Transcripts
1. Overlapping Circle Patterns in Photoshop - Introduction: Hello. I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this Graphic Design for Lunch class, overlapping and random circles patterns in Adobe Photoshop. Graphic Design for Lunch is a series of classes that teach a range of tips and techniques for creating designs and for working in applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. Today we're looking at creating some circle patterns in Photoshop. Now as you're watching these videos, you'll see a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you're enjoying the class, do two things for me. Firstly, give it a thumbs-up, and secondly, write in just a few words about why you're enjoying this class. These recommendations help other students to see that this is a class that they too might enjoy. Now if you'd like to leave a comment or a question for me, please do so. I read and I respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. If you're ready now, let's get started creating some circle patterns in Photoshop.
2. Pt 1 - Overlapping Circles - Photoshop CS6 and CC: To start our first pattern will choose File and then New. Now, I'm using the New Photoshop CC 2017. So the New Document dialogue looks a little bit different to earlier versions of Photoshop, but look for a width and height and type 800 for your width and 400 for your height. That's going to be relatively important that you keep to these dimensions, RGB color mode, transparent background and I like to select sRGB as my working color space, so I'll click "Create". Now in later versions of Photoshop, you can lay out a grid over the image to help you line things up. So we're going to choose File and then New Guide Layout. Now, I've already set up the dimensions for my new guide so I've got columns and rows turn on, I want four columns, four rows and everything else is zeroed out and what that gives me as just a simple grid over my documents, so I'll click "Okay". Now, if your version of Photoshop doesn't have that guide layout, you can create one and you'll choose "View" and then "New Guide". You're going to select vertical and you'll make one at position 25 percent and then you'll go ahead and make one at 50 percent and 75 percent, then you'll come back to horizontal and again make them at 25, 50, and 75 percent and you're going to get the exact same layout. Now, we're going to create some circles here, so we're going to just display the last pallet so we can see what's going on here. I'm going to select the "Ellipse Tool" and I'm going to make sure that I have no stroke on my shape and a fill that is black to start off with. I'm going to click once in the document because that opens up this create ellipse dialogue. Again, if you're working in a version of Photoshop where this is not what happens when you click on the document, go ahead and look at the very last video in this class, because I'm going to show you how you can do this in CS5 and earlier, and you might find it easier to use the instructions for that version. Now, the width and the height of this ellipse are going to be 400 pixels, so we're just going to type 400 and 400, make sure it reads pixels, and then click "Okay". Now, this is black, so I'm just going to move it into position exactly here and I'm using the smart guides to line the shape up. Now, if your dialogue didn't say pixels, go to "Edit" and then "Preferences" on a mark that would be Photoshop and then preferences and you want to go to "Units & Rulers", and you want to set your rulers to pixels and that's going to ensure that whenever you open up a dialogue, that the dialogue is going to default to pixels, you certainly don't want it to be inches or else this thing's going to be huge, so let's cancel out of there. I'm going to select a second color here, I'm going to select just a lighter color for the intervening spaces. Now, the reason why I've done that is it's going to be a little bit easier to recolor this pattern later on if you choose a color other than white at this point. We're going back to ellipse tool, we're going to click again in the "Document", and this time we're going to make it a little bit smaller, so we're going to type 350 and 350, click "Okay", select it, select the move tool and just position this again, centered in position, so it's centered over the line here, and so it's inset from the previous shape. Now, we'll flip back our colors, again, select the "Ellipse Tool". We did 350 last time, so we're going to do 300 and 300 this time. You can press the letter V or just select the "Selection Tool" here and then move it into position using your smart guides. We'll switch colors and then click away from the document here, this time we're going to make one that's 250 by 250 and click "Okay". But the color hasn't switch so I'm just going to select the correct color for this and you want to alternate your colors at this point. I'm just going to click "Away", flip my colors and this next one is going to be 200 and 200. We're going down in increments of 50 pixels each time and we're alternating colors as we go. Next size is 150, 100, it helps to learn the VK for selecting the move tool, just makes things a little bit quicker, and the last one is going to be 50 pixels by 50 pixels. Now, we have