image. Spend a little time creating a unique color palette, and I'll see you in the next lesson to start on how to manipulate those colors. 5. The Colour Palette 2: In this lesson, I'm going to run through how to apply a range of effects to the stroke colors in your color palette. Remember when you open eye ornament, your saturation and brightness is slightly reduced. I'll put these up to 100 percent. I'm also going to set the repeat as a simple repeat using the symmetry icon on the right-hand side so that I can show you the strokes clearly on the Canvas. Underneath the main palette, you have a set of icons that look like brushstrokes. They will apply a metallic or glitter effect to your strokes. The first sparkle effect makes a stroke color brighter and more raised. I'll show you what an original stroke looks like, and then what it looks like when you add a sparkle effect to it. Next, the metallic silver effect, which looks a bit embossed. Then the metallic gold effect, and lastly, the reflective glitter. You can also use the sparkle effect in conjunction with the others, and I'll show you what that looks like as well. First, the sparkle and metallic silver, sparkle and metallic gold, and sparkle and reflective glitter. When you are done using these effects, don't forget to tap them again to remove the effect before you continue with the rest of your design. Underneath, these are the properties sliders. In order, the sliders represent: saturation, brightness, size, opacity, and blurring of the stroke. Per tip, if you tap on the cog in the main menu on the side, you have the option to turn on the slide and numbers in the global settings at the top of that menu. When you go back to your color palette menu, you'll see the numerical values on the sliders, and this allows precise adjustments to be made and applies to any sliders in the app. You can adjust the slider settings with the main slider found next to the icons, and as you do this, you'll see that it opens up a preview window at the top for you to see how the stroke is affected. Tapping on the slider image will open up a new menu. This then allows you to adjust more variables. When you tap a variable, you'll see a blue color and an icon now showing on the right-hand side of the main slider when it is activated. The first variable is time, which adjusts the property with the time that the stylus is on the Canvas. With length, the property is affected with the length of the stroke. Manual, opens up a slide on the left-hand side of the Canvas, which enables you to adjust manually as you design. This is great for those using a stylus that is not precious sensitive, like an Apple Pencil because you can then adjust as you design. Tilt, adjust the setting based on the angle of the Apple Pencil, and pressure is based on the pressure settings of the Apple Pencil on the screen. Other styluses may not respond to the tilt and pressure. Starting with this saturation slider, I'll go through each setting with the exception of manual and tilt, because that's more based on personal preference. I'll do an original stroke first so that you can see how each setting affects it. First with time, less saturation in your stroke with time compared to the original stroke, and remember that if you want to adjust the intensity, there is a slider at the bottom, and as you move the slider, a preview window will show up at the top of the screen so that you can see how much the intensity is being affected, and this applies to all of the settings. With length, you have less saturation with the length of your stroke. With pressure, more pressure on the Apple Pencil gives you more saturation. I'll just reset the settings and move on to the brightness slider. With the brightness slider, first our original stroke, and then manipulated with time. With time you have a darker color over time. Length. Also gets darker with the length of your stroke. With pressure, more pressure gives you a brighter stroke using the Apple Pencil. I'll just clear those settings. Next we have our stroke size slider. First, your original stroke size. Now, this one usually starts out with the app with the pressure sensitivity on, so your normal stroke size will be a monoline looking stroke. With time, your stroke becomes thinner. With length, your stroke is also thinner, and with pressure, more pressure is going to give you a thicker stroke, and this is really fun to use for artistic strokes. But if you are someone that prefers a more monoline stroke, just note that because this is the default, when you open up the app, just take the precious setting off. I'm going to leave it moving on. Opacity is the next slider. First your original stroke. Then with time, you're going to have a more transparent stroke. With length, you're also going to have a more transparent stroke with length. Pressure, the more pressure you apply, the less transparent and more opaque your stroke will be. I'll just clear those settings. The blurriness or the blur of the stroke does not have a contextual menu, so you can only use the main sliders to set the blurriness, and I'll just pop them back. Now these properties on different sliders can be used simultaneously, and this is where you realize the power of this program. I'm going to give you an example. I'm turning on the sparkle and gold embossing. I'm going to have my pressure setting for saturation and pressure for the brightness. I'm going to set my stroke for length, time for opacity, and a halfway blur on the stroke. This then gives me a really prominent emboss look, which is so fun. Don't forget though, when you are finished with your settings, do reset them when you are done. I'm going to reset them all except for the pressure sensitivity on the stroke. Last but not least, there is a drop-down arrow that opens up another menu panel, which allows you to preset gradients and have more control over the hue in your stroke. You'll