Repeat Patterns in Photoshop: Incorporating Sketches into Digital Design

1. Introduction: In this class, you will learn how to create a conversational repeating pattern in Adobe Photoshop and incorporate hand-drawn elements into digital design. What I love about conversational patterns is that they're packed with personality and they can illustrate things that we love. They're also a wonderful way to get started in the world of surface pattern design, and they can look great both in simple repeating forms or in more complex ones. They're normally very unique and will come in all drawing styles, from the most polished to the more sketchy ones. Hi, I'm Silvia and I'm a professional graphic designer and artist. I was born in Columbia into a family of artists, and my biggest passion has always been creativity in all of its forms. The reason why I chose this style of patterns for my class is because I wanted to immortalize this chapter of my life. After six wonderful years of living and working in London as a freelancer, I decided to come back to Barcelona, the city where I started leaving when I was [inaudible]. I took my journey from London to Barcelona as a source of inspiration for my conversational pattern, and the objects I drew were all items which tell the story. This class is divided into three main sections. In the first section, we'll be working on our assets, brainstorming, creating our sketches, and digitizing them. We'll create color palettes, and I'll show you various tools that will help you get out of your colored comfort zone. Then in the second section, we'll move along to creating our pattern from simple to complex. I will show you the method that I use when creating the repetition on each side of the canvas, and you'll have the chance to practice the fundamentals whilst creating simple patterns. Simple patterns can be a great compliment when designing collections, and if you use different assets to cover the different exercises, you'll have a mini collection of six or eight when you finish practicing the fundamentals lesson. Finally, we will create one with all of our elements and we will start thinking about our patterns on products. We will explore different color weights and visualize our patterns everywhere. If you have a basic understanding of Photoshop, this class will be easier to follow. But if you're a total beginner, I want to encourage you to still take this class. I will guide you step-by-step and show you all my Photoshop tips and tricks so that you can design like a pro in no time. By the end of this class, you will be able to create designs with personality, which cell well commercially and can be applied to a vast number of products. It could take years to discover these methods and you will learn them all in this class. Whether you want to advance your career or simply create something for pleasure, the skill of combining hand-drawn elements with Adobe Photoshop will open a whole new world of possibilities for you. By the way, the pattern that you see in this T-shirt is the one that I designed while I was creating this class. Let's get started. 2. Your Project: Your project is to create your own fun conversation repeating pattern from hand-drawn elements. I will be looking for at least one pattern made with all of your hand-drawn assets and three different color ways that show that you could successfully explore different color bullets. You can compliment your project by uploading some smaller and simpler patterns showing that you practiced the fundamentals. I'll provide some cats so that you can show how your pattern would look on a t-shirt, eye masks, and socks. All these things will reflect that you learned and applied the skills that you have gained in this class. Once you complete your project, upload it to the project and resources gallery, so that we can all have a look at what you did. Share your initial stage of the process where you draw your elements and surprise us with your final pattern and mock-ups. You will be able to use your pattern in all personal and commercial projects so they don't Print on Demand websites such as Society6 and Redbubble. Use it to decorate your room, decorate your desktop or your computer, or use it as a screensaver. If you share your artwork on social media, you can tag me so I can not only have a look at what you did, but also share it in my feed with my followers. I can't wait to see what you create. 3. Tools and Materials: As we're going to draw our elements by hand, we will need the following materials. We'll use a pencil and an eraser to create your initial sketches. This will allow us to define our shapes freely before adding ink to them. You will need a piece of paper to do your drawings. You can use your sketchbook or any type of regular printing paper works. Tweak my assets, I will be using a couple of different pens. One will be a 0.3 to create the outline of my drawings and the other one will be a 0.05 to create the thin details. Using different weights of pens will give a bit more of depth to my chosen objects. It doesn't matter if you don't have these type of pens, you can use also a regular black pen that you find around your house. If you have an iPad with Procreate installed and you prefer to create your assets in it, it's totally fine. You will be able to skip the digitizing your assets lesson. Just save your files in a PSD format and send them to your computer via email or using a program like Dropbox. If you did your drawings by hand, you will need a scanner or a camera to digitize your assets. If you don't have a scanner, you can also use an app to scan your assets with your phone camera. The resolution is never as good as when you use a scanner, but you can definitely do it and it will work fine. I really recommend having a drawing tablet as it will make your workflow much easier and it will give you a lot of freedom when using the lasso and brush tool later in Photoshop. I also recommend having a ruler or a measuring tape by your side. It will help you to understand and visualize the size of your assets when designing your pattern. Finally, you will need a computer or a laptop with Photoshop installed to create your final repeating pattern. Once you have your materials ready, meet me in the next lesson. We will do some brainstorming exercises and you will have to define the subject of inspiration for your pattern. 4. Brainstorming Ideas: A conversational pattern can talk about anything and so the options to choose from are endless. That is why writing down some specific ideas before you start designing can be very helpful. In this lesson, we'll do some exercises that hopefully will help you choose a subject for your pattern and see if it's appealing to you or if it's not. It might be that for this project you end up writing more than one cool idea, which is great. Next time that you wan to work in a pattern of this type, revisit your list and choose another one. Keeping a notebook with written ideas, slogans, words, and doodles is a good practice for any designer. This is a quick example of how an exercise can help you to come up with some ideas. I can ask myself a question such as, what wakes me up in the morning or what makes me feel awake? Then I'll make a list of things that comes into my mind. The sun, my alarm, my mobile phone, a little makeup may help, someone saying good morning to me, and of course, a cup of coffee. This listed items could form the base of my pattern. Now if I'm still struggling to visualize in my head how a repeating pattern could look, I tend to make some quick doodles in a piece of paper. Drawing them in different directions makes it easier to imagine how a final multi-directional pattern could look. If these exercise is too difficult for you and you come up with an idea that you struggled to draw, you can always go to Pinterest or Shutterstock and find some inspiration in there. This exercise may help you to choose a subject and feel confident that it works before going through the whole process of drawing, digitizing, and designing a repeating pattern. Here goes another one. What fruits do I like to eat in the summer? Write a list of five or six items. If you can imagine them as a pattern, great. If you struggle, make some easy drawings in different directions and see if you like the subject. Pay attention to all the slides of this course as they all show different patterns. Some are inspired on the subject that lesson is covering and others might be a bit random. Here are some other patterns that I have design in the past, which are also conversational and might give you some ideas or show you different drawing styles. I hope that they serve you as inspiration and demonstrate how anything you want can be turned into a repeating pattern. Make sure that you leave this lesson with a subject for your pattern that is appealing to you. In the next lesson, we're going to create a mood board by gathering some images to use as reference for when we start drawing. Grab your computer, connect to the internet, and see you in the next lesson. 