our first shape, let's just open the last pallet because what we will have here is a whole series of shapes. You're going to select the top most one "Shift" click on the last of them to select all of them, and then just press "Control" or "Command G" to group these together and that puts them all in a single group, just makes it easier to work on the shapes. You're going to take this group here and you're going to drag and drop it on the "New Layer" icon and that makes a duplicate of this group. Now, since the group is already selected, just start using the arrow keys and you can add the Shift key to the arrow key and what that's going to do is just move this group away from the original. Now, at this point, it will pay you to open up the group and select all the objects in it and what we want to do is we want to move this down, so I want to move it down to the bottom most of the guides here, the one that is at 25 percent and I'm just going to align it up so it's aligned up neatly with that guide. I'm going to close up that group and I'm going to select this group here which is this shape over here and I'm going to duplicate it. Now for this one, I want to move it right across the document so I'm going to hold the Shift key as I press the right arrow key. I'm just going to move it all the way across and into position, it should snap into position. If you're concerned that it's not in position, open up the group, select all the objects in it by clicking on the first, Shift click on the last, and then just use some move towards just snap it into position. Now we want a copy of everything that we've created so far, so I'm going to select the topmost group, Shift click on the bottom most group. I have all three groups selected, I'm going to drag and drop all of them onto the "New Layer" icon and this puts that copy immediately on top of everything, so I'm going to now select the set at the very back, which is the bottom three groups and I'm going to press the Shift key and the up arrow key and we'll start walking this entire set of three groups up the document and what I want to happen is I want to place them so that their top edge is right at the very top of the document and so the center of the circles intersects with this middle line in the middle of the document. Now again, if you're not 100 percent sure of everything lining up, go and select "Groups", so open up a group, select all the objects in it, and just make sure that they are snapping into position. It's critical at this point that you get everything nicely snapped into position because if it's not, the pattern's going to be out, so I'm just making sure that these are nicely snapped. Select the top objects, Shift click on the bottom one using the move tool, just snap them into position. We now have all the objects that we need to make the pattern and the pattern pace is actually this little area in here. I'm going to the rectangular marquee tool and because I've got my guide here and because I've got the snap turn on, so I've got snap enabled here and snap to guide layers and document bounds all selected I can just drag over here and as I do, Photoshop's telling me that the selection I've just made is 400 pixels by 200 pixels. Well, that's a quarter of this document size because the original document was 800 by 400, so I've got 400 by 200, that's an exactly correct size marquee. Now, this is a selection marquee in Photoshop, with that selected, I can now make my pattern, so I'll choose "Edit", "Define Pattern" and I'm going to call this circles and click "Okay". Now, I'm going to create a brand new document. Now for argument sake, I'm going to make this the size of a sheet of scrapbook paper which would be 3600 by 3600 pixels and it would be 300 pixels per inch, sRGB, click "Create". Now I'll choose Layer, New Fill Layer, Pattern. I'll click "Okay" and the document is filled automatically with the last pattern that I made which of course is the pattern that we have just made now. I can change the scale of it should I wish but I'm going to leave it at this size and click "Okay" and there is our layered circles pattern. Now, we can recolor that really, really easily with the last lecture that I'm going to choose "Layer", "New Adjustment Layer", "Hue Saturation", I'll click "Okay". This hue saturation adjustment layer allows me to change the color of the pink area of the pattern. You can see I can walk it around and make it any color I like. Now that wouldn't be as easy if that pattern pace had been black and white, for example, just as much easier to work with it when you've got a color that you can actually adjust and we can make that more or less saturated and we can also make it lighter or darker, so you've got quite a lot of flexibility with this hue saturation adjustment layer, just make sure that the original pattern pace actually has some color in it. Now patterns are stored inside Photoshop, so this pattern is going to be available to you anytime that you open Photoshop and want to create a new document. Now as I said, if you're using an earlier version of Photoshop and any of these tools that you saw me use are not available to you, switch to last video because I'm going to do it in a much earlier version of Photoshop and that should be easier for you to understand.
