Organic Surface Design in Adobe Photoshop: From Basic Turing Patterns to Unique Seamless Repeats

1. Introduction & Class Overview: It is incredibly satisfying to see how organic and perfectly balanced patterns take shape in just a few clicks and without drawing a single thing! And that’s why I love Turing patterns! You might already know how to generate this kind of patterns in Adobe Photoshop, but a few adjustments and actions are not all there is to Turing patterns, so don’t stop there! Hey guys, I am Evgeniya Righini-Brand, a graphic designer at Attitude Creative, and I love creating all sorts of abstract, organic and geometric patterns, and I teach a number of classes on the subject. And with this class, I invite you to explore the creative potential behind generative Turing patterns, so that you can easily and quickly create more varied seamlessly repeating organic surface patterns with different character which can be printed on products, sold as digital assets or used in your graphic design or branding projects. Beyond the basic technique for generating Turing patterns, in this class, you’ll learn a smart non-destructive workflow for generating seamlessly repeatable pattern tiles; techniques for creating patterns with different character by using different tile sizes, exploring symmetry and structural distortions; how to speed up your workflow with sets of handy actions for generating patterns and creating pattern swatches; how to apply your patterns and colour your surface designs; how to create designs with perfectly smooth oversized patterns in Adobe Photoshop and avoid pixelation; and tips for creating and managing your pattern swatches and exporting your surface designs. Whether you are a beginner and love the idea of creating patterns without needing to draw anything and want to learn some super useful Photoshop basics and create your first generative pattern, or an intermediate user who is excited to create a range of different patterns and explore a different workflow in Photoshop, or a pro who uses Photoshop a lot and want to add a nifty creative technique to your arsenal and pick up a few workflow tips for working with smart objects and actions, this is the class for you! By the end of this class, you’ll have a range of reusable assets to use in your future projects and will be fully equipped to run wild with experiments and create a lot of different patterns in just a few clicks! I bet you’ll become obsessed with generating Turing patterns in different sizes, exploring symmetry and playing around with distortions, and I cannot wait to see all of the patterns and surface designs you create! So join me in this class, and let’s push Turing patterns beyond their basics! 2. How to Approach This Class & Project: I fell in love with creating Turing patterns as soon as I had learnt the basic technique for generating them! And after some experimentation, I discovered that there is much more potential to this generative technique beyond imitating natural uniform surface patterns. Introducing repeatability to Turing pattern formations and then exploring different tile sizes, symmetry and distortions, and mixing these properties in different combinations, offers you endless creative possibilities and allows you to generate any number of unique designs with different character! And with this class, I am excited to share with you how you can use this simple technique to create varied surface designs, which you can incorporate as graphic elements into any graphic design, illustration or branding projects, apply to various print-on-demand products or sell as digital assets. This class is quite technical, so if you want to follow along with it right-away as you watch it for the first time, be sure to pause the video lessons so you can take as much time as required to complete each step. Because this class is based on generative elements and there are a lot of saving steps throughout the process, completing each step will take a different amount of time depending on the pattern size you are working with and how powerful your computer is. So pausing the lessons to allow yourself time to complete the steps will make it much easier to keep up with the process. For your class project, create as many different patterns as you like and share the results! Explore creating patterns in various tile sizes and experiment with symmetry and distortions, and mix and match these techniques to create unique patterns with the character you are after! Pattern scale and colours can drastically change the look of your patterns or surface designs, so have fun playing around with different scale and colour combinations, and don’t hesitate to download the swatches from the class resources and use them to get started with recolouring your patterns. It is always super fun to see these patterns in use, so consider creating and sharing some application mock-ups as well. This can also help you come up with some fun ideas for how this sort of patterns can be used, beyond some straightforward surface designs! Be sure to post your project in the Projects & Resources tab for this class and check out the projects submitted by your fellow students and give them some kudos! I cannot wait to see what you create in this class, so let’s get started! 