see a whole range of different gradients, and tapping them will apply an automatic color gradient to your colored stroke, and you can see this with the rainbow stroke for example. As you swipe right, you'll see a full range of the gradients. You can then take this further down the rabbit hole and adjust the intensity of the hue control in the gradient using the slider at the bottom. A preview window will show up to show how the effect can be manipulated. First with time, then with length. With the manual, note that for the hue control, the manual has to be adjusted using the slider at the bottom here, as no slider will appear on the side. Tilt affects the Apple Pencil and the pressure setting affects the Apple Pencil. I know that's a lot to play with, and it takes some time to get more familiar with these adjustments and find effects that you are happy with. Take some time and I'll see you in the next lesson to talk about the pencil, pen, and brush menu. 6. The Brush Menu: This lesson is all about the pencil, brush, and pen settings. I'll go to the color palette for a minute and choose a bright color. Remember, if you are opening the app after shutting it down, you may need to adjust the sliders for saturation and brightness to 100 percent. As I did in the color palette lesson, I'll put this symmetry into a simple repeat and zoom in so that the strokes can be easily seen. The icon for the Brush tools is a paintbrush and tapping it opens its menu. Inside it, there are three types of pen you can use; the Pencil tool, the Brush, and the Calligraphy pen. I will start with the Pencil tool. You'll notice that the default setting in eye is to have the pressure sensitivity active for this size. You'll see this by the Pressure icon next to the main slider in blue. This will show up whenever you have a stroke size slider in any of the menus, like we saw in the color palette menu. I will turn it off for now so that you can see what the monoline stroke looks like, with the pencil setting. The Pencil tool has a range of properties that can be adjusted, beginning with its size. As I adjust this slider, you can see the changes in the preview window. Tapping on the image will give you a contextual menu that works the same way as the slider in the color palette menu from the previous lesson. This can be adjusted with time, length manually using the slider on the side, with the tilt of the Apple Pencil, and with pressure. The next slider is going to affect the blurriness of the stroke. Again, just like the color palette menu, this has no contextual menu and it can only be adjusted using the main slider. I'll just reset that. The spacing of the stroke is a new property. This will space your stroke into dots. It also has a contextual menu that allows you to manipulate the spacing. You can see in the preview how this effect is manipulated by time, length. You can manually adjust on the side, use the tilt of the Apple Pencil or a pressure sensitivity. I'll just reset the slider before moving on. One thing to note is that with these last two sliders, you will not see the icons show up on the side of the main slider when they're activated, the way that the stroke size does. Just be aware if you see any unusual strokes in your design, you may have a setting activated that you've not turned off. The last slider is going to affect the jitter of the stroke. I'll show you what that looks like in the preview window. It gives a charcoal-like stroke pattern on the canvas. This also has a contextual menu that can be manipulated with time, length, manually using the slider, the tilt of the Apple Pencil, and lastly, your pressure sensitivity. As always, reset your settings when you are done. Our next tool is the Brush tool, and it has the same sliders again as the Pencil tool with the contextual menus for each; for the size, spacing, and scatter brushes. Again, the blurriness uses the main slider only. But at the bottom of this menu, there are four different brush types that you can choose to work with, each more painterly than the last. The first one looks like like lines. The second looks like an acrylic paint stroke. The third and the fourth brushes are going to look like blurry painterly brushes in different degrees. Each of these strokes can be adjusted using the main menu. You can see how the strokes change in the preview window. These will work the same way as the sliders in the Pencil tool menu. I'll reset these sliders before going onto our last tool. The third tool is the Calligraphy tool. The Calligraphy tool imitates a calligraphy pen, but it only has two sliders in its menu. The first slider is for size of the stroke, the same as we've seen in the other two menus, with the same contextual menu. The blurriness also works in the same way using only the main slider. But underneath these, you have a wheel that allows you to adjust the angle of the stroke. As I move it, you can see in the preview window how this affects the nib. To the right of the circle, you have a variety of nib and stroke types that you can use. I'll reset the nib angle first to zero and then I will show you what each looks like. Finally, there is an icon at the bottom of the Circle tool that allows you to adjust the twist of the stroke and manipulate it using time, length, manual, tilt, and pressure settings, the same way that you did in the Color Palette menu. I'll show you how this affects the stroke in the preview window. There are a bunch of just really awesome ribbon effects that this can create, especially using the time slider. Spend a little time playing with the brush effects, and we will dive into the Layers panel in the next lesson. 