Pattern Magic in Adobe Photoshop: Learn Pattern Design Basics | Freya Riedlin | Skillshare
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Pattern Magic in Adobe Photoshop: Learn Pattern Design Basics

teacher avatar Freya Riedlin, Designer, Illustrator, Plant Lady

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Class Introduction

      1:04

    • 2.

      Creating a Repeat Tile

      9:49

    • 3.

      The Pattern Preview Tool

      5:34

    • 4.

      Final Pattern Check

      3:00

    • 5.

      Playing with Color

      2:30

    • 6.

      Exporting the Pattern Tile

      1:49

    • 7.

      Final Thoughts

      0:52

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About This Class

If you want to create patterns that retain that beautiful texture of hand-drawn or painted motifs, this class is for you!

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most powerful and versatile tools for creating patterns, and it doesn't have to be hard. I'll show you all my best tips and tricks to quickly and easily create beautiful patterns in Adobe Photoshop. Even as a beginner, you'll quickly learn to create a pattern that is ready for print.

In this class, you'll learn how to:

  • set up your canvas for a simple repeat pattern;
  • create a basic repeat tile;
  • check for errors;
  • change colorways; and
  • export your file so it's ready to go to the printer.

I'm also providing you with a quickstart guide, and some sample motifs so you can hit the ground running. By the end of class, you'll have created a beautiful pattern that you can apply to all kinds of projects.

Why Adobe Photoshop?

Photoshop has a number of advantages over other illustration programs. Unlike vector-based programs, Adobe Photoshop allows you to retain the gorgeous texture of your hand-drawn or hand-painted artwork, just like you created it. And unlike some other raster-based programs, Photoshop does not clip artwork that extends past the end of the canvas, and motifs can be moved around as often as you like without losing resolution. Plus, Adobe Photoshop has a live pattern preview that allows you to see the pattern emerge before your very eyes -- or even draw it live from scratch.

This class is the first in a series of bite-size classes to guide you through the ins and outs of creating patterns in Photoshop, from planning your pattern to tackling watercolor motifs. Follow me here on Skillshare to be the first to know when the next class drops!

You can also find me here:

