Pattern Design in Photoshop: Half Drop Repeats Simplified!

1. Hello and Intro: Hello, my name is Kim Milan. It's nice to meet you. Virtually. I am an artist in Chicago, Illinois. I have gone down many paths with my hurt journey from painting glassware and furniture to bureaus and portraits, and even sculpted with polymer clay. I love trying new things. Recently I came across pattern design and I was amazed that my art could be put onto products. So I delve into learning how to do pattern design. So I created a template that makes heft drop repeats easier and more accurate. I think this class will be great for seasoned pattern designers as well as beginners, because we go from beginning to end step-by-step. So let's get started. 2. Your Project: So your mission, if you choose, is to create a half trap, repeat using the template and actions. So you will be using a template to create your half trap repeat arranger design, and then check your design. And lastly, create your patterns square of your finished half drop. Repeat. What will you need for this class? You will need Photoshop software. If you do not own Photoshop. I've listed below in the class description how you can get a free trial. You will also need artwork that is created by you to use to create the half dropped repeat. Lastly, the template connection downloads, which are located in the projects and resources tab down below. Once you have completed your half dropped, Repeat. Please upload it to the past projects. I cannot wait to see what you create using the template. 3. Basic Repeat vs Half Drop Repeat: Hello again. In this video, I'm going to explain the difference between a basic repeat and a half drop repeat. So if you already know the difference, you can go ahead and skip this video to the next one. So let's take a look at a basic repeat. When you have a basic repeat patterns where everything on your top edge is going to align with your bottom edge. So this rows right here, the top of it is going to be on the bottom edge, as well as this leaf and this rose bud over here. And your sides as well, everything's going to match up nicely in a direct line. So this rose over here, and this rose bud completes over here. So when I take a copy of this pattern square and I move it directly to the right. Everything's going to complete itself. This rose bud and this rows over here. The same thing is going to happen when I take the copy and move it down. All of your edges are going to complete this rose, the leaf, the rose bud. And this is what makes up your basic repeat. Okay, now let's take a look at a half truck repeat. Here is a half drop repeat patterns square. And everything on the top is going to line just like the basic repeat on the bottom. So when I take a copy and put it directly beneath our regional patterns where everything's going to line up the rows, the rose bud. But if you will recall, with a half drop, repeat, not only do we have to move it to the right. And if we left it at the right, you'll see that nothing is aligning correctly. These two roses have launched part of there. Beautiful bodies. So we need to then take this pattern square and move it halfway down to complete our half drop repeats. So right there. And now you see those roses are complete now. So top to bottom, just like a basic repeat, aligns nicely. But we then have to take our patterns were to the right and down halfway to complete it on the horizontal, vertical axis. And that is what makes up a half dropped repeats. 4. Creating Design Elements Final: I have been on a watercolor kick lately. I just, right now it's just fun to see how the water and the pigment and work together. And, and some days I can be so happy with it and others not so happy. But the key to pattern design is doing what you love, using mediums that you love. It doesn't have to be fancy. It can be very simple. Anything you choose. I have seen patterns which just squares or dots. And they look so beautiful because the way they are organized. So choose a medium that you love. There are so many, I've listed a couple here, but oh my gosh, there are so many mediums that you could work with and create something you love. That's the key. 5. Cleaning Up Your Artwork: Okay, so cleaning up your watercolor or any any RPC have, I like to use the magic wand. So I click on the background. And it will show the marching dots around me images. It's also in watercolor gonna bring up things that you might want to remove, like right in here. That's when I go to the lasso tool. You hold down the option key, circle the dots you want to remove and press delete. So like here for instance. And this is one of my favorite ways I like to do it. It's just easy for me. You might have away you love and that's great. Keep doing it. But for me I really like this method. And then I zoom in to see what else I could keep in there that's being taken out. And then for the next few seconds I'm going to speed this up so you don't have to watch me do the whole thing here. But when I'm done with the flowers, I like to do a new layer with a black fill. And then it shows me all the spots that I might not have caught. And I do the same thing with the Lasso Tool. Hold down the option key, circle and delete. Every Ackerman is a teacher and skill share here and she has a great class on how to remove your backgrounds with various methods. It's definitely worth a watch. 