3. Tile Sizes & Document Setup: Let's begin by setting up a new document in Adobe Photoshop. The document size will determine the size of your pattern tile, and there are some important points to consider. First of all, in order to make your future patterns seamlessly repeatable, the width and height of your document need to be in multiples of 128 pixels, but with the smallest size being 256 pixels to avoid any potential issues. And to make the whole process a little more straightforward I would recommend using a square format. If you use small pattern tiles, your pattern will have less variation and the repeats will be more obvious. And the larger the document, the larger the repeating tile will be. Having larger tiles is great when you want to have more variation in your patterns, but they might take a little longer to generate. I have created a guide in which you can see different tile sizes and the variation in the pattern they create. So don’t hesitate to download it from the Projects & Resources tab for this class and reference it when picking the sizes for your future patterns. For the demonstration in this class, I will start by creating a 768 by 768 pixel document. After setting up your desired document size, make sure you set the resolution to 300 pixels per inch, colour mode to RGB and the bit depth to 8 bit. Keep the Background Contents set to White, and in the Advanced Options keep the standard sRGB profile and Square Pixels. And when all the right settings are selected, press the Create button. Then right-away press Command+Shift+S or Control+Shift+S in Windows to save this new document. Select a suitable location for saving your Turing patterns, and then rename your document so you know what sort of patterns can be generated within it in future. I highly recommend including the document dimensions in the file name, and also indicating that it is a Master file for generating patterns in this size. With this naming convention you will be able to easily tell this file apart from any other master files used for generating patterns in other sizes or for creating various pattern variations. Make sure you select Photoshop document format and embed the colour profile here, and then press Save. So create a document for your future pattern tile in your desired size in multiples of 128 pixels, and next let’s move on to setting up the structure of layers used in this master file where we will be generating our patterns. 4. Master File Structure Setup: Now that we have created a document in the correct size, we can start setting it up for generating our Turing patterns. To be able to easily generate and regenerate Turing patterns, make adjustments and create variations of the patterns, throughout this process we will be working with the structure of the Smart Objects nesting within each other. At first it might seem a little complex or confusing, so just make sure you follow the steps I’ll be showing you here to be able to properly set up your document and avoid having any issues later on. First of all, go to the Layers panels, double-click on the name of the default layer you have in your document, and rename it to Pattern. Then right-click on this layer in the Layer panel and select Convert to Smart Object. Next, double-click on the Smart Object’s thumbnail to open the Smart Object’s contents as a separate document. This second level document will be used to develop the seamless repetition of the pattern tiles. So go to the Layers Panel in this document and rename this layer to Tile. And then, right-click on it and convert it to yet another Smart Object. So, this our second level document for now! Next, we need to go a level deeper, so double-click on the Tile Smart Object’s thumbnail to open its contents. Now in this third level of our document, rename the layer to Base instead. And again convert it into a Smart Object. Now still in this third level document, press D to reset your foreground and background colours to black and white respectively, so the colours look like this in the Tools panel. Then select the Base layer, and go to the Filter menu, Render, and select Clouds. And Photoshop will generate a cloud pattern which will be used as a basis for your Turing pattern. So you won’t need to draw a single element during this process! Because we have generated this pattern applied to a Smart Object, you will be able to see it as a Smart Filter under this layer. And you can regenerate a cloud pattern by double-clicking on the Filter’s name here. Every time you regenerate the clouds, you’ll get a completely new cloud pattern, which will generate a unique Turing pattern in the master file. And you’ll see how this works shortly! After generating the clouds in this document, press Command+S or Control+S in Windows to save the contents of your third level document. This will update the smart object in the second level document, which now should look like this. Now save the contents of the second level document so the changes can feed back into your master file. When working with the Smart Object’s contents, pay attention to which window or tab you are working in and to the layer names you have in the Layers panel to avoid having issues. And make sure you work in the documents in order: from the deepest, to the top-level master file, and save the changes you make in that order to avoid unlinking your open smart object documents from their parent documents. Also make sure you don’t skip any steps and avoid generating your clouds in the second level document instead of the third level document, because having this extra level in between is what will allow you to create seamless repeats and develop pattern variations later on. After saving changes in the third and then second level documents, you should now see the clouds pattern in your master file. And you can now save it as well. So with the structure and order of the nesting documents created, next we can move on to the next stage of setting up the actions to generate Turing Patterns. 