7. The Layers Menu: This lesson is going to be about the Layers panel. The layers panel is shown by an icon that looks like three papers on top of each other. When you tap on it, it opens up the Layer menu. The default layer is the middle layer, and this allows you to add details in layers above and below that layer. You can change the layer that you are working on by tapping on the layer icon, which will then be highlighted in blue. You have three layers that you can work on in our ornament and the background layer is a fourth separate layer and has its own icon in the main menu that we will look into later on. This settings in each layer are editable post-production or after you have created your design, which allows you to be able to create various color ways of the same pattern. The slide is on the sides of the layers are going to adjust its opacity so that you can make each layer more transparent or more opaque. I'll show you on the three layers in this pattern. If you tap the little triangle arrow at the bottom, there's a new menu underneath with three sections. First, the color tab. Now this allows you to use sliders to adjust the hue. I'll show you in my design. The saturation and the brightness of that layer. With the Effects tab, the first option that you have is blur, which allows you to blur the entire layer. Then you have a gold option. So if you have used a metallic pen from your color palette icon, the gold defects in that layer can be adjusted to different styles of gold foil, for any of the strokes in that layer. The effect is highlighted in blue and you can see in the design, as I move through it, that the gold will have different textures depending on the icon that I am tapping. If you do not like the gold effect in your design, you can also tap the "Gold" again to remove the gold effect from your design altogether. Next is the Glitter. If you are using any of the glitter brushes from the color palette menu, this setting allows you to adjust the hue of the glitter in three different ways. The size of the reflective glitter and the frequency of the flicker of light using glitter speed in the animation. The Mode tab allows you to adjust the blend modes of each of the layers. I'll go through and tap through them so you can see the effect that it has on the layer that I am working on. With off, you can turn the layer off completely. Normal, which is the default layer that you start with to show the layer as you drew it. Multiply, reveal, add, lighten, darken, subtract, and screen. Now, it takes trial and error to find a setting that you prefer to apply to your designs, so spend a little time making strokes on three different layers using different colors, the glitter brushes, the gold brushes, and see how the colors in each layer can be adjusted using this Layer menu. I will see you in the next chapter to talk about symmetry and tiles. 8. The Symmetry Panel: This lesson is about the symmetry menu. This is one of the most exciting parts of the app for me as a surface pattern designer. The icon for this looks like a mandala, and inside the menu are symmetry icons arranged in a grid. Each represents a different seamless repeat orientation. The beauty of this is that you can set the symmetry pattern before you even start drawing, so you can just focus on creating a pattern and not worry about how you are going to make your elements repeat because they are perfectly positioned as you draw. I'm going to tap on the honeycomb icon as well on the main menu so that you can see the grid lines of the symmetry as we work through the orientations. Also in this lesson, I'm going to be using a few different colors to show you how the symmetries work, and so to avoid going backwards and forwards between the menus, as I create a design, iOrnament has a wonderful shortcut to this. If you head back to the color palette menu and make sure that the hidden menu is collapsed, you will then see an icon that looks like a Swiss Army knife at the bottom right. Tapping this will open up a simplified menu that combines the main tools that you require for designing in one, the color palette, the property sliders, symmetries, layers and brushes will then be accessible to you in one menu. This symmetry icon is identical to the one in the symmetry menu, except for the design mode and local rosette buttons, which I will come back to later in this lesson. Heading back to our all-in-one menu, remember that the default orientation when you open the app is the one at the bottom highlighted in white. I'm just going to change that back to a simple repeat. Anytime you want to know what repeat you were working with lookout for the highlighted icon. I'm going to draw a few simple shapes on the Canvas using the default color palette. Now I can go through the tile orientations one by one, and you can see how the grid lines and the elements are rearranged each time. I absolutely love this feature for creating patterns. Fun fact, the creator of this app is a mathematics professor, and it's just fascinating to me to see how he has applied his love of math in such a creative way. Having a science and arts background myself, I'm just astonished by the work and precision that has gone into this program. I'll just head back to the symmetry icon for this next part because the smaller menu allows you to see the next feature really well. At the bottom right, the globe icon allows you to turn your pattern into a circular 3D globe. The normal patterns still shows up on the right as well and you can still add to it in the side panel and see the pattern on the globe change in real-time. I'll go through the globe orientations as well. Tapping on the blue globe again will take you back to the main symmetry menu. Next to which the flower-shaped icon allows you to create rosettes and mandalas. If you are a fan of coloring book pages and mandalas, you will really enjoy this. I'll just start with a fresh canvas for this one. Make a simple squiggle stroke, and then show you how you can adjust the symmetry either by tapping the plus symbol or by using the main slider. This then increases the complexity of the design with each symmetry. You can also tap on the