6. Using the Template: Okay, let's get into Photoshop and open up our template. So I'm going to double-click on it. And this is how it's going to look when it opens, it has seven squares. And if you click on any one of them, will show on the right hand panel here in your layers. Next, let's open up our artwork that we're going to use to create our half trap repeat. Okay, so here is my artwork. It's just going to be these simple watercolour roses. Now let's go back. Your half dropped template is going to be called untitled. So let's click on that. And now I wanted to show you how you get into the working square. That's what I like to call it. So I'm gonna go over here to my Layers panel. And on any of these, you can click on this lower right hand little box here. You double-click. It's going to open up our working square. I call it this because this is where all the designing happens. This square is 3600 pixels across and 3600 pixels down. So that's important to know, just so you know, you're sizing. Now let's also download our actions while we're here. I have my actions tab open here. But if yours is not just go to Window and actions, make sure it's checked down. So now that the actions tab is open, go to your little menu here with the three lines. You're gonna go down to load actions. And now you're going to click on all three of your actions. Click open. And here they are, right here. So now these actions are going to be with you for as long as you want up there in your library. Now. Now the key to these actions is they relate to the sizing of this working square. Meaning all the actions here are calculated for the 3600 by 3600 square. So you won't be able to use these and any other different size canvas just done on a 3600 by 3600. Okay, so let's go back to our artwork and let's start designing. So I am going to take. All of these by holding Shift and clicking on all of my images here. And then I'm going to just drag them up into my eye, Mr. leap there. That's okay. Go back and get her. Let me go back and get that little munchkins over here and drag her in as well. Okay. So here is all my images that I want to use for my repeat. Now I want to just emphasize here that this class is more about how to use the template, then it is pattern design. What I mean by that is, I'm not going to make this a complicated halfway up repeat. Because I think it will be easier to understand the process if I do a simple design here. Okay, so let's start, let's start with this rose over here. And let's put her here. And whenever you place something, makes sure to double-click on it. So then it gets it set there. So now in a half cup repeat, I want to go across and halfway down. Now normally, you might go to edit transform. Let's do that again, edit Free Transform. And then it will bring up this menu up here and you change your x and your y-axis. There's also people who will do an offset which is under Filter and other and offset and do their calculations here. These are all great ways to do it. There's no right or wrong way. But in this template, you're not going to have to put in those numbers. Because when you have this rows selected, if we come down to our actions that we just downloaded, all we have to do is go click on write down and hit therapy and it is going to move it for you. Isn't it sweet. Okay. So let's let's take this rose and put her up here. Double-click on earth to setter. And now all we want with this rose is to just go and get copied directly to the bottom edge. So then we go to our handy little actions and we go to down, click the arrow. She is copied. All right. So how about if we take this one and Uber about here? Now I want her to go left across and down. So I just go to left and down. Click my arrow. There she blows. Now there is one key thing to understand here. I don't like how this rows and these rows are right in line with each other. So it's difficult to, you. You would think that you could just copy both of these and move them, but it doesn't seem to work as well. So I just delete this one. And then I'll go here. Maybe I'll go here like this. And then I'll go left down again. And then she's copied where she should be. So let's put a leaf, maybe turn it. Put her under this rose. Her like, yeah, maybe diminish her low shall colonial, gigantic. Okay, so there we go. Alright. Like I said, I do want to keep this simpler because I think it will be easier to understand. But when I'm designing, it's hard to stay simple. So I'm going to try my darkest to do that for you. Where if we put a rows like this and then I'm going to just move her underneath. Like so. What if we just put a leaf up here? Like so? And I'm going to double-click to center. Now all I want this leaf to do is go down. So I'm gonna go to my handy little actions and go down, hit the arrow. And there she bows. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to speed up the next bit of this just so you don't have to watch me do the fill ins for this. So now you have this square. And you say to yourself, I want to know how this looks on a bigger scale. Very simple. So now at this point we just go Command S to save our working square. It's going to take a moment because it's going to save all your smart objects. And then we're gonna go back to our untitled, which is our template. And click on there. And boom, there's your repeat command. Isn't that cool? So, alright, now I want a little maybe different back Chrome color. Don't you think it's a little too bland? So let's go back to our working square. And over here in our working space. If you click on that layer and then go up here to file, sorry, layer, new fill layer, solid color. And just click OK and it will bring up your color picker here. And then you can just play around and see what works. Lighter yellow. What am I? And a light yellow. Okay, that looks nice. So I just hit OK here. Now we made a change to our working square. So what do we have to do? We have to save it again. Command S. It's gonna go through the process of updating the smart objects. And then we go back to our template. And now it's going to have that pretty yellow background. So at this point, we want to save our template, which is not going to save as a template. It's going to save as your fire, your PSD file, your Photoshop file. So I'm just going to save as I'm going to name it. My skill share. Half. Spill lately, drop, repeat. And I'm just going to save it to my desktop right now. Okay. So now you have completed your half truck. Now, let's say you want to upload it to spoon flower, red bubble, Society six, Print Full. There's so many out there now. So I'm going to show you how to simplify your pattern square. So when you upload it, it's going to be a lot easier for you. We'll do that in the next video. 7. Creating Your Pattern Square: Alright, so here is our patterns square that we made. And now we want to make this into a pattern square that we can upload to all those Print on Demand places I mentioned, like spoon flour and red bubble. So we're going to go over to our layers over here. And the first thing we wanna do is go to the very top of our layers. Click on the very top one, scroll down, press Shift, and click on all of them. And first we're going to group them. So we go up here, group from layers. And I am going to call this original layers. Let's call it original layers. And then I'm going to click on OK. And then I want to duplicate this. There are a couple of ways you can do this. You can do command J, or I'm going to command C to go back and just drag it to a new layer. So however you feel comfortable. So now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to click on that original layer. I'm gonna press lock so I can't mess with it. And I'm going to turn it off so we can't see it. And then click on your Down Arrow. And once again, we are going to click on that top layer, scroll down to this leaf right before our background layer, press Shift. And now what we wanna do is merge layers. Alright, so far, so good. Now what we want to do is hover on this right side, right-click your mouse and create a clipping mask. Good. Now we're going to press down shift. Click on this layer with right-click and merge layers once again. Nice. Okay, so now we have made this, as you can see, one square, no layers, it's all merged. So the next thing we wanna do, and if you recall, our square is 3600 pixels across by 3600 pixels down. So we're going to go to File New. And we are going to create a canvas that is double the size. So we want it to be 7200 pixels by 7200 pixels. And 300 dpi is good. For spoon flower. They like the DPI at 150. So I haven't had any trouble uploading a 300 dpi discipline power, but they do prefer 150. So let's create this. And here is our 7200 pixel by 7200 pixel canvas. So we're gonna go back to our working Square. And I'm gonna just left click hold down and drag it into this new file. And I'm gonna put it right here in the corner. Now I want to copy this straight down. So I'm going to hold down option and click with my left mouse button, press down. And I'm gonna go back to this top square. Hold down Option. Click on my left and drag. And now I'm going to go across and halfway down. So you can see it forming now. So I'm gonna go and this top one again, option. Click your left mouse button, drag, place it there. And then let's go to this bottom one option. Click and drag. Oops, going down there. I lost him. Okay, so let's do that again. Option, click and drag, snap into place. Ok. So now once again we're gonna go to our layers and click on the tab one. Shift. Click on the bottom, then highlights all of your layers. And then we are going to flatten image. So now what we've done in essence is we have created a basic repeat pattern out of our half trap repeat. So as you can see, this rows here matches up here. This rows here, here. But we still have the beauty of our half trap, which goes here to here, and it flows Nice. And now you have your perfect calf drop repeats in a basic repeat patterns square. That makes it much easier to upload to whichever site you would like to. 8. So Long!: Well, I guess it's time to say so long. Thank you so much for taking the class. I hope you learn something new, and I hope that half drop repeats will be much easier and much quicker for you. Take care and keep creating.