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Meet Your Teacher

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Freya Riedlin

Designer, Illustrator, Plant Lady

Teacher
Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Class Introduction: Hi, I'm Freya Riedlin. I'm an artist and surface pattern designer. And today I'm going to walk you through how to make a simple. repeat pattern in Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop doesn't have to be hard, but it has a lot of bells and whistles. So it can seem overwhelming at first. But I'm here to demystify the process and walk you through all the little tips and tricks that I've learned along the way. When you're done with this class, you'll have a print ready file that you can use to create fabric, wallpaper, gift wrap, or anything else that you want to have printed pattern onto. This class, I'm going to show you how to set up your canvas, create a simple repeat pattern, check your pattern, change your color ways and export it so that it's ready to go to the printer. I'll also provide you with a quick start guide so that you can come back and reference that guide whenever you want. All you need for this class is Adobe Photoshop and a motif that you want to turn into a pattern. If you don't already have a motif of your own, you can download one of my sample motifs so that you can hit the ground running. So let's get started. 2. Creating a Repeat Tile: Let's get started by setting up our canvas in Photoshop. You'll want to click on File and New. Then I like to set this up with inches. So let's do a six by six inch canvas. There'll be plenty of space for any pattern that you want to use on fabric or wrapping paper or anything like that. If you wanted to do wallpaper, you would probably want to go for either 12 " or 24 ". Make sure that the resolution is at least 300 DPI. Anything below that, the resolution will just be really pixelated if you print it, so 300 DPI is the minimum. If you know that you want to maybe print this at a larger size, you can go up in DPI, but I always start at 300 DPI. And then I like to design in RGB color mode. And then we can just hit Create. This is going to be our repeat square. So the first thing that we're going to do is import our motif. So I'm going to go to File and Open and just find this motif and open it, opens it into a new file. As you can see. I'm going to select this and copy it. So I will press Control C or Command C if you're on a Mac. Click back into our repeat, swear and hit Command or Control V to paste. And then we have our first motif in here. I don't really like this black and white look so I'm going to recolor this first. I'm going to change the background color. So I'm clicking on the background layer here. I'm actually not going to change this background layer. What I really like to do is click right down here and click solid layer. That's going to bring up this little pop-up. And then I can either change the color here or I can go to my swatches. I actually have a custom color palette. I'm going to pick this color and hit Okay. One thing you always want to do is steer away from the pure white or pure black because they're very, very harsh colors. So you almost always want to have something that is like a little bit off of that color just to soften it. Then I'm going to recolor the motif. So click into the layer that has this motif. And what you want to do here is go just above this layer and hit this lock button. It's this little checkered pattern. And what that's going to do is make sure that when we recolor, the only thing that gets recolored is the motif itself. So I am going to select a new color from my color palette. And then we're going to recolor by going up to the menu panel, hitting Edit, then Fill. Make sure that Foreground Color is selected here because that's where this color is showing up. And hit okay. We're going to set the motif at the edge of the canvas so that it cuts it off. Then we're going to duplicate the layer. So you can do that by either right-clicking and selecting Duplicate layer all the way up here. Or you can hit Command or Control J and it's going to create another layer right above this one. Then we want to select the duplicate layer to transform. The way we do that is with Control T or Command T on a Mac. This little command box is going to pop up and the bar up here is going to change. And this is a really important one that we're going to be using. So the first thing I want you to do is click this little delta button between the x and the y axis, which is telling you where exactly on the canvas this is currently located. So I'm going to hit delta and it resets it to zero. And now I'm going to change this to inches. because we have this set to zero and we know that our canvas is 6 " wide. I'm going to change this to 6 ". It's going to move it over by 6 " on the x-axis. So it goes 6 " to the right. So now we have a perfect repeat of this. Now I'm going to make another copy of this so that I can move this to the top. So again, Command or Control J have a new layer. Control or Command T To transform. Then I'm just going to move this around and see where I might want to put this. And I'm actually going to turn this around a little bit. So hover near the transform box, you'll get these little arrow if you're near a corner that are bent and click and you can just turn this any which way. You can also make your motifs smaller. By going like this. The one thing you want to make sure though, is that you never go up larger than it was originally. The way that you can check for this is going up here, back into the command bar. There's a width and a height option, and it shows you as you're transforming it, like I have gone past 100% and that means that when it prints it could get pixelated. So we don't want that. We want to make sure that it stays at 100% or lower. I'm actually going to keep it at this size because I kinda like it. The other thing that you can do here is flip it horizontally if you wanted. So you go under Edit transform and flip horizontal just to give you some variation in what this looks like. So I'm just going to move this into here. It is overlapping with a top right up here. I'm going to click the layer to let it settle. And then again, I'm going to make a copy of this layer. Hit Command T. We already have this equalized up here on the x, y axis. So now I'm just going to change this to inches. And I'm going to type in 6in and it moves it down 6" for me. So we have a perfect repeat on top and bottom. Now we want to repeat this and I really like to make sure that I have the sides filled in before I go into the center. Just because it is a little bit trickier to move things around at the edges. So let's just make another copy and I'm going to go ahead, just move this here. Looks good. I'm going to make a copy of that. And just move that down. Here. You can see that this overlaps with the other motif, right? So we want, we don't really like that. That's going to look weird when we have it in the pattern itself. I'm actually going to delete this layer and just move this around, this top one up around a little bit more. I think this actually works better. And you can tell that it overlaps here with the edge because this little square is above the top of the canvas. So that's your sign. If that happens, that you need to move, you need to make a copy and move that copy down to make sure that you get that perfect repeat. There we go. And now I'm just going to add one or two more to fill in these gaps in here. I like that. Okay. I'm going to make one more. The other thing that you want to be really careful of is if you're overlapping here on a corner, you'll need to make sure that you're moving a copy to the right, but you also need to make sure that you're moving a copy up top because it's overlapping both horizontally and vertically. Okay, so this is a basic repeat that we have now set up. Let's check our repeat and then we can make any adjustments. 