5. Creating a Moodboard: Before we start drawing, we're going to create a mood board. Just in case you're unsure about what this is, a mood board is an arrangement of images, materials, pieces of text, etc., intended to evoke or project a particular style or concept. If you took my previous class, you know that I love going for a walk and use the world around me as a source of inspiration. Actually when designing this class, I draw many objects from life or from photographs that I had taken with my phone. But there many times where it's just easier to gather the images from the internet and that's what we're going to do. With your chosen subject, open Google Images or Pinterest and start searching for images that can serve as inspiration or reference for your drawings. I'm going to make my mood board in Photoshop, but you can also save the images under a folder or do it in a program you know. I want to explain much of what I'm doing, but don't worry because later when we start designing our assets, I will explain all the shortcuts and methods that I use carefully. I'll open an A4 document, and as I'm not planning to print this mood board, I'm going to change the resolution to 150 DPI. I'm going to go to File, Save as, and I'll save it under the name Moodboard. Now I'm going to go to Pinterest and start searching for the objects that I want to draw. I'll start with the parcel and start scrolling down until I see an image that I like. I'll right-click on the image and go down to copy image. Then I will return to my Photoshop file and paste it. You can use a shortcut Command V if you're in a Mac, Control V if you're in Windows. Once the image is in Photoshop, I will transform its size by pressing "Command T", move the handles to adjust the size, and place it on the top. Now I'm going to go back to the internet and search for my second image, a plane. All these photos are too realistic and I feel that I'm going to struggle when drawing them. I'll go ahead and write, plane drawing to see how other creatives have approach this type of shape. It's good to see sometimes other representations of object and use them as reference as well when drawing. I'll place this image in my mood board and I will change my drawing when making my sketch. Once the image is in the Photoshop, I will transform its size by pressing "Command T", moving the handles to adjust the size, and place it on the top. Passport. Pretty straightforward, copy and paste. This is basically what I'm going to do with all of my images on my mood board. I will start moving them around the canvas without thinking too much. This should be a quick exercise and it doesn't has to be too fancy or too complicated. If you're new using Photoshop and this is taking too much of your time or if you simply rather save the images into a folder in your computer or a Pinterest board, please go ahead and do so. I'm planning to write the names of the London and Barcelona directly, so I won't search for the city icons or photos. The reason why I prefer doing on mood board separately is because I can see myself getting distracted and looking at images that have nothing to do with what I'm doing. Is so easy to end up endlessly scrolling down Pinterest that I rather do this before I start drawing. Pinterest is my favorite online source of inspiration, but there also other options such as Google Images, Shutterstock, Tumblr, Flickr, and many others. Once I have my mood board ready, I'll go to File, Save as, and save a copy as a JPEG format. Now that we have our mood board ready with a reference images, we're going to start sketching. For the next lesson, you will need to have a white paper, a pencil, and an eraser. Open your saved mood board and place it as a full-screen mode to avoid getting distracted with anything else. 6. Sketching Your Assets: There is something important that I want you to consider before you start drawing. What would you like to use your pattern for? Would you like to design a duvet cover for your kids with bacon detailed drawings? Use it for a notebook cover, print, wrapping paper, or perhaps a t-shirt with medium graphics? As we're going to compose a repeating pattern in Adobe Photoshop, it's a good practice to be mindful about the size of your drawings from the beginning. Photoshop is based on pixels and so it's probable that if you do your small drawings and enlarge them digitally, they will lose definition. Your assets don't have to be an exact size, but it's good to think about the final design and draw accordingly. I want to ask you to draw some bigger assets and some smaller ones. We're going to separate them when creating our pattern. The bigger ones are going to be used to create the main structure, and the smaller ones will serve as a complement and will help us to fill the blank spaces. Any dots or small geometrical shapes, stars, hearts, or just little pieces of texture, squares, triangles, any complement will work just fine. Before I start drawing my final assets, I want to share something with you. In the process of designing this course, I drew these exact shapes several times. The first time was when I traveled from London to Barcelona, I started drawing some turtles in a sketchbook of mind molded from imagination and some from real-life like the sangria, the parasol, or the palms. The second time was when I was defining the subject for my pattern and getting this class together. The third time was just a minute ago. I did all these drawings I'm showing you, and I decided to change them because the shapes where getting too realistic and big for what I wanted. This time, after so many times of drawing the same shapes, I'm finding it quite easy and I'm not going to be using my eraser a lot, but this is not always the case. Take your time, don't rush your drawings, and enjoy this stage. Finish this lesson making sure that you like them. I'm going to be playing this video in a higher speed, but don't think I can draw this fast. Actually, when I was recording this lesson, I was listening to some music and really enjoying the stage of drawing. I'm keeping an iPad by my side with the images that I gathered to have the most reference for when I don't know how to draw something. You can also do this in your computer or not do it at all, and draw from your imagination. Try to think about the style of drawing as a very clean and clear one. For the purpose of this class, it's going to be much easier to use certain Photoshop tools if your drawings are well-defined. When you finish taking this class and you know how to digitize your assets, color them in Photoshop and make the repeating pattern. You can start experimenting and using other style of drawings. If you find that drawing is challenging for you, you have to know that the only way to get better is by practicing a lot. Also, once you have drawn the same shapes several times, you start to memorize them and understand them, and it becomes so much easier. When you understand the shape and memorize it, it's actually easier to start drawing more intentionally. For example, they form something a little bit or make it look naive or childish, or realistic, or stylized. Once you understand how to draw something, you can play with it to make it yours. It's a really good practice to keep a sketchbook with you. You can make little drawings wherever you are. You might be that you're waiting for a friend in a coffee shop and you just start drawing the items that are surrounding you. Or you might be that you're in the park and there are some dogs in there or some birds, trees, anything that you can imagine can be turned into a conversation repeating pattern. You can then come home, scan the same drawings that you've done and experiment, or you can take it a bit more seriously and copy the final assets into a paper with a pencil and an eraser and refine them. Either way is fine and you can learn a lot just from experimenting. Whenever I find a challenging object like the rollerblade, I start by drawing slowly the outline with some structural lines or geometrical block shapes. Once I have the main structure defined and looking well proportioned, I can start adding the details. It's good to remember that this type of designs are super welcoming to different styles of drawings and so pretty much, whatever you do is going to look great. After having all my assets ready, I'm going to start drawing final words that could go well with the subject of my pattern. As I left London and came back to Barcelona, I'm going to write the city names, Barcelona and London. Then some things like ola, ciao, salute and stuff like that. For my small assets, I'm going to draw some hearts, some dotted lines, a sun, a cloud, and some other words. Once you have your pencil sketch ready, join me in the next lesson where we'll start inking our assets. If for whatever reason you are not entirely happy with the results of your drawings or you feel that they are too challenging, you can change the subject and go for something super easy. Here are some ideas that could work perfectly well, and they look beautiful once they're turned