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.