5. Forming Turing Patterns: At this stage we will be working purely in the main master file with our Smart Object named Pattern, which you’ll need to select in the Layers panel. To make it super quick and easy to create Turing type patterns in future, in this lesson, we will be creating some actions, which you can set up once and then simply apply afterwords without having to worry about memorising any settings. So start by going to the Actions panel. If you cannot see it in your workspace, you can open it through the Window menu here. In the Actions panel, create a new set by clicking on this button, and name it Turing Patterns. Then select the new set and click on the New Action button here. The first action we will be creating will replicate the actual process of Turing pattern formation, which is referred to as reaction-diffusion. So let’s name this action accordingly. And press Record. When recording an action the recording button here will turn red, indicating that recording is in progress. With the Pattern Smart Object layer already selected in the Layers panel prior to starting to record the action, go to the Filter menu, Other and select High Pass. Set the Radius value to 6 px, and press Ok. Then go to the Image menu, Adjustments, and select Threshold. Set the Threshold Level to 128, which is its default value, and apply the changes. Then again go to the Filter menu, Blur, and select Gaussian Blur. Set its radius to 6 px, and press Ok. Next stop the recording in the Actions panel. Your action should contain these three steps in this exact order. And if necessary you can double-check the settings of each filter like this. In the Layers panel, the Smart filters applied to the object will look like this and will be in reverse order, with the filter applied last being on top. Turing patterns are formed by repeating the same reaction-diffusion process multiple times which develops the shapes and creates a uniform pattern of shapes and gaps between them. So to make it faster to create well developed uniform formations, let’s create a new action which will allow us to apply the previous action we’ve created a number of times. I like applying reaction-diffusion actions in sets of 5, because it makes it easier to make finer adjustments to the pattern formation. So let’s name our new action Reaction-Diffusion x5, and hit record. Now simply select the previous reaction-diffusion action we’ve created and hit play, and then repeat the process 4 more times, so you see 5 play steps overall in this new action. And then stop recording, and collapse the action’s contents so they don’t take up too much space in the Actions panel. Whilst recording our two actions we’ve already applied reaction-diffusion to the pattern 6 times. To form well developed shapes in your pattern, you need to apply them somewhere between 20 and 50 times. The more times you apply them, the more even the shapes and gaps will become, but you’ll also notice more separation of the shapes occurring throughout the process. I find applying the actions between 25 and 35 times to be a good target! So with our 6 rounds of the reaction-diffusion already applied, let’s apply the original single reaction-diffusion action 4 more times to bring us to 10 overall. And then select the Reaction-Diffusion x5 action, and apply it also 4 more times to bring the overall number of reaction-diffusion actions to 30. I always make sure I count how many times I’ve applied the actions so I know whether I need to apply them more or less times in future to produce a desirable formation level. And for the same reason I also like amending the layer’s name to indicate the number of times the reaction-diffusion effect was applied. Whilst applying the reaction-diffusion filters you get a glimpse of the shapes being formed, but you won’t know how well developed they are until you sharpen the pattern. So, that’s the next action we’ll be creating. Name it Sharpen Pattern, and hit record! Now go to the Filter menu, Sharpen and select Unsharp Mask. Set Amount to 500 percent, Radius to 100 pixels, and Threshold to 3. Then click Ok, and stop recording the action. The pattern now has pretty solid edges, but they still appear relatively soft, albeit we are looking at it zoomed-in. To make them crisper, let’s apply the same Sharpen Pattern action once again, and we will get a nice graphic look of the shapes, which are still smooth! After sharpening the pattern, you’ll get a better view of the shape formations in your pattern, and if necessary you can go and experiment with applying the reaction-diffusion actions a different number of times and comparing the results. It is far easier to delete all of the filters and start again if you need to apply a different number of reaction-diffusion actions, so knowing how many times you’ve applied them in the first place is always a good idea so you don’t need to manually count the filters in the Layers panel. For example, I’m going to simply delete these smart filters; and then go and play the Reaction-Diffusion x5 action 7 times so that I have 35 rounds instead of 30. Then I will quickly update my layer’s name to reflect the change. And then go and apply my Sharpen Pattern action a couple of times. And here’s my pattern with slightly more evolved shapes. Now let’s quickly save our master file. So, that’s us done with setting up the actions for quickly converting the clouds patterns into Turing patterns. And in the next lesson, we’ll look at making the pattern tile generated in this document seamlessly repeatable. 6. Ensuring Seamless Repetition: With the reaction-diffusion and sharpening effects applied to the Smart Object in our master file, if you now go and try repeating this tile or previewing how it repeats using the relatively new Pattern Preview option in the View menu, you’ll find that it is actually not seamless. But this is easily remedied by making a quick and easy modification to the contents of the Pattern Smart Object. So let’s go to our second level document, and press Command+Alt+C or Control+Alt+C in Windows to open the Canvas Size dialog. Here we need to double-up both the width and height of the canvas. You don’t need to calculate anything, simply start by going to the Width field, and type ‘*2’ after the existing canvas width. And then do the same in the Height field. Photoshop will Calculate everything for you, so all you need to do now is click Ok. Now in the Options bar, click on the Align Options button, and select Align to Canvas here. Align your tile to the top left corner. Then check Auto-Select here, if it is not already checked, and hold down Alt and drag the tile sideways to duplicate it. If you