into a repeating pattern. After all, this is a class about repeating patterns in Adobe Photoshop, so make sure you leave this lesson with some drawings that you are happy with. 7. Inking Your Assets: Now that our sketch has been defined, it's time to ink our assets. The stage always makes me a bit nervous as I feel that once I apply the ink, there's no going back. So before inking my pencil sketches, I did these quick exercises in another piece of paper. I grab some different pens and made some quick toodles. Not only it helped me to choose the final graphic style, but also to relax my hand a bit and get confident. For this class, I decided to stick to a very clean style of drawing. I'm going to use two different fine liners. One, 0.3 to draw the outlines, and the other one is 0.05 to add some few details. If you don't have these exact pens, don't worry. You can also use any regular black pen and it works perfectly well. I would like to ask you to use a similar clean style and have these in mind whilst inking your assets. Close your shapes. We're going to be using a paint bucket too later in Photoshop. If you have any gaps, the paint will slip through. Once you finish this class you'll know how to create a pattern of this type and so you'll be able to use any style that you want. Inking my asset, it's a pretty straight-forward process as I'm literally going to be tracing over my pencil drawings. I have already refined my sketches enough to be able to be certain and confident that I'm going to be making the less mistakes as possible. I like to be able to change things a little bit and play if I feel like I want to. Yes, this might make room for some mistakes. As you can see in the parcel, I've made a little double line here that I will erase later in Photoshop. I would advise you to not use too much texture within your assets, as it might make things a bit more difficult when using Photoshop. You can add a couple of dots here and there, but for the purpose of learning the tools that I'm going to show you, it's better to have clean and defined shapes from the beginning. Now you can stay with me and watch me ink my assets until the end of the lesson or you can skip the rest of the lesson, ink yours, and meet me in the next one. Once you finish, you erase your pencil marks and you'll be ready to digitize your drawings. As I said before, for the purpose of this class, it is better to have clean shapes without too much inner texture or shadows. I'll only make a few tiny dots here and there and make sure I don't overdo it. If you want to add a bit of texture here and there, you can observe the photos and see where the shadows are to make a couple of tiny dots and give a bit of depth. Now that all my main shapes are defined, I'm going to move to the 0.0 fine liner to give the details. I got too impatient with my 0.3 pen and I could have saved some lines to this thinner pen, like the lines which are inside the palm, or the star inside the passport. Once you finish adding the ink to your assets, erase the pencil lines, and always do this by pressing your paper with one hand and moving the eraser away from it. If you do it the other way round, you may end up with a grease paper and this will be very frustrating. Once you have your joints inked, get your scanner ready. In the next lesson, we're going to digitize our assets and import them into Photoshop. 8. Digitizing Your Assets: Once you have finished inking your assets, grab your scanner. If you drew your assets in Procreate, simply share them under our POC format and send them to your computer via e-mail or Dropbox. I will be running through this on my own Mac, but you should find a way to do this on your own computer. It's important to scan your images at 300 DPI to have a good resolution for printing. You can save your files in a jpeg format. Open Photoshop. On the navigation bar go into, "File", "Open", select where you saved your scan, and click, "Open". Your scan should now appear in the Photoshop window. If it appears vertically, we will rotate it so it faces the right way. To do this, click on, "Image", "Image Rotation", and rotate in the correct direction to adjust. In our next lesson, we're going to isolate our assets using one of my favorite tools, the magic wand. 9. Shortcuts, Shortcuts!: If you took my previous class, botanical scenes in Photoshop, you will know already that I like to make emphasis on the importance of using shortcuts. It's very important to start using them as you grow in your career as they play a crucial role in creating a faster and more efficient workflow. If you go to the project and resources gallery, I have left a page with the shortcuts that I use regularly when creating a repeating pattern. You can print this page and put it by your side when working and look at it if you have any doubts. Now that I'm using a Mac, when I say Command in a Mac, this will be translated to Control when using Windows. Many of you are probably already familiarized with how to undo things when working in Photoshop, but just in case there's someone new here I'll explain it quickly. To go a step backwards in Photoshop, you have to press "Command Z". This will only allow you to go back one single time. But don't panic, if you want to go back multiple times, you will have to press "Command shift Z." You can also access a History Window located under the Window tab on the top menu, where you will be able to see all the actions that you have taken so far. One of the main shortcuts that I'm going to be using constantly is layer via cut and layer via copy. I will explain them quickly so you can start getting familiarized with them, but don't worry if it's hard to understand. I will be mentioning them in the following chapters, and this will almost serve as a preparation for you to get it later. First, layer via copy. When you make a selection and press layer via copy, Photoshop will create a new layer from the selection made out of the current layer. If there's nothing selected, the shortcut will duplicate the whole layer. This command will be very handy when it comes to duplicating our assets throughout the repeating pattern. Layer via cut is a shortcut that I want you to remember and mostly understand the most, as we will be using it a lot when creating a repeating pattern. The script layer via Cut cuts the selection and paste it into a new layer. See how the top half of the flower has been cut into the top layer and the bottom half is on the bottom layer. This forms part of the method that I normally use when creating a repeating pattern. When created all repeating pattern we're going to be transforming our elements constantly. You will have to press Command T every time that you want to scale or rotate your elements. If you right-click on the element whilst they're transforming function is active, you can also flip your elements horizontally and vertically. Something important to know if you are knew using Photoshop is that the bounding box that appears when you press Command T will surround all of the elements which are contained in the layer that you are standing on. If you want to modify them individually, you can either select them using a selection tool and then pressing the Command T shortcut to transform them, or you would have to select them and press the Layer Via Cut command to place them into its own layer, and then modify them individually. We will also be duplicating our assets a lot, so remember this one. When you press and hold Alt on your keyboard, this double arrow will appear and once it does, you can drag your element or layer to duplicate it. When creating something in Photoshop, it's a good practice to measure the elements that you are designing with. Once you've measured something in Photoshop, you can check the real measurement by using a measuring tape or ruler. This will give you an idea on how your assets will look once they are printed. There are different system of measurements in different countries. To change the system to ones that you're used to, you have to open the rulers located under the Window tab on the top menu. You can also press the shortcut Command R to display them. You'll see a ruler appear on the top and on left border of your Window. If you right-click on top of them, you'll be able to choose the type of measurement that you want to use. Once chosen, you can press the M key on your keyboard to select the rectangular marquee tool, and then close your elements to see how long and wide they're. If you press the Space-bar, you will be able to reposition the initial selection area. Another way in which you can measure your elements and set a certain size to them is by pressing Command T and checking or modifying its measurements on this top little Windows. W stands for width, so you'll be able to transform the horizontal scale in it and H stands for height, so you will be able to modify the vertical scale. You can select or deselect this chain icon to maintain the aspect ratio. When you're working in a document which has many layers, it can be handy to use the Auto Select option