3. The Pattern Preview Tool: Alright, let's check our pattern. While I'm creating the pattern, what I really like to do is go under View and select Pattern Preview. This is a really cool feature in Adobe Photoshop, which generates the preview for you. And then you can zoom out and see what this pattern looks like. I can see here that there are a couple of things I would want to fix. So there's a big gap right here. And this is a little too close to comfort to this other motif. It makes it look a little bit cramped over here. So I think we'll want to move this up a little bit and a little over. Either rotate this. We're going to move things a little bit around. And we can do that either by turning pattern preview off and moving things around or do it while we are in Pattern Preview. So I'm actually going to turn this off just for a second. And let's go through the basics of this. So let's move this leaf first and I think I want to rotate it. The thing to know here is that you can't -- if you rotate this top leaf, the bottom will not automatically rotate with you. So I'm actually going to delete this bottom layer and go into here. Again, do Command T and rotate this a little bit. Move it up. Like this. We're just going to test that out. Make a copy, Control T or Command T and move it down 6 ". Then I think this needs to be moved a little bit. Move that up. I think I might try flipping it actually. I think I kinda like that a little bit better. Try to make sure that you have relatively even distribution of whitespace. I suspect that there's going to be too much whitespace down here now, then I'm going to move this one in because this is one. You can see here that this is close to the edge, and this stem is also close to the edge. So that was where those were a little too close for comfort. So I'm just going to rearrange this a little bit, see if we can create a little bit better spacing. This is again, very irregular spacing. I think I'm going to rotate this a little bit and then you just can't forget to change the equivalent and then mirror image on the other side. So I'm going to delete this. And we're just going to repeat this. Move it over 6 " and see we're overlapping again. So this gets a little bit tricky, when you don't have the pattern preview. So I am actually going to go back to Pattern Preview because this really makes things so much easier. And what I want to do is select both the top one and then hold down the Shift key. And also select this bottom layer and Control T. And so now we have both of these selected at once and we can move them around pretty freely. We can see if we can find a better fit. Again, it's not it's just not quite fitting, right? So I'm going to undo that. I'm going to delete this bottom one. Select this, and I can rotate this. Yes, I think this will look much better. Now it's actually showing me what this would look like down here. Just moving this around. That looks good. I liked that a lot. And then I'm seeing here that this is again coming pretty close. I'm going to select this. Just turn it and zoom out. And I think this actually it looks pretty cute. There's some nice movement here with the stems going in these directions, so I am going to keep this, I am happy with this pattern. This is a lovely way that you can arrange your pattern in real time and see what is happening with it. So I'm turning pattern preview off. And I'm going to show you one other way that we can proof this pattern. 4. Final Pattern Check: I always like to use a second way of proofing the pattern because the pattern preview while it's really helpful as you're setting up the pattern, it looks a little bit pixelated. And I like to see the pattern without that, that bounding box, that blue box that it puts around it, I want to see it as a pure pattern. So you want to go to Window > Pattern. And it'll pop up this a little box over here. And you can add this little plus line. And it'll pop up a preview of your repeat pattern and you'll just hit Okay. And it adds it to your patterns. Any patterns that exist in this pattern field over here. And then I like to open a new document that's larger than the original one. So I'm going to open this at yeah, let's do 12 by 12 ". Click Plus for a new layer, I just click our pattern that is in a pattern box. So it's actually going to generate this pattern for us. And then we can change it to different sizes. We go to Layer > Layer Content option. It's going to pop up this little pattern fill box here. You can manipulate it a whole lot so you can change the angle. I actually like to keep it at zero. But you can also change the scale here. So let's scale this down by 50%. And then we can just zoom in and just make sure that nothing is cut off anywhere. There aren't any stray pixels. This looks really nice and smooth. Now, you can also use this to apply a pattern to literally anything that you have in Photoshop. So if I just delete this layer, for example you can use the rectangular marquee tool. You can create any kind of rectangle and then you can just fill it with a pattern. Go into a new layer. Click the pattern. You can resize this in any way under Layer, Layer Content options, resize to 25%. So e.g. if you wanted to set up a portfolio sheet, this is an easy way to set it up. You can set up all of these rectangles and then insert your patterns however you want. 5. Playing with Color: Now that we have our pattern or setup, let's talk a little bit about coloring. You can, of course go layer by layer. Again. You want to lock the layer every time that you change the color. You can select all layers and hit the lock button, which will speed up the process just a little bit. But what I actually like to do when I have a simple pattern like this that isn't overlapping, is merge all the layers. But just in case you ever want to go back and move things around a little bit. You might notice sometime later that the composition just isn't quite right and you want to move something a little bit. So I like to put all of these layers into groups. So select all layers and hit Control or Command Z. And then we'll put it into a group. And then I'm going to duplicate that group with Command or Control J. Unselect the bottom group. Now for this group, I'm going to merge all layers. So you can do that by either hitting Merge Group here or hitting Command or Control E. And I'm going to lock that layer and now I can recolor the entire layer at one. So I'm just going to play with us. I'm going to change the background color. I'm going to make this a blue. And then they'll really need to change this color. So I'm going to go for a lighter blue and make the subtle pattern. Going to hit edit and fill the foreground color. A little too subtle. So I'm going to go for a lighter color and just do that again. Okay, let's look at this and pattern preview. That looks pretty neat, but I'm going to try it. One more color. Go for this deep, dark, clean, lighter green for the leaves. School. I do love that. I think I'm going to stick with this color. Alright, that's it on re-coloring, that's pretty simple when you have simple layers like this. Let's move on. 6. Exporting the Pattern Tile: Okay, We have created a pattern, we have recolored our pattern. We are ready to go. Now all we need to do is export it. So let us go to File, Save a Copy. And then I like to export this as a high res JPEG. So I'm going to select JPEG here. Hit Save. Then I like to make sure that the quality is 12 and you want to have baseline standard selected. So basically "optimized" and "progressive" actually have a smaller resolution, it compresses the file. The idea for those is that it makes it easier for websites to load quickly. So the quality is a bit degraded. But if you want this to be printed, you want to use Baseline Standard. And we'll just hit Okay. And there we have it. I have this beautiful JPEG pattern. All done and ready to go and ready to be uploaded or used in any way. One thing you can also do, again here is just another check. Reopen this JPEG file in Photoshop and do a pattern preview on it. Every now and then. if I have a complex pattern, I like to do that and just to make sure. With this, you're all ready to go, you have a print ready file all ready to apply your pattern! 7. Final Thoughts: I hope you enjoyed this class and that you feel inspired to start trying out Photoshop for your pattern designs. If you liked this class, make sure to follow me so you don't miss the next installment in the series. I'll be covering how to create more complex patterns, the best way to digitize watercolor motifs, and many more tips and tricks to use Photoshop efficiently to save you time and quickly make beautiful designs. I would absolutely love to see the patterns that you've created. So please share them. You can upload them in the project section below. If you share the design you made today on Instagram, make sure to tag me so I can admire and share your work. If you have any questions about the process, please feel free to reach out to me. You can contact me here through Skillshare or through my website. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you again soon.