have Smart Guides on, you can use them to perfectly align the second tile to the other corner, or to be safe, you can click on it after creating it, and align it to the canvas using the Align buttons. Then select both tiles like this and Alt+drag them to the bottom half of the canvas. And again, make sure they are perfectly aligned to their respective corners and to each other. Your second level document should now look like this with 4 tiles forming a perfect pattern covering the whole canvas. Because of how we have created these copies, all these Smart Objects will lead to the same Smart Object content. So if you go to it now, regenerate the clouds and save this third level document, the 4 clouds pattern tiles in the second level document will reflect the changes. And that’s the whole point of using Smart Objects and nested documents. Now save the second level document, and let’s go to the master file. Here the reaction-diffusion effects have been regenerated to take into account the new Smart Object’s contents, and what you see on the canvas is now a seamless tile. So now the whole structure of the documents, effects and actions are set up, and we are all set for generating a ton of repeating patterns! And in the next lesson, I will show you how you can considerably speed up your workflow when defining patterns to be used in Photoshop and keep all of the pattern tiles you generate for any further use or reference. 7. Creating Pattern Swatches: We are almost ready to start going wild and creating a huge number of unique Turing patterns! But before we start, and to save time defining patterns, let’s create another action, call it ‘Create Pattern Swatch’, and press Record. For the first step in this action, press Alt+comma to select the bottom layer which contains the Pattern Smart Object. Then right-click on this layer in the Layers panel and select Create New Smart Object via Copy. Next right-click on the new copy and select Rasterise Layer. By performing these steps we essentially back up the results of the generated pattern so we don’t lose it when we go and regenerate the clouds. After performing these few steps we can move on to defining the pattern swatch. So first press Command+A, or Control+A in Windows, to select the contents of the newly rasterised layer within the canvas. Then, go to the Edit menu, and select Define Pattern. In this dialog, rename your future pattern, I’m going to simply call mine ‘Turing Pattern’. You don’t need to specify the size or anything else here to make this action universal for any of the Turing patterns you’ll be creating. And you can always manually rename your future patterns later if necessary. After changing the pattern’s name, click Ok and your pattern swatch will be created, and we’ll check it out shortly! But before that, we need to complete our action, by hiding this layer, which you can do by pressing Command+comma or Control+comma in Windows which is the shortcut for hiding the currently selected layer. And finally, we can stop recording the action. Now you can quickly double-check the steps in the Actions panel, and make sure there are no extra steps apart from these ones. So this is a very simple action, but when you create a lot of patterns, it can really help you save a lot of time! Next, but before moving on to generating more patterns, let’s quickly check out that our actions and everything else we’ve done so far have created a perfect seamlessly repeating pattern. 8. Previewing Your First Turing Pattern: With our first pattern swatch ready, let’s quickly check out how it looks when tiled. If you have a newer version of Adobe Photoshop which has the Pattern Preview option in the View menu, you can preview your patterns straight in the master file like this if you want. However if you have an older version of Adobe Photoshop or if you want to right away play around with the scaling and rotation of your new patterns, then you’ll need to use a separate document. So firstly let’s quickly save our master file, so we don’t lose anythings we’ve done up to this point. And then go and create a new document. You can use any document size you want, but it will need to be big enough to accommodate several repeats of your full scale pattern! If you want, you can straight away set this document’s size for any potential future application of your pattern, or for sharing on social media, or in your class project! I’ll set my document size to 2400 by 1800 pixels, which will provide a good overview of my patterns and also look good when posted as a class project. So consider using a similar size for your project images, and again use 300 ppi resolution and RGB colour mode, and create your document. Let’s apply our pattern in a smart way so we can easily explore different options. So go to the Layers Panel, click on the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer button, and select Pattern. Next, in this dialog, let’s select our new pattern from the list here, and click Ok to apply it. Because it is a Pattern Fill Layer, you can double-click on its thumbnail in the Layers panel at any point, and swap the pattern fill for any other swatch to see how it works. And you can also play around with the pattern’s scale and rotation angle here. With the smaller pattern tiles the repetition can be quite obvious, but you can always rotate your pattern a little, and it will stop looking very structured. I’ll cover using patterns within Adobe Photoshop, tricks for avoiding pixelation when scaling them beyond 100% and colouring patterns later in the class, so for now just keep these options in mind. So check that your pattern tiles seamlessly, and then press Ok to apply the changes. Now let’s quickly save this document so we can easily jump back to it later on to test other patterns. I’ll call this document ‘Pattern Previews’ and save it in the same folder as my master file. And now that we know that all our actions and document setup work properly, next let’s move on to generating different patterns and creating more swatches! 