so you can just click on the image that you want to move. This will automatically select the correspondent layer in the layer panel. I think that for the purpose of this class, as we are going to be constantly selecting different objects, it makes us to live it on. But if for whatever reason this is giving you trouble by switching layers accidentally, know that you can leave the Auto Select turned off, and toggle it on with a keyboard shortcut. Just hold the Command key once you click on the elements you want to select. The Auto Select will be enabled until you release the key. It also works the opposite way. You can leave the Auto Select turned on in the option bar, and temporarily turn it off by holding Command. Now select all the objects by pressing the Command key whilst you drag and enclose all your elements to select them in an easy way. Save. In this class there will be an exporting lesson right at the end. Still, I'll be asking you to save your files in a JPG format and PSD format as we move through the class. When saving a file there are two options: Save, which is Command S, and Save As, which is Command Shifts S. When you're working on an artwork and press Command S, the changes that have been made will be saved to your file. I advise you to start getting used to pressing Command S regularly. There is nothing more frustrating than losing a file in which you have been working for hours. Sometimes your computer or Photoshop can get stuck and you'll risk losing what you've done. If you want to create the habit you can even set an alarm every five minutes or less to remind you. When you press Command Shift S, Save As, you can store your file as a new one by using a new name. This is great for storing new versions of the same artwork like colors or new versions, choose a new location for it or save it with another extension such as JPG or PNG. As working in Photoshop, you will see a pop-up appear on the left corner of the screen with the shortcuts that I'm using for you to look at when you forget. I will encourage you to really start using them and memorizing them. Before you know it you will have internalized them and designing without even looking at the computer, the menus, or anything. You'll be flying using Photoshop. In the next lesson, we're going to go ahead and separate our elements into different layers. 10. Isolating Your Assets: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to isolate your assets using the magic wand. If you draw your assets in Procreate, you might already have them in a transparent backgrounds. If this is the case, go ahead and meet me in the next lesson. Carefully removing all of the white paper space will allow us the freedom to manipulate our elements individually later on. In the process of isolating your assets, I'm going to show you a couple of methods that are used often. I believe that when you get to know and understand how to use different tools or functionalities in Photoshop, you can start combining them creatively or use them on their own in order to achieve different results or develop a more efficient workflow. You understand this better, I'm going to show you how it works. First, we're going to make a selection with the magic wand, then we're going to apply a mask and refine the selection. Once we're happy with how it looks, we will erase the background. First of all, I'm going to duplicate my background image by right-clicking on it and selecting duplicate layer. It's a good practice to keep a copy of your original image in case you want to go back to it after modifying it. Now, I'm going to add another layer and fill it up with a strong color. Select the ''Bucket Tool'' or press ''G'', set the foreground color to one that you like, press ''Okay,'' and click anywhere on your image. As this is only going to serve as a guide for when I erase my background, I'm going to go ahead and lock it. Having a strong color below your assets will allow you to see if they are well isolated and could work okay in a dark background as well. I'm going to show you how to add a mask to your image. If you're new to this, you'll be able to understand it better. On the top menu, go to Layer, down to Layer Mask, and you have Reveal or Hide All. Let's select "Reveal". You will see that it has added a new layer mask and the image looks exactly the same. Now, if we go back by pressing command Z and select ''Layer'', ''Layer Mask'', and ''Hide All'', then it will create a black layer mask. As you can see, now, it has actually hidden all of the image. By pressing command I, it inverts the color, swapping it around. Now, delete the mask by pressing right-click on top of it and pressing ''Delete Layer Mask''. Note that you can also disable, delete, or apply it on this drop-down menu. You can also create a layer mask from the bottom of the panel by clicking on this icon. If you hold the add key, it will add a black, and as you can see, when the mask is black, you can see that it hides our image. This is very important. If the mask is black, it hides the layer, if the mask is white, it shows it. It's important that you remember this for when you start using the mask and want to modify it. Let's go ahead and remove the mask for now. Now that I have explained how masks work, we're going to fix the brightness and contrast of our image by adjusting the levels. This will make the process of selecting the background much easier as it will look plain white and not textured gray. Press command L and the levels window will appear. You can also do this by going to Image, Adjustments, Levels. Move the black handle to increase the depth of the black tone and the white one to fix the brightness of the white paper. When you're images have colored, the middle handle is used to increase the color richness. Once the contrast of your image looks good, press ''Okay''. Before we select our background, we're going to double-check that there are no gaps in the borders of our images. If you do have any, simply select your Brush tool and close them carefully using the black color. We're going to use the magic wand as selection tool which selects pixels based on tone and color, and because both are background and the inside of our items are white, it's important to check these before making the selection. Now that our image has a good contrast and we have closed all the gaps, we can go ahead and make the selection. From the tool panel, select the ''Magic Wand" tool and make sure that the tolerance is set to 32. The tolerance options tells photoshop how different other pixels can be in tone and color from the area we clicked on for them to be included in the selection. You can play with this handle and click different areas to understand this better for yourself. Click on "Contiguous" to make sure that you only select your background. Contiguous means that the magic wand will select the pixels which are touching each other and not the ones which are isolated from the background. If you uncheck this box, the magic wand will select all the white pixels in your image, including the ones inside your objects. To understand this better, try checking and unchecking it to see what happens. Click on the white background and you should see your selection being made. Start selecting the areas that you see that haven't been selected and you want to include in your selection. You can do this by pressing ''Shift'' as you click on them. You will see a plus symbol appear on the side of the eyedropper tool when you press shift. As we're going to mask our background to make it invisible, we're going to invert our selection to select our assets. To do this, click ''Select'' from the top menu, and click ''Inverse'' or shift command I. The magic wand tool selection is great but it can be a bit dirty and imprecise. To fix this, click on ''Select and Mask'' from the top menu. If you can't see this option, make sure that your selection tool is active on the toolbar. This will enable us to see the mask before we add it. With this handles, you can modify your selection in many ways. In the view mode drop-down menu, you can select many ways in which you can see your mask. If you change your selection and leave your mouse over the view window, an explanation of what each selection mode is will appear. I always select the Onion Skin and set transparency to 100 percent. This mode works very well when you have a solid color under the image you're applying the mask on. Normally, in this type of black and white image contrasted graphic, there is no need to refine the selection too much, but if you see that yours look pixelated, you can smooth the border and then contrast it to gain definition. If you see that you have a white border, shift it to a negative number until you see that it disappears. If you want to be able to use your pattern over a dark background, then you should not have any white border or pixels around your graphics. As you can see, my palm has a lot of little squares within it. Selecting these by hand one-by-one could take me a while so I'll use another selection tool and focus on the bigger