rotational symmetry at the top right, to adjust the symmetry of your strokes again. I'll tap on the flower icon to head back to the main menu and clear the Canvas for the next pot. At the bottom of the symmetry menu are two text tabs, design mode and local rosette. Design mode basically allows you to combine different symmetries in the one design in the same pattern. I'll pick a symmetry and make a few strokes, then I will tap design mode. When you do this, the app already determines using your first orientation which other symmetries are compatible. All other symmetries will be grayed out except the ones compatible with your first symmetry. This means you can start by using a simple pattern and then halfway through change your symmetry and add other symmetries. I find that this feature allows you to have a more organic feel without the tiles looking like rigid repeats. You can do this in the same layer or you can work in separate layers as well. Local rosette is the second option that is presented. I think of it almost as an extension of the mandala mode, but with this mode, you can create them all over your pattern. I'll just clear the screen again. You can absolutely use the rosette mode with the design mode, but for now, I'm going to keep things simple and take off design mode. When you tap the local rosette button, you can tell that it's on because a new menu shows up at the bottom of the page and a circle shows up on your Canvas. The circle hands faint pink lines that indicate that you can move it around. You cannot make any strokes when it is in this mode as it is in editing mode, but you can place it anywhere on your pattern motif and adjust the repetitions the same way that you did with the mandalas using the main slider. The local rosettes in edit mode will snap to the symmetries of the repeat. I'll just open up the extended symmetry menu briefly, and tap Show Symmetries to show you how this works. I will go into detail with this second half of the menu in the next lesson but for now, I'm just going to tap this. The symmetries will then show up as triangle or diamond shapes and as I move the rosettes to them, they will snap into place. If you don't want the magnetics on, just tap on the magnet at the bottom menu, and then move the circle anywhere in your pattern. When you are happy with the position of the circle, you can then tap the word Edit. The pink lines will then go gray, the rosette position will be fixed and you can now create strokes. You can also rotate between the two symmetries as you draw. At any point, you can still zoom in and out using two fingers on the screen, which will also adjust the position of your strokes. Then iOrnament takes things to the next level. If you tap the arrow on the right, it opens a new menu where you can create a sub symmetry, so you have two rosettes being created at the same time. At setting 1, you won't see a change, but as you go above one, you'll see another symmetry circle show up and every time you make a stroke, it will create a simultaneous symmetry. When you are done, take it back to one and collapse the menu. To move the rosette again, tap Edit and you can move it to a new location and make another rosette. Lastly, when you're done with the rosette menu, to close the symmetry, you can press the X at the right of the menu and return back to your main symmetry menu. I'll just clear that canvas and I think that's enough for now. Take some time to play with this menu. I will see you in the next lesson to talk about color symmetries. 9. The Symmetry Panel Pt 2: The second half of the Symmetry menu opens when you tap the triangle arrow at the bottom, and we touched on this in the last lesson. The first section that you see are the color symmetries, and these allow you to adjust the existing colors on your pattern into complimentary color combinations in your strokes. Starting with a blank canvas, I'll lay down a few strokes so you can see how this works. The red color symmetry icon is the default color of your strokes as you drew them. But you'll see next to it, icons for two color symmetries with the number one and two on them, and then a tricolor symmetry on the end. Sometimes this last one doesn't show up unless there is a stroke on the canvas. I'll tap each to show you how it affects the colors on your canvas. The first is going to split your existing strokes into two complimentary colors, and the second changes the orientation of where the colors are in the stroke so you can choose which you prefer. These settings when they're on, will be applied to every stroke you make from that point on. Now, these may not be colors that you are particularly fond of, and you may be wondering if you can choose the colors yourself. The answer is yes. To show you how to do this, I will just put the setting back on the two symmetry mode, and head back to the color palette menu. You will now see that the color you were using in the palette is split into two colors. The highlighted color is the main stroke color, where your stylus is touching the canvas. Tapping on the second color will highlight it with a white circle, and this will become your main stroke color. Now, this will affect the other colors in the palette, and you'll notice that all the colors in the full palette will also switch. If you want to choose your own colors, I'll just clear the canvas and tap on the rainbow ring icon. You will see that under the color wheel, there is text that says symmetry color. I'll just brighten the color wheel to see it a bit more clearly. You can set your own color symmetries by first tapping on the oval and setting the color using the color wheel, sliders, or the dropper that we covered in the color palette lesson. Tapping on the second circle activates the second symmetry color, and allows you to choose a second color. Then when you draw on the canvas, you will see the colors in your strokes. For the three color