9. Generating More Patterns & Swatches: With the master file for your first pattern tile size setup, you can now easily create as many new patterns in the same size as you want. Whenever you want to generate a new pattern, you’ll need to access the contents of the two nesting smart objects. If you have kept them open, then simply go to the third level document. And if you closed them, open them up by firstly double-clicking on the thumbnail of the Pattern Smart Object in the master file, and in the second level document, double-click on the thumbnail of any of the four tile layers, as they lead to the same document. In the third level document, double-click on the Clouds filter name in the Layers panel to regenerate the clouds pattern. Then save changes to this document, and go back to the second level document, check out the updated cloud pattern tiles, and save the changes to this document as well. Then go back to the master file, where you will see your new pattern. If you like the look of your new tile, run the action to create a pattern swatch. And then go back and repeat the process to generate as many pattern tiles as you want! Make sure you save the documents in order: starting with the third level document, and don’t forget to save the master file from time to time so you don’t lose any rasterised pattern tiles. So, that’s the process of generating more patterns and creating more swatches using your first master file. And in the next lesson, I will share with you my tips for creating more master files for pattern tiles in different sizes. 10. Pattern Variations: Tile Sizes: Now that you’ve set up your master file for a specific tile size, you can follow the same steps to create more master files for different pattern sizes. So check out the guide for different pattern sizes and shape variations, and set up your new master files for the sizes you want. When setting up a master file for a new different tile size, it is best to start from scratch every time. The process will be fairly fast because the actions are already set up and ready to be applied. And you only need to set up your new master files once, and then you can use them forever! So avoid the temptation to simply resize your previously created master file and its contents, because, whilst it might seem easier and faster, it can mess up the linked smart objects. To make it easier working with your different master files, I highly recommend only having one master file and its nested smart objects documents open at a time, otherwise you’ll quickly get confused with multiple smart objects! When you have your new master files ready, play around with re-generating the clouds and create as many new pattern swatches in each size as you want. And then go and check out your patterns in your Pattern Preview document. Apart from creating pattern tiles in different sizes which provide some pattern variation, there are also a few different techniques for creating structural variations of these patterns. And in the next part we’ll explore the first of these techniques which will allow you to create symmetrical pattern tiles. 11. Pattern Variations: Symmetry: One of the main reasons why I love Turing patterns is that their organic, random and generative nature provides a great basis for experimenting and having fun with creating symmetrical patterns! You don’t have to do much extra work in order to create symmetrical patterns, and you can use your previously created master files as a starting point. For my pattern, I will carry on using my 768 pixels master file. You can use any size you want for your first symmetrical pattern, and after seeing the results, I bet you will want to experiment with creating symmetrical patterns in a number of different sizes because the character of symmetrical patterns in different sizes can be quite different! If you are using the file you’ve just been working in, save all the changes in the master file, and close both nested smart object documents. This is important to avoid messing up the linked files. If you have multiple documents and tabs open, it is a good idea to save and close all of these files apart from your Pattern Previews file and the master file you want to carry on using, so you don’t get confused about which file is which! So with just your selected master file and the preview document open, let’s start by creating a copy of this master file, so the original one stays as it was. Press Command+Shift+S or Control+Shift+S in Windows to open the Save As dialog and save a copy for your symmetrical variation as a new document under a different name. To make it clear what is in this file, add something like ‘Symmetry V+H’ to indicate what type of symmetry will be used. It is also a good idea to modify the size description here and double up the size, or put double the original number here followed by ‘from’ and then the original number. So for me it will be ‘1536 from 768’. And you’ll see why the size is going to be different very shortly! So make the changes to the file name, and save your new document. Now in this new master file, delete any previously generated rasterised tiles and only keep your Pattern Smart Object layer. Then double-click on the Pattern layer’s thumbnail to get into the second level document for this file. In order to create both vertical and horizontal symmetry we need to reflect three of our four tiles here. With Auto-Select checked here, start by selecting the two tiles on the right. Then press Command+T or Control+T in Windows to switch to the Free Transform tool. And then go to the Options bar and input minus in front of the 100% in the Width field, like this. And hit Enter! Then click outside the canvas to deselect the two reflected tiles. Now select the bottom two tiles and again enter Free Transform mode, but this time enter minus before 100% in the Height field. And press Enter to apply the changes. By reflecting these tiles we have