shapes for now. Now, with all these tools, I recommend playing with the sliders until your selection looks much smoother and most imperfections have been erased. Once you're happy with the look of your mask, click ''Okay''. Great. Now, this selection is being made and it's time to apply the mask. Simply click on this icon in the layer panel, and the mask will be applied. If you see that your assets have disappeared instead of the background, simply press command eye to inverse it. You can start modifying it by selecting areas that you wish to add or erase, and use the brush or the eraser. I'm pretty happy with how my mask is looking, apart from my palm that has all of these white squared areas. I could start erasing them one-by-one or I could show you how to use another selection method to select then erase them all at once. To use the selection method, we need to disable our mask first. To do this, right-click on top of its thumbnail and press ''Disable Mask''. You can also press ''Shift'' and click on top of the thumbnail. You should see a red cross which means that the mask is currently not active. Now, go to Select on the top menu and go to Color Range. This selection method will allow you to select all the pixels that are the same color as the one that you clicked on. The Fuzziness bar is very similar to the tolerance option that we saw earlier. If you move the handle to the right, more shades of the same color will be selected, and if you move it to the left completely, then only the exact color will be. You can see a preview of this selection that is being made in this window. There is also this drop-down menu called selection preview that I have never noticed before. I'm not sure if it wasn't there, but I have never noticed it. I installed Photoshop 2019 in my computer and it might be a new feature. It allows you to visualize this in four ways. I would say that in this case, the quick mask is the most helpful, but I'm sure different options are suitable for different needs. If you have an older version of Photoshop and can't see this option, don't worry, I've been using this program four years, this is the first time I notice it, and I've survived perfectly well without it. As we're working with a black and white image, it's difficult to see the difference. But if you ever have a colored image, play with the selection tool as it can be very useful. Click on the white background and bring the fuzziness to the right. That way, all the shades of gray pixels that could be attached around the black silhouette will be selected as well, then press ''Okay''. Now, click on the Mask thumbnail to activate the mask again, and selecting the ''Eraser" tool, start erasing the squares of the areas of the image that you wish to remove. Remember that if your eraser doesn't work, you can press the X key to swap the foreground and background color around it for it to work. If it still doesn't work, check that the correct thumbnail is selected. It should be the mask and not the image. Once you're happy with how your mask is looking, right-click on the Mask thumbnail and click ''Apply Layer Mask''. Your background has been erased and your assets are now isolated. In the next lesson, we're going to create some color palettes. Leave your assets aside for a moment and download the color palette Photoshop document that I have left for you in the Project and Resources tab. 11. Color Palette: Color is one of the most important elements in design, and that is why I decided to dedicate a whole lesson to these topic. Choosing limited color palettes that work amazingly well is a whole skill on its own. To master it, you just have to practice and experiment. Limiting your palette to five or six colors has a lot of benefits. From the design perspective, having the same colors repeated across your whole design will provide it with a very strong visual identity and make it look harmonious and cohesive. If you repeat the colors across different designs, then they will instantly work together as a collection. From the production perspective, limited color palettes can reduce costs when your pattern is being printed in big quantities using their screen print technique. I'm not going to explain this in depth, but you might find that certain clients or websites are often looking for designs that have a limited amount of colors. Why is it so important to make your palettes yourself when there are websites that provide ready made ones for you? I believe that it's only when you start creating the palettes yourself that you connect with the colors and feel identified with them. How cool is to know that you own your colors, knowing that you chose them yourself. In this lesson, I will be showing you some different ways to approach the process of combining colors. I will show you some tools that will take you out of what I call the colored comfort zone, and you will be surprised by discovering new combinations that you wouldn't necessarily have picked yourself. Towards the end of the class, we will use the palettes that we agreed in this lesson. We will try our pattern in different color with. Download the color palette template that I have left for you in the project in Resources tab. These will be the main tools that we will use in this lesson. The magic wand, press "W" to select it and click on top of any color that you want to select. When you want to deselect it, press "Command D", G to select the Paint Bucket tool. We'll use these to add color to our squares. I to select the Eyedropper tool. With this tool, you'll be able to select colors that are already exists in your canvas by clicking on top of them. When the Paint Bucket tool is active, you can press and hold Alt on your keyboard, and it will swap for the Eyedropper tool. If you release it, it will go back to the Bucket tool. Lastly, the Command U to open the hue saturation and lightness window. In here, you'll be able to modify your colors as you want. Use these shortcuts from the beginning as they will make your workflow much smoother. Download and open the document called color palette template. You will find two folders, palette and template. They each have five layers, and we're going to add color to the ones in the palette folder and leave the template folder for when you want to create new palettes in the future. Each layer contains five squares that will be filled up with color. We're going to start with the most basic way of making our color palette. Unlock the first layer and press "G" to select the Paint Bucket tool. Press the foreground color. You can change the hue of your color in this vertical bar, and the saturation and luminosity in this square. Take your time choosing a random color that you like. Once you have decide on one, press "Okay". Click on the first square to add color to it. Repeat these steps to add color to the second square. Press "G", click on the foreground color, and start moving the handles to explore different hues. Note that you can see the current color in this lower half of this little square, and then new one on top. This makes it easier to see how both colors combine and look when they're side-to-side. Once you have found one that you like, click "Okay" and click on the second square. Repeat these steps until you have filled up all of your squares. Great. You have created your first color palette. Colors influence each other, and that is why it's [inaudible] will log these first color palette and make it invisible by clicking on this eye icon. We'll create the second color palette in a slightly different way. Select and unlock the second layer. Choose a foreground color to start your palette. Try to choose a color that you didn't use in the first one. If you did a bright, first color palette, try to go for a pastel or more desaturated one, and vice versa. Once you have chosen your color, press "Okay", and click on the first square. Add the same color to the second square, and we'll modify these one by using the hue saturation tool. To prevent the whole layer from changing, it is necessary to select the second square by using the Magic Wand. Press "W", and click on it. Open the Hue Saturation window by pressing "Command U". Start playing with these handles until you find the color that visually combines well with the first one. I find this method easier and more enjoyable as I can see how the colors are looking side-by-side. Once you find one that you're happy with, press "Okay". Great. You have chosen your second color. Now, repeat the same method with the other three squares. Press "I" to pick the new color, pick a new color with the Eyedropper tool, then press "G" to add it to the third square. Press "W" to select it with a Magic Wand and Command U to open the Hue Saturation window. Modify the color until you're happy with it, and press "Okay". I to pick, G to color, W to select, and Command U to modify. Finish with these other two, and you will have created your second color palette. The third method is more like an extension of the second one. We're going to copy all of the colors into the third one. Instead