variation, I'll just clear the canvas and head back to the symmetry menu and activate the tricolor symmetry. Now when I go back to the color palette, the colors are split into three colors. Opening the rainbow ring will show a third symmetry color that you can choose, so I'll just set that one, and then you can see in your strokes the three colors working together. To turn off your colors symmetries, go back to the symmetry menu, and then tap on the plain red color symmetry icon. This will turn all of your colors back to the original stroke color. If you want to save your design in your color symmetries, save first before resetting this, and I'll cover how to save and export in a later lesson. The next section of the symmetry menu has two text boxes that say: Show Symmetries and Fundamental Cell. This allows you to show the grid lines of the symmetries and we have touched on this briefly in the previous lesson. I'll start on the right, starting with the fundamental cell. This allows you to tap either Faint or Full to make the grid lines of the symmetry a light or darker gray, so that they are easier to see. On the left-hand side, there is a heading that says, Show Symmetries. When you tap "Faint", this brings up more symbols in the grid pattern. Those solid lines are for where you have a reflection; the dotted line for a glide reflection; and the shapes that we snapped our rosettes to in the last lesson, are the centers of rotation for that symmetry. It's just fascinating. Tapping the "Full" tab shows these lines and symbols color coordinated, and you can see how that has changed on the canvas. I'll just turn these off. Grid lines can also be activated on the main menu using the honeycomb icon on the main menu on the right-hand side. But for all of these, please remember to turn them off before exporting or they will show up in your image. Right at the bottom of the symmetry menu is the Deformations tab. This allows you to take your existing pattern and deform it into several animated shapes, like a circular pattern. The first one is very similar to the globe symmetry as it also has that side panel. I'll just collapse the menu so you can see it. It shows the flat pattern which can also be added to in real time. This panel is going to exist for all of the deformations that we are going to go through. Back to the deformations. Underneath the icons are new sliders that allow you to play with the repetitions in these deformations. A special menu will explain it all in detail when you tap the question mark, so feel free to do that in your own time if you would like a bit more information. There are different types of orientations that you can use, and you'll see that in the pattern as I tap the numbers. There are also three other shapes that you can use: the square, rectangle, and the heart-shaped deformation. The plus symbol on the left of this shape, allows you to have a little pop-up menu where you can move, rotate, or re-center the pattern as well. Tapping the egg shape next, will change the canvas to an egg that is covered with your design. You can also alter the density of your pattern by rotating between the eggs. The last deformation is an animated square pattern that shows your pattern in a spiral formation. This can be adjusted using the sliders underneath. The awesome thing about this is a spiral can be animated. The animation speed sliders will show how this works. The first one affects whether the pattern is moving towards you or away from you in the animation. Bringing it back to the center will stop the animation. The second slider affects whether it spirals to the right or left. Together, they will give you a dizzying animation. But this is actually quite fun for making social media reels and videos, and I'll dive into how to export them in the export lesson. I will just reset both to the center to stop the animation. When you return this slider to the default position in the center, it stops that rotational animation. To clear the deformations icon, just tap on it to remove the blue color, and then you can collapse your menus. To exit the symmetry menu, you just tap on the icon on the right-hand side. All right. I'm going to stop here for this chapter. It is a bit mind-blowing. Spend some time playing with the symmetry menu before going on to the next lesson, where we will talk about your background options. 10. Background Options: This lesson is on the background menu. The background icon in the main menu looks like two pieces of paper on top of each other. When you open the menu, you can see a selection of colors, and tapping on a color will change the background to that selection. Remember that this is independent of the three layers in the Layers menu. I've used a print on the canvas so that you can see the design is not affected as you change the background color. Like the color palette, the rainbow ring icon allows you to make your color selections the same way that it does in the color palette menu. We covered that in a lot of detail in that lesson, so I will just skim it here. You can either use the wheel or the HSB RGB sliders. There is also a color dropper that pops up only when the sliders are touch. But at present, the color dropper does not work in this menu. However, as this app does have frequent updates, it may be a feature that is being trialed for a future update. Heading back to the color wheel, as you select a color, it will also change the highlighted background color in the main palette, so you can adjust the colors one by one and create a palette of background colors that suits your design style. Tapping the rainbow ring on the main menu, again, closes this menu. If you press the arrow at the bottom of the main background menu, you get an expanded menu where you have the option of selecting from eight background textures. These textures will overlay your whole pattern. Some are fabric textures and others are metallic