effectively created a new bigger tile which will be repeated to form the pattern. So let’s select these four layers in the Layers panel, group them together by pressing Command+G or Control+G in Windows, and rename this group to ‘Symmetrical Tile’. And now we need to repeat the same process of fitting four copies of this group on the canvas in order to make our symmetrical pattern seamlessly repeatable. So again let’s open the Canvas Size options, and double up both width and height of this smart object document. And apply changes. Next uncheck Auto-select to avoid selecting individual smart objects within the group. Then select your group in the Layers Panel, go to the Align tools, select Align to Canvas and align your group to the top left corner of the canvas. Then create a copy, and align it to the top right corner instead. And then repeat the process to fill the other two corners. Now let’s save this document, and go back to the master file. The symmetrical shapes are already looking interesting, but this is only a fragment of the repeating tile. So let’s open the Canvas Size options for this master file, and double up the width and height here as well. And now you know what all these file name changes were about! Now let’s apply the changes, and here is our seamless symmetrical tile. After setting up this new master file, make sure that you save it. And then the process or generating patterns and creating pattern swatches will be exactly the same as before. I love playing around with symmetrical patterns and they can look pretty different depending on the original tile size. Generating pattern tiles can be an addictive process, so have fun! Apart from fully symmetrical pattern tiles, you can also create patterns with only vertical or only horizontal symmetry. In order to do so, reflect two adjacent tile smart objects, either like this to create vertical symmetry, or like this, to create horizontal symmetry. If you want to experiment with different types of symmetry, I’d suggest going through the process I have covered in this lesson for each of them and creating separate master files so that they can be easily reused in the future to generate more patterns. So explore creating patterns with different types of symmetry and using different tile sizes, and test them in your preview document. And next, let’s have a look at how you can create even more pattern variations with structural distortions. 12. Pattern Variations: Distortions: The Photoshop-generated clouds provide a good base for creating calm even patterns, but you can develop your Turing type patterns further using structural distortions, which will help create more dynamic patterns with a different character, or simply add more visual interest or variation to your patterns. There are a lot of different filters you can use to distort your patterns, so there is plenty of room for experimentation. And in this lesson, I will walk you through the general workflow for creating distorted patterns and quickly share with you a few of my favourite effects and the settings required to create them. Again, it is a good idea to create separate master files for each pattern variation. And you can start with any of your previously created master files. I’ll carry on using my original 768 pixels master file which I created earlier in this class. The same as when creating master files for symmetrical variations, start by closing any associated smart object documents and resave this master file as a new document with a different name. Amend the file name with the filter you’ll be using, the first one I’ll be showing you is Mosaic. And let’s save this document. Now working with our new master file, go into the second level document, and then into the third one. Select the Base Smart Object layer, and go to the Filter menu, Pixelate and select Mosaic. Set the cell size to 32. This size works best with this sort of patterns, but you can also try 64 or 128. Apply the changes, regenerate the clouds if desired, and save the document. Then, as before, go to the second level document and save it with the updated pixelated tiles. And this is how your pattern should now look in your master file! So if you like the look, create a new pattern swatch and experiment with re-rendering the clouds to create more patterns of this kind. So that’s the general technique for using additional filters to distort the clouds, and you can use other kinds of filters to create different effects. I won’t go through the same process for each of them, and instead just give you a quick overview of other filters you can apply to the Base Smart Object with the Clouds filter which will create various fun looking patterns. So if you like the look of some of the following distortions, don’t hesitate to grab a screenshot of the particular filter settings and try it out yourself! The Motion Blur filter from the Blur section of the Filter menu, allows you to easily create elongated patterns. Here you can experiment with the blur Distance and Angle. Try using 0 or 90 degree angles for horizontal or vertical distortions. Or 45 degrees if you want a diagonal motion. The longer the distance, the more elongated the shapes will become, but you will also get some shapes at the seams which don’t follow the distortion pattern. There is nothing wrong with this, just the tiles will become more obvious. You can also use the Ripple effect from the Distort section to create a slightly different diagonal distortions, and explore different amount and size options. The most pronounced effect will be achieved with the Large size and the maximum amount. But the other two sizes combined with different amounts can create some fun variations in the pattern without having an obvious directional distortion. Ripple is a fun effect to try in combination with symmetrical patterns, which will allow you to create more dynamic symmetrical tiles. One of my favourite filters for creating Turing pattern variations is the Wave filter from the