of modifying the colors individually, we'll modify the palette as a whole. First of all, lock the second layer to prevent it from being modified. Unlock and select the third one and copy all the existing colors into this one. To do this, use these shortcuts. G to select the Paint Bucket tool, then press and hold Alt on your keyboard to swap it with the Eyedropper tool. Click on the first square of the existing color palette to pick the color up. Finally, click on the first square of the new one to copy it. Repeat, press G to select the Paint Bucket tool, press and hold Alt to swap it with the Eyedropper tool, click on the second square of the existing color palette, and click on the second square of the new one to copy it. Practice this shortcuts is again, to copy all of the colors into the new color palette. Try to remember all the shortcuts as it will make your process of coloring your asset so much more enjoyable. Once palette has been copied, make the second layer invisible. Select the third layer. Press "Command U", and play with the handles. The color combinations that appear with this method are always a surprise to me. I think I tend to choose very similar colors when designing and when using this method, new [inaudible] combinations are shown. For the other two palettes, try combining these two methods. Choose some colors from the foreground window, choose some others with the eyedropper tool and modify them with a hue saturation adjustment. If you adjust the color to the whole palette, then modify or change the ones that you are not sure. Once you have your page full, save the file in PSD and JPEG format. Press "Command Shift S", make a folder for your color palettes, and save it under the name of Color Palette 1. If you're having fun and want to explore with colors a bit longer, then go ahead and make a second page. You can change the first folder's name to Color Palette 1, lock it, and make it invisible. Duplicate the template folder. Rename it to Color Palette 2, and fill it up. Once your second page is ready, save it under JPEG if you want, and do a third one. This way you can end up with a whole collection of ready-made color palettes to use across different design projects. In the next lesson, we're going to add color to our assets with the help of our chosen color palette. Make sure that you decide on one before playing the next video. 12. Coloring Your Assets: In this lesson, we're going to add color to our assets using the palette that we have created already as a guide. It might be that you want to change your mind the body of palette while coloring your assets, and that's totally fine, it happens to me all the time. We're going to color our assets in a non-destructive way which I'll explain a bit later. Feel free to change the palette for another one or try new colors as you go. I'd suggest that you maintain a limited palette as we're going to separate our colors into different layers towards the end of the class, and having too many might make things a bit more difficult to follow. Open the Conversational Assets file and save a copy of it under a new name. I'd like to keep a copy of my assets without colors just in case. Press Command Shift S, or go to File, Save As, and save the new document. I'm going to save mine as Colored Assets. I'd like to bring my chosen color palette to this document for where I'm going to make a bit of space at the bottom. Instead of making my assets smaller, I'm going to make my canvas bigger. When you want to make your canvas bigger, Photoshop adds the new space, taking in account the background color. For it to be white, I have to make sure that the background color on my toolbar is set to white as well. By clicking on this little icon, I can reset the colors to black and white, and then press the key "X" to invert them. I can change the dimensions of my canvas using two different methods. Press Command Alt C to open the canvas panel and change its height in here, or I can make it bigger by pressing C to select the crop tool from the toolbar and change the dimensions of my canvas organically, which I prefer. I'm not going to need this middle purple layer anymore so I'll erase it by selecting the layer and clicking on the backspace key on my keyboard. I'm not going to need this original assets either, so I'll erase them as well without getting rid of the background layer. Press M to select the rectangular marquee tool and close your assets and press the backspace key on your keyboard. When you want to erase something on your background layer, this fill window will appear. Select "White" from the content drop-down menu and then press "Okay". When changing the size of my canvas, this little line appear in here. I will select it using the rectangular marquee tool, and then press the backspace key to erase it. Now that we have created space for our color palette, let's bring it into this document. Go to your color palette document and select the color palette that you want to use. Once your layer is selected, right-click on top of it and go down to Duplicate Layer. Where it says destination, go to Conversational Assets document and click "Okay". Go to your Conversational Assets document, and your palette should appear in here. Place it on the bottom of your canvas to have it as reference. If you work on a laptop or have a small screen like me and you start zooming on your assets, the fact that your colors are invisible might get pretty annoying. You could start zooming in and out to pick new colors with the eyedropper tool, and lose time this way. A great solution to this is to save your colors as swatches and then have them available all the time. To do this, go to Window and go down to Swatches. To erase all of these swatches that appear by default, click on top of this right top corner icon and go down to Preset Manager. When this window appears, choose all the colors by clicking on the first one and then while pressing and holding Shift on your keyboard, click on the last one. Now, you can delete and click "Done". The default swatches can be reset as they were originally by selecting Reset Swatches from the drop-down menu. Now that our swatches box is empty, we're going to add the colors that we're going to use. Press I to select the eyedropper tool, click on the first color of your palette, and it should instantly appear on this first swatch in this horizontal line. Now, press this icon at the bottom of the panel to save this new swatch. Press "Okay", and then repeat the same step with all of the colors. Click on the second color and save. If you wish to save this color palette, you can save it by going to Save Swatches on the drop-down menu, and save them in a folder of your choice. You can also delete colors that you no longer want to use by right-clicking on top of them and selecting Delete Swatch. If by any chance, your panel window disappears, go to Window and choose Swatches from the drop-down menu. The same way I like to use masks to prevent damaging my images when erasing their background, I like to use layer in a multiply blending mode when coloring my assets. Let me explain this better. I'm going to duplicate my assets layer, lock it and make it invisible, just in case I damage my assets while explaining. If I start coloring my assets and I changed my mind too many times by applying light and dark colors, with every application, my lines will start to get damaged. The times that you can go backwards in Photoshop are limited and so there is a chance that you won't be able to go back enough times to recover your drawings as to how they were initially. I'll erase this layer I just damaged and lock my assets layer to prevent myself from using it. Go ahead and lock your assets layer as well. If I create a new layer on top and set the blending mode to multiply, I can color and change my mind as many times as I want, even discard it without affecting my assets layer. The main thing is to tick this little box located by the side of Contagious that says All Layers. When this mode is active, Photoshop will read all the pixels shown on the canvas as if they were in the same layer. See what happens and check, and nothing. It add colors to the whole layer, as of course, there is nothing on it to contain the color. If I tick the box but then Photoshop forgets about the layers and reads the whole image as if it was on the same layer. Something to have in mind was coloring graphic with the bucket tool is the tolerance. Remember, I covered this already while selecting our white background with the magic wand? When you use the bucket tool, there is a similar scenario. The bucket tool fills up spaces that share a common color and tone, and the tolerance number dictates how many shades of that same color can be included in the colored area. Let's say that you want to add a very dark color like this dark blue to your assets. You might find that it doesn't covers the whole area completely and there is a tiny gray border left on the borders. If I zoom into my assets and click on the white area, you can see that there is a row of gray