3. Pt 2 - Random Circles pattern: Now, the second pattern that we're going to make is a series of random circles. But we've already done some of the work in creating the circle, so let's use the ending point of the last pattern as a starting point for this one. I'm going to open up my group and then I'm going to click on the first of the black shapes, and I'm going to hold the Control or Command K as I click on every other black shapes. I have all the black shapes in this set of concentric circles selected. I'm going to the Fill here, and I'm going to make it a blue color. Then I'm going to click on the first of the pink ones and Control or Command click on every other one, and fill that with a different blue. I'm going to use a series of blues for this pattern. Once I've done the first color, I'm going to just close up this panel and I'm going to do it to the next one. I'm going to continue to do that for all of the six shapes that I have here. Now, that I've re-colored all of my concentric circles, I'm going to get rid of my guides with view and then Clear Guides. I'm going to enlarge my document so that it's 800 pixels by 800 pixels, so I'll choose image Canvas Size. I'm just going to make it 800 by 800 and click OK. Now I'm going to take each of these groups and make them a smart object. Right-click and choose Convert to Smart Object. My layer panel has been set to show my shapes really large. I think that's going to be to large for this particular projects, so I'm going to make them much smaller. So now what I'm going to do is start moving the shapes around, and I'm also going to re-size them. I'm going to hold the Shift key as I scale them down. Now, because they're smart objects, they are going to scale down and up to there original size without any degradation in quality. I'm going to make some duplicates of the shapes and I'm going to drag them elsewhere in the document and perhaps re-size them as well. So what I'm looking to do at this stage is to cover my document with concentric circles. Now, I'm going to opt for bigger rather than little just simply because I've got a lot of territory to go over. But you could make yours smaller and spend a little bit more time on it. I just want to get through this relatively quickly. But this can be a sorted of Zen like task to do. Just selecting shapes, you can alter option, drag a duplicate away and just re-sizing them. What you want to do is to cover the entire document, including all the outside edges. Just make sure that if you're resizing a shape, that you do use the Shift quay so that you resize it in proportion. I'm using the Alt or Option key to drag a duplicate away so that I can make sum duplicates of the shapes. You may notice that in the top left-hand corner of the screen that auto select is enabled on the Tool Options bar. That's allowing me to just click over a shape and select it automatically. This setting will make working with the circles a whole lot easier. What you want two do it is you want to make sure that every single piece of this document is covered up and if it's not, you want to cover it up. So I'm just going to size a couple more of these circles. I've got a couple of little spots that I need to cover up here. Now, once I've done that and I've got everything covered up, I'm going to select everything. So I'm going to click on the topmost of these groups, Shift click on the bottom most one right-click, and choose Convert to Smart Object. That makes that into a Smart Object. I'm going to make three more copies of this by just dragging and dropping the entire Smart Object onto the New Layer icon. So I've got four in total. I'm going to turn off the bottom three. I'm going to focus on this top one here, and I'm going to choose Edit, Free Transform. Now, it's got a center point here marked, and I'm just going to drag that up so it snaps into the very top corner of the document hear and I'll click the check mark. I'm going to show the next one, Edit, Free Transform. I'm going to do the same thing, but this time I'm going to send it to the other corner of the document. To make this one visible, same thing, Edit, Free Transform. I'm going to drag it to the bottom corner. Make the last won visible, select it Edit, Free Transform, and drop that down to the last corner of the document. They just need to snap into position perfectly. I'll click the checked mark. Now that I've done that, I'm going to the marquee tool, the rectangular marquee tool. I'm just going to select over the entire document so that I have an 800 pixel by 800 pixels selection. I'll choose Edit and then Define Pattern and this is going to be blew circles and click OK. Now I'll create a new document that is scrapbook paper size 3,600 by 3,600 pixels in size at a resolution of 300 pixels per inch, RGB color, transparent background, and I'm choosing SRGB as my workspace. I'll click "Create". I'll choose Layer, New Fill Layer pattern. I'll click "Okay". The pattern that we're using is the last pattern that I created and I'm just going to click, "Okay". Here is an overlapping pattern of circles. Now, you're going to get a better result than this if you spend a little bit more time getting a really good starting shape it to use. So you want to make sure that you get lots of variety in your circles. I tried to make them pretty big because I didn't want to be here a long time creating these shapes. But you'll seen that this is a nice, easy weigh of creating a simple repeating pattern that has these overlapping circles. In doing this, we've been able to take some concentric circles that we spent quite a bit of time creating for one pattern and create a completely different looking pattern from that starting point.
4. Pt 3 - Overlapping Circles CS5 and Earlier: To create this pattern in an earlier version of Photoshop, choose edit and then preferences, and then units and rulers. If you're on a Mac, that would be Photoshop preferences, units and rulers. Make sure that rulers is a set of pixels, that make things a lot easier as you work, and click "Okay" Now file, new and create a document 800 pixels by 400 pixels. RGB color mode, transparent background, click "Okay." Next we're going to add some guides, so I'm going to choose view and then new guide. I'm going to create guides at 25, 50, and 75 percent vertical, and then 25, 50, and 75 percent horizontal. Once I've done that, I'm going to choose View and then lock guides. That's going to stop the guides from moving when you least expected. Now I have two colors, that is my foreground and background color, black and blue color, you just want two contrasting colors, try to avoid black and white because white doesn't give you quite the same recoloring options later on. We're going to start with black. I'm going two select the ellipse tool here. Just click on that. Up here in the toolbar, I'm going to open up this down pointing arrow, which gives me my ellipse options. I'm going to set this to 400 and 400, and this is the reason why we said our units to pixels