Quick Actions for Creating Pattern Repeats Previews in Adobe Photoshop
Evgeniya & Dominic Righini-Brand, Graphic Design & Photography
Watch this class and thousands more
Watch this class and thousands more
Lessons in This Class
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1.
Introduction & Class Overview
1:56
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2.
What You'll Need & Tile Preparation
1:11
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3.
Action #1: Copying Pattern Tile into a New Document
2:16
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4.
Action #2: Resizing the Canvas to 200%
0:56
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5.
Action #3: Repeating & Aligning 4 Pattern Tiles
3:36
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6.
Workflow Tips & Combining All Actions Into One
1:47
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7.
Final Thoughts & Conclusion
1:40
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About This Class
In this 13 minute class, you will learn how to create a set of time-saving Adobe Photoshop actions for converting single pattern tiles into precise 4-up pattern repeats previews.
Whether you need to create tiling previews for cataloging your surface patterns, for analysing your work-in-progress, for sharing your patterns on social media or including them in pitches, using actions instead of defining pattern swatches and creating pattern fills takes less time and effort, and results in having neat pattern previews. You can use these actions with any pattern tiles created in Adobe Photoshop, or exported from Adobe Illustrator, Procreate or any other app where you can create repeatable pattern tiles.
Of course, you can preview your patterns by applying them as pattern fills, and it totally works when you want to see how they work as surface designs covering a specific area. But sometimes you just want to see 4 tiles next to each other to assess or display how the repeats work. And that's when using actions to automate the preview generation process comes in handy and saves you a ton of time! I started creating 4-up pattern repeats previews to be able to easily print out my pattern experiments, analyse them and select pattern swatches I want to use, and then to catalogue and showcase my final patterns, and these actions have been a real game-changer and helped me to massively speed up my workflow and stay organised!
In this class, I will walk you through the process of creating a set of actions for previewing your patterns and share tips, 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 a surface pattern designer, but want to learn to automate your workflow with actions which deal with aligning to canvas, you’ll pick up a few useful tips!
—Evgeniya
P.S. If you want to get your hands on some more complex repeat previews actions, check out my complete set of actions (including actions for creating 4x, 6x (2x3 and 3x2) and 9x tiling previews, both merged and grouped) available as a digital product here on Skillshare: Adobe Photoshop Actions for Creating Pattern Repeats Previews.
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Hands-on Class Project
Set up your own set of actions for creating 4-up tiling repeats previews in Adobe Photoshop.
Follow along with the steps from the class to create foolproof actions for copying your pattern tile into a new document, increasing the canvas size the smart way, and copying and aligning 4 tiles to the canvas. After these actions have been recorded, record a combined action by running these actions in order — and you'll end up with an action which will allow you to convert any selected pattern tile into a 4x pattern repeat preview in a single click!
Share in your class project any pattern repeats previews you've created using these actions. And I'll be excited to hear where you are going to use this sort of tiling previews in future—will it be in your sketchbook, portfolio, look books, on social media or in pitches?—share a few words to let me know!
And of course, I'd be excited to hear what you've learnt in this class, so please drop a few words in the Reviews tab for this class!
—Evgeniya
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