Quick Actions for Creating Pattern Repeats Previews in Adobe Photoshop

1. Introduction & Class Overview: Hey, guys. I'm Jennifer Mate Creative. Welcome to our channel. If you're integrating surface patterns and have access to Adobe Photoshop, this tutorial is for you. I love creating abstract and organic surface patterns and enjoy playing around with techniques, which allow me to quickly generate a ton of unique patterns without much effort. It all sounds great, but as it goes, I often end up generating more patterns, then I can keep track of in my head. So to make it easier to find analyze and select pattern swatches I want to use, and basically generally to catalogue and showcase my patterns. I started creating fotile previews. Of course, you can preview your patterns by applying them as pattern pills. I totally works when you want to see how they work as surface design covering a specific area. But sometimes you just want to see four tiles next to each other to assess or display how the repeats work. And you can really quickly create these previews based on single tiles in adobe photoshop and automate the preview generation process with a set of handy actions, which will save you a ton of time. In this tutorial, I will walk you through the process of a set of actions for previewing your patterns and share, tricks, and best practices for setting up smart actions, which don't throw any errors when you start running them. So even if you are not integrating pattern previews, but want to learn to automate your workflow with actions which deal with aligning to canvas, you will pick up a few useful tips. So let's get started. 2. What You'll Need & Tile Preparation: You will need to start with a file where you have a single pattern tile covering the whole canvas. This can be a pattern created in photoshop or any single pattern tile exported from Illustrator, procreate or any other app where you can create pattern tiles. All elements of your tile should be either merged into one layer or converted into a smart object. All elements of the tile are treated as a single graphic. For example, I have this master file, where I have generated a range of unique pattern tiles, and each of them sits on a separate layer. If you want to learn to easily create these kind of patterns and more kinds of t urine based patterns, be sure to check out my class about designing t urine patterns. So open and prepare any pattern tile you want to use. Then let's get on, we're setting up our first action. 3. Action #1: Copying Pattern Tile into a New Document: In the document with your pattern tile or tiles, select the layer with the desired tile in the layers panel. And then let's go to the actions panel and set up our first action. Let's start by creating a new folder for all the actions we'll be creating and name it pattern repeats previews. Next, let's create ANU action, name it copy Tile in the EU document and hit record. For the first step in this action, press command A or Control A in the windows to set the selection to the Canvas boundaries. Then press command C or control C in windows to copy the selection. Next, press Command or Control n in windows to create a new document, and don't touch any of the settings here as we need them to fit from the settings of what we have just copied into the clipboard. Hit the create button, and then press Command V or Control V in windows to paste your tile into this new document. In stop recording this action. D will check the steps in the action s panel. They should look like this, and importantly, under the make sep, you should see clipboard listed here. And make sure that you select a layer manually before starting to record the action, so there is no step here for selecting specific layers. In future when you run this action, you need to firstly manually select pattern tile you want to copy in the layers panel. So that's our first action ready. And because of how it is set up, it can be used to copy tiles of any size in the e document of the respective size or really copy any layer in the e document. I. 4. Action #2: Resizing the Canvas to 200%: Now, let's create our second action. Name it Canvas size 200% and hit record. Press Command Option C or Control C in windows to open the Canvas size dialogue for our new document. Here change units 2%. Input 200 in both width and height fields, and make sure the rest of the settings look like this and press and stop recording the action. This action might seem like something super simple, but when you need to change the canvas size for a lot of documents, it becomes a huge time saver. 5. Action #3: Repeating & Aligning 4 Pattern Tiles: Next, let's create our final action, which will repeat this tile four times. Name this action X four pattern tiles plus Merge and hit record. With the layer with the tile already selected in the layers panel prior to recording this action, press command A or control A in windows. This will set the selection to the canvas boundaries, and this is a hack which makes it possible to align objects to Canvas using actions. You will need the step because photoshop doesn't allow you to save the align two settings from the align panel into actions. Remember this trick for any future actions you set up, which require alignment in relation to the canvas. With the selection set, go to the align options and align the tile to the top left corner using these buttons. Next, press command or control j in windows to duplicate the currently selected layer. Again, set the selection to all by pressing command A or control A in windows, and align your new layer to the top right corner instead. And then repeat the process by duplicating the layer, setting the selection to all, and aligning the layer to the bottom right corner. Yet again, duplicating the layer, setting the selection to all once more, and aligning the last copy to the bottom left corner. With the four tiles aligned, press command D or Control D in windows to select all. Then press option shift open square bracket or old shift open square bracket in windows three times to select all four tile layers in the layers panel. Next, press command E or Control E in windows to merge the four layers together. Rename the resulting layer for x patent tiles to keep the document meter, and finally stop recording the action, and you're done here. Now let's quickly double check all the steps in this action. If everything worked correctly so far, the results will look like they, and the steps will look like this. Important steps to remember here, as setting the selection to all after creating each new copy of the patent tiles, and then the selecting all after aligning the last tile. Using shortcuts and not selecting anything manually in the layers panel, whilst recording the action ensures that this action can be applied to any future pattern tiles without any errors, and it is not reliant on any specific layer order or layer names. For example, if you went ahead and manually copied a different pattern tile of the same size and pasted it into the same document on top of the existing merged tiles, you could still select this new layer in this document and then run the same action to create four copies of it. I. 6. Workflow Tips & Combining All Actions Into One: If you're working with the pattern tiles in the same size and want to create the tiled previews in the same document, I would also recommend simply creating a new artboard for each new tile instead of layering them in the layers panel on top of each other. This way, you can paste new tiles onto separate artboards and then create tile previews, for example, like this. If you work on artboards, you can then quickly export them as individual files, and then use them anyway you want. For example, print them separately, or arrange them onto contact sheets using the automated contact sheet option in your desired settings. On the other hand, if you want to create your pattern previews in individual documents, you can also create an extra action, which will run these three actions for you in one click. For example, let's select a new pattern tile, and then create A New action and call it Copy and create A four X Pattern Preview. A record and then go and play these actions in order, starting with the copy action, then the Canvas size action, and then the four x pattern preview action. Hat stop, and now this new action is ready to. But it will only work in future if you have these actions here and keep their names unchanged. 7. Final Thoughts & Conclusion: Now you know how to set up the pattern preview actions in a smart way, and you can use the same tricks and logic when setting up any other actions which require a lining to cannabis and creating multiple copies of players. Also, while learning to set up these actions is super handy, do not hesitate to grab a free download of the actions I have walked you through in this class from the class resources. If you want to get your hands on some more complex repeat previews actions, check out my complete set of actions available as a digital product here on Skillshare. So let's sit for this tutorial. Hope you found it helpful and learn a few new tricks, which will allow you to speed up your workflow when working with surface patterns. If you want to learn some fun techniques for creating various abstract and organic surface patterns, in case you haven't watched them already, be sure to check out my pattern design classes which you can find on our profile. If you have found this class helpful, please leave a review in the reviews tub for this class. And if you have any sort of questions, be sure to leave a comment in the discussion tub for this class, and I'll happily answer and provide feedback. And be sure to follow us here on Skillshare, to be the first to know about our classes and updates. Thank you for watching this class, and I hope to see you in our other classes.