pixels that are not being included when the tolerance number is set to the default 32. If I increase my tolerance number to, let's say, 100 and click again, it starts looking much better, but I can see that there are still a couple of pixels here and there. I'll set the number to 200 and try again. As you can see, it's now covering all of the pixels. Same goes for when you are applying a very pale color and your assets have a tiny gray space. If the tolerance is set to 200, then it will read those gray pixels as part of the whiting side area that you clicked on, and the paint will slip through. If you drop the number down, then you will differentiate the gray pixels from the white pixels, and the paint will stop in there. Coloring my drawings on a different layer gives me the peace of mind to change the colors as many times as I want. If whilst coloring your assets, you feel that you want to add colors to your palette, feel free to do so. I'll leave some of my assets white as I want the style of my pattern to be quite clean. To color my palm, I will use my brush and color on top of it, adding some lines and texture. Zooming in and out constantly will allow you to see how the colors are being distributed across the whole elements. Without your color palette, know that that's totally normal. I'm actually starting to doubt mine myself. I'm not sure if it's the yellow Ochre, but there is something that I'm not quite sure about. Instead of starting all over again, I'll leave this until the end and adjust the color palette in the Hue Saturation window. It is good to see how a design evolves and not get too attached to anything in particular. Designing is a very creative, organic process, and so I feel that the design starts guiding you as it moves forward. I have finished and I'm definitely not entirely happy with my chosen colors. So I'll open the Hue Saturation window and adjust them there. There is this wonderful drop-down menu in here which allows me to modify my colors individually. This is an amazing feature as it allows you to have much more control when modifying a multicolored image. Great, I think I'm happy with how it looks now, so I'll leave it for now. Now that I have finished coloring my assets, I'll erase my color palette, ungroup my assets, uncolor layer. I'll duplicate the group and press Command E to merge them. That way, I can maintain the assets and then color layer separately, but still available, and then one which has the two-layer merged. I'll make my group invisible and leave it for if I want to use more colors in the future. Once your assets are looking colorful, join me in the next lesson. We're going to quickly separate our assets into separate layers to be able to manipulate them individually later on. 13. Assets into Different Layers : In this lesson, we're going to separate our assets into different layers. This will allow us to work with them individually and start moving them around our canvas when composing our repeating pattern. We're going to select each element, and put it onto its own layer. To do this in a quick and easy way, we will use the Lasso Tool to select it. Right-click on top of the element, and select "Layer Via Cut". I recommend using the shortcut; Command, Shift, J, as we will be repeating this step multiple times. After you have your element on its own layer, click on the eye to hide it from view. Repeat this process for every element on the page. Now that our assets are looking colored and separated into different layers, we're going to set them aside for a moment. In the next lesson, I will talk about some pattern fundamentals that is good to learn before we start designing our pattern. 14. Pattern Fundamentals: Patterns can seem very tricky to make. When they cover larger surfaces, they can look extremely complex, but they're actually made up from one single repeating tile. In the next lesson, I'll be showing you some slides and examples showing concepts that are good to understand before putting them into practice. I'll mainly talk about size, something extremely important when designing in Photoshop, and the different repeating systems that you can use to create repeating patterns. This class is about creating a repeating pattern, which is something that can infinitely repeat across any area. When patterns cover large surfaces, they can look extremely complex, but they are actually made from one single repeating tile. One of the fundamental steps of creating a repeating tile is to understand the basic different repeating systems and how to make them. This can educate your eye for when it comes to creating more complex, seamless patterns. In this lesson, I'll show you some pattern examples and explain with a couple of slides, the different repeat systems. In the next one, we'll go ahead and practice them. First, let's talk about size. When you design in Photoshop, it's important to think about what you would like to use your pattern for and try to design accordingly. Throughout my professional career, I have been mainly requested by clients to design in these formats. Eight per eight centimeters, 16 per 16, 32 per 32, and 64 per 64 centimeters. These sizes are a function of the circumference of the cylinder that some factories use for printing, but they can vary depending on where you live. You can take them as reference, but let's refer to them as small, medium, large, and huge. The size of your canvas not only has an effect on the characteristic of your design, but can also make the design process much more efficient if you know what you're looking for. When you're making a very simple design with one small element, it makes more sense to go for a smaller canvas. There is no point in investing a lot of time and effort when the repeating system will do the hard work for you. If instead of one, you want to use three elements, then a medium format would be enough to make it look good. Choosing a canvas size that suits the look you want to achieve will definitely make you more efficient when designing. This is a moon and star pattern, which I made a couple of years ago. At that time, I chose a big canvas straight away, thinking that it was going to be much better and it would look more professional. Now, after having worked in the industry for years, I would have totally gone for a medium one. It would have taken half of the time to do the repetition and when you compare both prints, you can't really notice much of a difference between the two. It's also important to have in mind the scale of the elements that we design with. This cat print is a good example of how to print using the same canvas size can look different in scale. To practice the fundamentals, we will use a medium canvas, and only when designing with other rare elements, we will move into a large one. Now let's have a look at some different repeat fundamentals. Block pattern repeat. The block repeating pattern is one of the simplest of other systems. This takes the original repeat block into a grid format to cover the whole area. It is most commonly used as a square unit, but you can also use a rectangle for this. A half drop pattern repeat is common within less formal designs. This type of pattern is done by stacking the repeating unit in a column and upsetting this by half in the next column. Brick pattern repeat. The brick repeat is similar to the half drop, but it's stuck horizontally rather than vertically, just as you would commonly see in brickwork. This helps to break up the design and also make it appear less formal. One way or directional pattern have strong lengths of elements running either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Two directional patterns are similar to one-way patterns, but they are reversible as they run both horizontally and vertically. A multi-directional repeat can be viewed from any direction. When you place the elements in different directions, the pattern design does not appear to have a specific direction. This type of designs are great for printing fabric, has it can be cut and used from any point which avoids fabric wastage. Now that we have covered the basic pattern fundamentals, we're going to practice them. In the next lesson, I'll show you the method and shortcuts that I use when making any type of patterns. 