textures. I'll choose a light background color and zoom in to show you the textures up close as I go through them. Pro-tip, be aware that not all of them are seamless, so you may need to think about that as you design because the seams of some of these textures will show up in your tile or final pattern. I'll zoom out and clear the canvas to show you what I mean. Just check if you are wanting a seamless pattern that you have the correct texture to go along with it. Tapping the background texture again, will deselect it, remove that blue color, and remove it from your background. At the bottom of the expanded menu, you have more options. The first is a background image that can be inserted into the canvas as I showed you in the color palette lesson. Pressing the box with the arrow allows you to insert an image from your camera roll. This time, however, press the honeycomb icon on the main menu as well, so that you can see the image in relation to your canvas symmetry. Once the image is inserted, it is a stand-alone image fixed to the canvas symmetry. If you want to move your image, tap on the four arrow icon in the menu. This then allows you to resize and reposition the background image on your canvas with two fingers. When you're happy, press the four arrow icon again, and this will fix your image in position. You can then trace the image or the shape manually, and any strikes that you make will automatically be repeated in whatever symmetry the canvas is in. I tend to do this if I've done a sketch on paper and want to import it to use to create a design. I'll just clear the strokes on the canvas using the trash can on the main menu. The next two buttons work in an interesting way. First of all, tap on the four-square icon, this will place four squares on your canvas that you can move to the four edges of your image. Once you have done this, leave the four squares selected and tap on the smiley face icon. Now, you can adjust the perspective of the image by moving any one of the four squares. Deselecting the smiley face, again, fixes the image in that perspective. Underneath this is an Alpha slider and three text tabs. I'll just place a few strokes on the canvas so you can see what happens to both as we make adjustments. I'll pick a few colors from the color palette menu and just stroke over different parts of the image. First, in normal mode, the Alpha slider is going to decolorize the image as I slide it backwards. On the mix setting, it makes the background black, and in this case, the Alpha slider will adjust the opacity of your image and the strokes that you have placed on the Canvas will overlay the image with their color. With the Reveal tab, parts of the image that are overlaid by the strokes will be shown, and the slider still affects the background image opacity. I can't say I use these features a lot, but they could make for some really interesting effects in your designs. The trash can icon in the background menu removes the image from your background when you are done, and the main trash icon on the side menu will remove the strokes from your canvas. Take some time to play with the background settings and maybe practice tracing a simple sketch in different perspectives. I will see you in the next lesson. 11. The Effects Menu: The Effects menu icon looks like a magic wand, and tapping it opens its menu. This menu allows you to add various effects to your strokes and background simultaneously. These are best visualized if you are using the sparkle and metallic pen effects we covered in the color palette lessons. I'll first go to the symmetry and select a simple repeat, and then head to the color palette menu and make some strokes on the canvas, all in one color, but in all the variations we looked at with the sparkle and embossed pins. I find adding a slight blur really enhances the stroke when using the embossed effect, so I'll add that to the strokes as well. Now back to the Effects menu. This menu, like others in the app, has an extended section when you tap the arrow at the bottom, and we'll be going through the features one by one. The first icons at the top of this menu look like embossed symbols. The first one is the default normal background and stroke, as you have drawn it, the second applies an embossed gold effect to your strikes and your background, and the last, an embossed silver effect to your strokes and your background. One thing I want you to notice is that as soon as you turn on the gold and silver effects, it activates two things, the global emboss settings, which will give a metallic overlay on your canvas in silver and gold, but also enhances the strokes so that they jump up from the page. Also, the change light with iPad orientation switch will also be activated, and I will come back to that later. Now, this is the same metallic overlay that you could apply in your background texture section when we look to the background menu, except that you have only two metallic options. I'll just open the background menu, and you'll see that with the gold embossed effects, the first gold texture is activated, and with the silver, the silver texture is activated. Now, this embossed effect looks very cool against a dark background, so I'll select a dark color to show you how it looks. How awesome is that. I'll scroll through the three options in the effects menu again, with this dark background, the normal, the gold, and the silver. Ridiculously fun. Next are the sparkle effects, and there are three variations of sparkle effects you can add as well. I'll start with the first, and for each of these, you can vary the strength and the tint of the sparkles. The second effect gives a bit more shine to the sparkles, and the the third is a glittery effect. I'll turn it up to full strength and head back to the background for a moment, and you'll see that this applies the effect globally across the whole canvas, and shows up most clearly