because otherwise it would default to the setting that you had in the units area, and this is just a whole lot quicker. You don't have to type px each time. Click away from this, click once in the document, and that creates our ellipse. I'm going to move the ellipse down so it's centered at the very bottom of the document, open up the last pallet and click to add a new layer that's going to make everything work a whole lot easier. Switch your colors, go back to your ellipse, open new drop down list and set it to 350 and 350. Click once in the document, press the letter v to get the move tool and move this shape into position. Add a new layer, switch your colors, and go back and do the same thing this time with a 300 pixel shape. Use v for the move tool. New Layer, 250 for the next one, v for the move tool, snap it into position. New layer, switch colors, 200 for this one, 150 for the next one, 100 for the next one, and finally one that's 50 pixels. In the last pallet, you're going to select either all the layers that you have here, click on the top one shift, click on the bottom one and press Ctrl or Command G to add them to a group. Go and make a duplicate of that group and move it using the arrow key and the shift key across the document. You're going to move it into position here and then just drag it down so it snaps into this area here. It's write in the middle of the documents lined up to the 25 percent alignment guide that you have. Go and select the bottom-most object and make a duplicate of it, and start Shift arrowing it all the way across, and you want it to snap into position here. Once you've done that, you're going to take all three objects and drag and drop them onto the New layer icon. Select the bottom most set, click on the top shift, click on the bottom. Again, with the Shift key, just start pressing the up arrow key because you want to send those all the weigh up so that they snap right into the top center of this document. Once you've done that, you've got all the objects that you need for your pattern. Select the rectangular marquee tool, and you're going to click here to snap to this point on the grid and just drag over here, then you should have a shape that is 400 by 200, but you're not going to get any indication hear that you're right, so you're probably going to have to zoom in here to just make sure that it's perfectly sized. If it isn't, you probably want to zoom in and start over again just creating that. Now, at this point, I can choose view, and I'm just going to unlock my guides and I'll choose view and then clear the guides because I don't want to say them anymore, and I'm going to choose edit and then define pattern, type circles, click "Okay." We'll create a new document. Again, scrapbook paper size 3600 by 3600 pixels at 300 pixels per inch, transparent background, RGB color, click "Okay." Layer, new fill layer pattern, click "Okay." The document is filled with the pattern you just created. You can adjust the scale if you wish, but I'm going to leave it as it is and click "Okay." Then to add your color layer, choose layer, new adjustment layer hue/saturation, click "Okay." Now you can adjust the hue to create a different color pattern, and of course, you can then adjust the saturation of your colors and the lightness of them too to get the effect that you desire. So there's how you create the pattern in earlier versions of Photoshop. If any of the tools that are used in the earlier video and not available in your version of Photoshop, this version should help you create this pattern.
5. Pt 4 - Random circles in PS CS5 and earlier: Now if you're working in an earlier version of Photoshop, most of the tools for changing this into a pattern of random circles are the same, except for changing the color of your shapes. I'm going to go here into these groups, I'm just going to open up the group. I'm also going to target some colors for my shapes. I'm going to set the foreground and background colors to a series of colors that go together. I'm going to click on this shape here and double-click on the color here. Now I'm going to select the color I want to use and click Okay. I can go through double-clicking on each of these and as soon as I get the solid color fill panel visible, I can just click on the color that I have selected as my foreground and background color. It's going to be a little bit tedious to do this because you've got to do them each one at a time. But you can make it pretty quick by just setting up the colors before you start to recolor your shape. That way you can make it really easy to select consistent colors for your circles. I'm going to recolor, the last piece of this shape. I'm going to close down this panel. I can right-click and create it as a smart object as I did in the other version of Photoshop. I'm going to open up this group and I'm going to select a different set of colors here. Some slightly pinker colors for my two circles. Then I click this as the starting color and choose something in the same color palette. Now I'm going to double-click on this and it's going to be this lighter color, double-click on it, lighter color, press Enter. Double-click on this lighter color, press Enter, double-click, press Enter. I'm going to go back and do the same for the darker rings. Close it down, right-click and choose Convert to Smart Object. I'm going to do that for all of the circles, recolor them all, turn them all into smart objects. Then Image and then Canvas Size, I'm going to set this to 800 by 800. Then I can go ahead and do exactly as I did with the other version of Photoshop for creating this random circles pattern. Of course, if you want to get rid of your guides then you can just choose View and then Clear Guides. Really the only difference is going to be in recovering the circles. It's just a little bit more tedious than it was in the other version of Photoshop, but everything else is going to work just fine.
6. Project and wrapup: We've now finished the video content for this course, so it's over to you. Your project for this class will be to create one or both of these overlapping circle patterns, fill a document with your pattern and then post an image of that as your class project. Now, as you are watching these videos, you will have seen a prompt asking if you would recommend this class to others. Please, if you did enjoy the class, would you complete the online review. Your answers to the questions help other students to say that this is a class that they too might enjoy and learn from. Now, if you see the follow link on the screen, click it to keep up to date with my new classes as they're released. If you would like to leave me a comment or a question, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and I respond to all of your class projects. My name is Helen Bradley. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of graphic design for lunch. I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming episode soon.
Helen Bradley, Graphic Design for Lunch™