Distort Section. It has got a lot of different settings you can explore, and I’d recommend using 1 Generator, setting it to Wrap Around here and using the Sine type. To create seamless, or as close to seamless wave distortions depending on the combinations of all these settings, set the Maximum Wave length to 256. With Wave distortions it is not that important to keep your cloud tiles perfectly seamless, so don’t hesitate to play around with the minimum and maximum wave lengths, as well as with the amplitude and scale, to check out different effects. If you want to create pattern variations with some circular motion in the elements, check out the ZigZag effect from the Distort section. For more pronounced circles in the pattern use a higher amount and a higher number of ridges, and use less ridges and smaller amount for more subtle effects. And try out different styles from the drop-down menu. Keep in mind that distortions will affect different sizes of pattern tiles in different ways, so there are even more variations you can experiment with! So these are just some of my favourite filters for creating Turing pattern variations, but of course you can try using other types of filters as well and see what effects you can create! And don’t forget that you can also mix different techniques together and combine using symmetry whilst distorting your pattern tiles! The possibilities are endless, and I’ll be super excited to see what pattern variations you create! So now you know how to create your patterns in different sizes and create some structural alternatives. Set up as many different master files for different variations of your patterns as you like, and have fun generating different pattern swatches! And next, I will share with you some quick tips for managing your pattern swatches. 13. Managing Pattern Swatches: By now you should have quite a large collection of unique Turing patterns. So let’s quickly sort out all of the pattern swatches so they are easy to find, use, or export. Go to the Window menu and open the Patterns panel, if you don’t already have it in your workspace. Here you will most likely see a number of the default or custom pattern groups, and your Turing patterns will appear unsorted, either outside of any folders or inside the last folder you’ve used. Shift-click on the first and last of your Turing patterns, and then click on the Create New Group button here. Name it ‘Turing Patterns’, and apply the changes. You can keep all your Turing patterns within one group, or add more groups within this group to sort them by size, type or distortion. For example, I’ll arrange mine in three groups: one for regular original Turing patterns, another for symmetrical variations, and the third one for all sorts of distortions. Apart from sorting your patterns into groups, you can also right-click on the individual patterns and rename them. This can be useful if you want the swatch name to reflect the pattern’s characteristics or tile size. You can also go to this menu and switch to the list view to see all of the patterns’ names, so you know what you need to rename. If you want to export your Photoshop patterns to use on another device, share, or sell them, select an individual pattern, several patterns or an entire pattern group and right-click on the selection, and choose Export Selected Patterns from the menu. Name your swatch library file, select the location where you want to save it and click Save. New pattern swatch libraries can be added to your Patterns panel by opening this menu, selecting Import Patterns and locating the library you want to import. So, now as you have all your new pattern swatches sorted, we can move on to tips for using your patterns in Adobe Photoshop. 14. Applying & Colouring Your Patterns: With a number of different pattern swatches ready, now we can start properly using them. I am going to be playing around with my patterns in my preview document, and you can do the same so you can easily share the results in your class project! When applying patterns for a specific application, you would want to start with the required document size. But the principles of using your patterns will be the same regardless of the specific document dimensions. Using a Pattern Fill layer, go and look through your different pattern options. If you are already working in a document for a specific application, then play around with the scale and rotation of the pattern within that specified format to make your pattern work best for the intended output. You can also drag your pattern around the canvas to better position its elements within the format and avoid having any awkward edges. If you want, you can also scale your pattern beyond 100%, even though it will have fuzzy edges! Just ignore these for now, because I will share with you a technique for getting oversized patterns to look good and smooth in the next lesson. Apart from playing around with the scale, rotation and position of your patterns, of course, you would want to colour them! The easiest way of colouring this sort of patterns in Adobe Photoshop is by using Gradient Maps. So click on the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer button in the Layers panel, and select Gradient Map. And the new adjustment layer should pop up above your pattern fill layer. In this dialog, click on the gradient preview here, and then in the following window select any gradient you want to use as a gradient map. One of the colour stops in the gradient will replace the black colour in your pattern, and the other one will replace the white colour. If you don’t have your own colour pairs to colour your patterns, check out Adobe Photoshop’s default gradients. There are a lot of different options, and I find that the Pastel set works pretty well when applied to Turing patterns. You can also play around with the gradient swatches I have designed specifically for colouring Turing Patterns. You can download a selection of these swatches from the Projects & Resources tab for this class, and import them via this button here. So select any gradient you want to use here, and apply changes. And if you want to quickly swap the two colours around, you can check the Reverse option here. And here’s your recoloured Turing pattern. So explore different colour combinations and see how they work with different patterns. And don’t forget to save your favourite experiments so that you can share them in your class project or use in any desired application. You can back up your separate experiments by saving them as individual PSD documents if you want to be able to easily build upon something you’ve created in future. And for sharing your experiments in your project or uploading them for print, save a copy of your files in PNG. This will result in considerably smaller file sizes than when saving JPGs and there won’t be any compression which is perfect for printing your patterns. So have fun playing around with all your patterns and colouring them. And in the next lesson, I will share with you my special technique for getting oversized patterns to look smooth and crisp! 15. Using Oversized Patterns: The size of the generated elements in your Turing patterns will be the same regardless of the document size, which is actually not that small and will look like that when printed at 100% scale, for example, relative to an A4 format. And this scale will be probably sufficient for most applications. However, if you need to use an oversized Turing pattern in your design or product, there is an easy way to make it look good when scaling it up without having to vectorise it in Adobe Illustrator. For example, I want to have huge organic shapes printed on a shower curtain, and the required image size is 6000 by 6000 pixels at 300 ppi. So this is the size of the document I will be working in. As usual, I’m going to start by adding a new Pattern Fill layer, selecting the pattern I want to use and scaling it up to the maximum value here, which is 1000%. Then I’ll quickly play around with the rotation of my pattern, and nudge it within the canvas to finalise its placement. And apply changes. Now the Pattern looks super fuzzy, and to make it look nice and smooth again, we need to apply several filters. If you are happy with your pattern’s scale and position, you can rasterise the pattern fill layer; or you can convert the pattern fill layer into a Smart Object if you want to be able to further play around with its contents, and swap or adjust the pattern fill later on. Creating a Smart Object will take longer and create a huge file, so I’m going to rasterise my Pattern Fill instead. And then select the layer mask and hit Delete. Now let’s select this layer. And then go and create a new action, so it is quick and easy to get any future oversized patterns looking smooth. Let’s name this action ‘Smoothen Oversized Pattern’ and click Record. For the first step in this action, go to the Filter menu, Blur and select Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius to 6 pixels as before, and apply changes. After that apply the Sharpen Pattern action a couple of times. And then, if it is still does not look super smooth, again go to the Filter menu, Noise and select Median. Set the Radius to 20 px, and apply changes. And stop recording the action. If you have scaled your pattern up not that much, this should be enough to get all the shapes looking smooth. But in some cases, you might want to run this action once more to make all the edges look even smoother. And here’s your design with an oversized pattern. Now simply colour it any way you want using a Gradient Map. Then save your PSD document, and save a separate PNG or JPG copy for print. And here is another technique for you to use which will make it so much easier to use your Turing patterns in any scale! And this brings us to the end of this class, so let’s wrap it up! 16. Final Thoughts & Conclusion: So this is how you can generate and customise Turing patterns in Adobe Photoshop! I hope that all of the techniques which I’ve covered in this class will spark some new creative ideas, help you improve your Photoshop skills and allow you to create a lot of fun organic surface patterns and designs! Have fun experimenting, and don’t forget that you can mix and match different variation techniques, including tile size, symmetry and distortions to create more varied and unique patterns! I will be super excited to see your pattern experiments and hear how you are planning to use them! So be sure to post your project in the Projects & Resources tab for this class, and if you are going to share your work on Instagram, please tag and follow us @attitudecreative and use the #attitudeskills hashtag so we can easily find your posts and share your work with our Instagram community! And that’s it for this class! I hope you have enjoyed it and learnt something new! If you have any questions, please leave a comment in the Discussions tab for this class and I’ll happily answer and provide feedback! If you’ve found this class helpful, please leave a review! And be sure to follow us here on Skillshare to be the first to know about our new classes, updates and announcements. If you enjoyed creating patterns without drawing a single element, be sure to check out my class Creating Organic Abstract Patterns in Adobe Photoshop to learn how to create a different kind of generative patterns! If you want to learn more about using Gradient Maps and creating your own duotones, don’t hesitate to check out my class Mastering Duotones in Adobe Photoshop. And if you want to learn more about creating abstract patterns, taking pattern elements from Adobe Photoshop into Adobe Illustrator for vectorisation and explore Adobe Illustrator’s amazing tools for working with pattern designs, my class From Abstract Handmade Marks on Paper to Seamless Surface Patterns in Adobe Illustrator is waiting for you! Thank you for watching this class, and I hope to see you in our other classes!