when you have a light background activated. The background you choose when applying these effects really changes the look significantly. I'll pop the dark background back on. Back in the effects menu, I'll just remove the sparkle effect for now as we move on. The slide is below this section, allow more adjustments to be made. First by strength of the embossed effects, then with source, sparkle and phong, which seems to affect the 3D light on the side of the strokes, especially in the strokes with the sparkle effect. Now, I'll overlay a second metallic effect so that you can see the difference. Underneath this is the global embossing switch that was activated earlier. But I'll take it off for a moment so you can see the difference without it. You would just have the metallic texture then showing through your stroke. I'll turn it back on for the last part. The way that the source light hits the embossed strokes can also be adjusted. You can adjust the light position by moving the dots in the circle at the bottom of the menu, and you can even make this dependent on your iPad orientation, so that as you move your iPad, it moves a lot. This is an interesting effect if you're exporting your design as a video, and I'll get into exporting a bit later. But for now, spend a bit of time getting more familiar with these settings, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 12. Help and Global Settings: As I touched on in the intro, the question mark opens up the help center. When you tap the help center and then a second icon from the layers panel, it will then provide an automized overview of that menu. This feature is really helpful for beginners to this app as it can help clear up any issues you are having in any menu. This setting menu is shown by the cog icon and this gives you general settings for the app and mainly addresses global settings. The first one that is useful is a slider numbers and I love this one because it gives you numerical values for all the sliders. As I'm creating, I can see the levels and percentages of brightness or blurriness. If I want to go back and recreate a stroke, I touched on this in the color palette lessons. Below that, you have your Apple pencil tool settings, which allow you to set what you want the double-tap function to do. To edit the stroke, which I'll address in the shapes icon, Undo, Toggle between your pen and eraser, or switch the layers that you are working on. Next are the data settings. These allow you to see the time-lapse of your pattern when you open the app and takes a bit more storage to do so. The next switch is for 16-bit color and this gives you more tones than the 8-bit, but also makes your files larger. Lastly, you can have your images export in high resolution or low resolution, which will also affect your file sizes. The low is still enough quality to use for print-on-demand sites. But if you have an iPad with lower storage options, this may help. Changing any of these settings may require a restart of the app. The guidelines icon is next in the menu and it's the honeycomb icon, which we have touched on several times and makes the grid of each repeating cell visible as a faint gray line so that you can clearly see them. Don't forget to remove the grids when your pattern is done, otherwise they will show up in your final image. All right, see you in the next lesson to get into the Shape tool. 13. The Shape Tool, Undo and Redo: This lesson is on the shape tool. The shape tool is a powerful tool for editing strokes after you've made them. The icon is a triangle, circle, and line combined. This tool is not only wonderful for creating shapes, but it's also useful for streamlining your strokes. You'll notice on a blank canvas, if I tap the shape tool, nothing happens. It's because the tool works with the most recent stroke. I'll tap it again to deselect it and now I will make two strokes on the canvas. My most recent stroke is the second one. Now I can tap the shape tool and you'll see a new menu and two circles on the ends of the stroke on my canvas. Using my Apple Pencil on the circle area of either circle allows me to adjust the position of my stroke. While the selection is still active, I can edit the stroke in multiple ways. I'll open the color palette to show you. If I tap on a color, my stroke color can be changed post production, except it can't go back to the original color. I can also use my property side to adjust the saturation, the brightness, the size, and opacity. Now, just note with the blur, I'm not going to use the slider because you cannot reverse your stroke back to a clean line. In the pen menu, with the selection still active, you can adjust the spacing of the stroke and the scatter of the stroke. In the paint, you can adjust it to a brushstroke, or in the calligraphy setting to a calligraphy nib, and adjust the nib type, and adjust the nib angle. Sometimes the calligraphy stroke will stay in that small to large stroke after this setting. Back to the shape tool menu at the top. You can also turn your most recent stroke into shapes, which can also be resized using the gray circles. The first icon gives you a straight mono line, the next icon gives a triangular shape, the third adjusts your stroke to a slightly rounded square, well, rounded edges anyway, the fourth, a circle, and the last keeps the stroke as a mono line but allows you to use the slider to streamline the stroke. The last keeps your organic stripe pattern but allows you to streamline your stroke as well using the slider. It's a really phenomenal tool, all the while maintaining your symmetries and reflections as you edit. If you tap the eraser on the main menu while the shape tool is activated, it will also erase the strokes in the same shape configurations, which is why I laid down that first stroke so you could see the eraser lines cut through as I move the circles. I'll flip through the shapes. This is a really fun effect that you can use in your designs. To keep any effects you have altered, simply tap on the canvas outside of the gray circles and the adjusted stroke will remain. That is the awesomeness of the shape tool. The next two icons on the main menu are straightforward. The erase tool allows you to use the same pen you are using to erase a stroke. It's useful to remember that if you have spaced out your strokes to dots or lines, for example, the erase function will also be in dots. It's important to check the pen settings if you find the erase tool is acting a bit strange. Also, it will be highlighted in blue, so don't forget to tap it and turn it off, or you may end up erasing part of a print that you didn't intend to. The undo and redo arrows are below that and will undo and redo a stroke you have just made. That's it for this lesson. Let's talk about exporting our designs in the next lesson. 14. The Export Menu: This lesson is on the export menu. The export menu icon looks like a camera with an arrow and tapping on it opens the contextual menu. Starting on the top left-hand side is the Save and Load function. This opens up a new window, which has a library of any ornaments or projects that you have worked on and a few sample designs from the program to give you ideas. You can save the project you are working on by tapping the save ornament text at the bottom right-hand side of the screen. This allows your project to be saved to the library so that you can come back to it and work on it later. This means you can be working on several projects simultaneously. To load a project, you just tap the image of the design and it will load up. In this window, you can also delete any ornament files you were working on by tapping the "delete ornament" button on the bottom left-hand side, this will bring up Xs on all of the projects. Tapping the X will delete a project permanently, but tapping on the "delete ornament" text again will disable this delete function and your library will return to normal. The X at the top right will take you back to your main Canvas. Back to the menu, the 3D and spiral tabs is linked to another eye ornament app called iOrnament Crafter, but this is not necessary to be able to use iOrnament Pro, so I'll keep moving. Beneath these icons are the export tabs. The export image allows you to export what you see on your screen and you can use two fingers to resize the pattern before you export it because it will export exactly what is on your Canvas. I find this useful because you could have a full version of your design to use in mock-ups, which helps visualize the scale that you want your print or your motif to be in. The export tile icon allows you to generate a repeat pattern tile of your design and this is great for print on demand websites because your tile is immediately ready to upload. The export role icon allows you to save the raw data and export it to another version of iOrnament Pro with all its layers. You can also AirDrop it to another device that has the iOrnament Pro app if you are someone that uses more than one iPad. The export video icon exports an animated video of your drawing if you have used glitter or sparkle effects or if you want an animated video of any of the deformation and 3D effects that we looked at earlier. I'll insert a video to show you what this looks like. It doesn't show your process, just the animated effects applied to your final design. The export time-lapse is a great function that allows you to export a time-lapse of your whole drawing process from your first to last stroke in about 7-12 seconds, which is great for use for video-based social media marketing like Instagram Reels, TikTok or Pinterest for your works in progress. At the bottom section of the export menu are the transparent and higher resolution switches. Transparent will export your image without the background color, so that if you're using the motif on an accessory like a T-Shirt or colored clothing, the color of the fabric will be visible under your design. I won't go into how to upload these images onto print on-demand sites, but if you are interested in how to do this, I take you through how to upload and list a design on Redbubble in my class online or cut print design. It's here on Skillshare and can be found in my profile. Lastly, in this menu, is the high resolution switch, which adjusts the format that your tiles and designs are exported in. That's it for the export menu. At the bottom of the main iOrnament menu is the trash icon, which will clear the canvas after you have saved a design so that you can start on a new project. Pro tip, if you accidentally hit this, you can tap it once again and get back your work. Take some time to get familiar with the export menu and check out some of the sample ornaments in the Save and Load library and I will see you in the next lesson for our conclusion. 15. Conclusion: Thanks so much for doing this class with me. I hope that it has been helpful and given you insight into this phenomenal program. More than that, I hope it provides you with new tools to be creative and save time in your design workflow. Your class project is to implement any of the techniques you learned in any of the lessons that you have covered during this course. To submit it, take a screenshot and upload the image into the class project tab in the web version of Skillshare. Details on how to do this are in the class description below. If there is an area related to an ornament that you would like me to go into more detail on in a future class, or if you have any questions about the app, pop a comment into the discussion section and I will do my best to answer it. You can also follow my profile here on Skillshare to get notifications when new classes are published. I cannot wait to see the creative designs that you come up with. It's been an absolute delight to create this class for you. Have a great day guys.