15. Practicing the Fundamentals: Here's where the real fun begins. Designing or repeating tile can feel quite daunting to begin with, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be a pro in no time. Everyone has a different approach to making patterns and you're welcome to experiment yourself. I'm going to teach you the method that has been working for me more in the last years when I've been using Photoshop. I would suggest that you download the practicing fundamentals document that I have left for you in the Project and Resources gallery and follow the lesson with it. You will be able to follow exactly what I'm doing with out any problems. After you see how every pattern is done, you're welcome to repeat the exercises but using elements of your own. Of course, if you feel like you want to use your elements from the beginning, then go for it. I'll explain in a couple of slides how we are going to make the repeating pattern so you understand the Layer via Cut method. Our chosen drawing is in the center of our canvas. We will duplicate it and place it on the top side so that the top half is in the outside area. Note that in these slides, I'm letting you see what's outside of the canvas but in practice, you won't be able to see it. Then we will select what's inside of our canvas and press "Layer via Cut". This will split our drawing into two different layers and so we'll be able to modify them individually. We will move the part that has been left outside of the canvas to the bottom of it and then merge the two layers to make sure that when we move one of the two parts, the other one will move as well. To create the repeat on the horizontal side and fill up the corners, we will move the object to the side and repeat the same process. Select what's inside the canvas, press "Layer via Cut", move what's left outside to the other side and our repeating pattern tile will be ready to be turned into a pattern. Now let's go ahead and practice exactly what we've just seen. Download the Practice and Fundamental file to your computer. If you prefer, you can also open a new eight centimeters document and place one of your elements inside it. Simply go to "File", "New", select the centimeters from the drop-down menu, put eight in here and check that the resolution is set to 300 dpi. Choose a name for it and save it on your computer. It is at this point where having a measuring tape or ruler by your side might come in handy. Open the Practicing Fundamentals files in Photoshop. There is a group with three layers, an umbrella, a sun, and a little 3.8 centimeter square that we will use as a guide when creating the block repeating pattern in a couple of minutes. To create these patterns, you can use these elements or use yours. Duplicate the object that you want to use from the Colored Assets document or simply drag it from one document to another. From now on, we will be using all the shortcuts that we saw in the shortcuts lesson very often. If you feel like you're getting lost, then go back to it or download the shortcuts page that I left for you in the Projects and Resources gallery. Before we even start, check that you have these two things active. Go to View on the top menu, and down to Snap. This will help you to place your elements on the border of your canvas and View, Show, Smart Guides. This will be useful when placing your elements within your canvas. Now we're ready to start. Duplicate the umbrella layer by pressing and holding out on your keyboard and place it outside of the group. Lock the group, and make it invisible. If you need to transform it, press Command T on your keyboard and move the handles to adjust. Press and hold Alt on your keyboard and drag the element to the top of your canvas to duplicate it so that the top half is left outside. Press M to select the Rectangular Marquee tool and select what's inside. Press "Layer via Cut" command to split your drawings into two different layers. When you do this, a new layer containing the selection is created on top. You can check this by making your layers visible and invisible, or by pressing command T to see which layer contains what. Select the bottom layer which contains the part that's outside and while pressing shift on your keyword, move it to the other side of your canvas. Merge the two layers to make sure that when you move one of the two parts, the other one will move as well. Now you have created the vertical repetition. To create the corners, we're going to repeat the same process, but to the other side. Move the split umbrella to the corner so that half of it it's outside. If you press Command T and move it, you will be able to see the middle edge of your objects and place them exactly in the middle. These might be handy under certain circumstances. Select what's inside of the canvas with the Marquee Selection tool, press "Layer via Cut", move what's left outside to the other side. If you're not sure if your objects are aligned with the borders of your document, zoom in as much as you can and check that there aren't any white pixels on the sides. If there are, use the arrows on your keyboard to move your motifs until they touch the borders. Once you finish, you can merge the two layers so the four corners are together. Group the layers and name the group simple pattern. You will have done your first repeating tile. Now we're going to turn our repeating tile into our pattern. Go to Edit tab on the top menu and down to Define Pattern. You can name your pattern if you wish, and press OK. To visualize the pattern, open a new A4 document. Once it's open, click on the icon located at the bottom of the layer panel and go down to Pattern to create a new field layer. On the scale window, you will be able to visualize your pattern at any scale. I like to always visualize my pattern at 50 percent as it makes it easy to spot any obvious repetitions and holes, especially when it comes to creating more context patterns. One thing I like to do when creating and testing pattern is to split my window into two vertical ones. If you go to Window, Arrange, and click over 2 vertical up, you will be able to see your repeating tile and repeating pattern at the same time. If you're working on a laptop like me, you might feel that the space to design isn't enough to work comfortably. The good thing is that by pressing the key F on your keyboard, you will be able to switch your screen mode from full-screen mode to standard screen mode and only have this mode active when you are testing and comparing your patterns. Note that if you have more than two documents open, you can still move the tabs from one side to another and only leave the ones you want to work with visible. Simply press F to work on your pattern, and then F when you want to test it. Block pattern repeat. To create the block repeating pattern, we're going to scale up our document up to 16-by-16 centimeters. You can do this by going to Image, Canvas Size, and adjusting the size in here or by pressing Command C. Remember that whenever you have doubts about the size of your elements, you can measure your element in Photoshop and then grab your measuring tape to see what the actual size is. If you can't remember how to do this, go back to the shortcut section and check it up. I can't stress enough how important this is when designing, especially when you want to print your designs. There have been countless time where I have designed without having the measurements in mind and then have had a terrible surprise when printing it. You might think that you're designing in a very big scale when in reality you're designing small. This can be very frustrating, especially when you design small and you want to enlarge it as it will lose resolution. From now on, our files might start having more than four or five layers. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, I very rarely name them as it doesn't really make sense for me. Remember that you can use the auto select icon on the top bar to select your objects by clicking on them. You can also press Command and click and drag your mouse to enclose the layers that you want to choose. Now let's start our pattern. Make the group visible, unlock it, drag them by the layer outside of the group plus holding Alt to duplicate it. Make the guide layer visible. Now transform the size of your drawing to fit in the box. We need to make sure that our object has the right size so that we can fit it up to four times vertically and horizontally in 16 centimeters. For those of you who have created their own document, you can check the size of your element by pressing Command T and adjusting the size of your longer edge in here to be 3.8 centimeter or smaller. If another type of measuring like pixels or inches is being shown, then double-click on top of the window and select centimeters. Now lock the group again and make it invisible. Press and hold Alt whilst dragging your objects horizontally to duplicate it four times. We want our pattern to look good so we need to make sure that the spaces in between our items are equal. We could try doing it by eye, but then the space in each side of the canvas would be hard to guess. To get this right, we're going to use the Distribute tool that Photoshop provides for us. Note that these icons will only be visible when the move icon is selected on the toolbar. To be able to distribute the spaces in between our elements equally, we'll have to split our element on the sides first. Place your first object so that half of it is invisible and outside of the canvas. Select the inside part of the object with the Rectangular Marquee tool, press "Layer via Cut" and the part that is visible will be placed on the new layer on top. Select the bottom layer that has been created, press V on top of your keyboard to select the moving tool and whilst pressing and holding Shift to maintain the horizontal edge, drag it to the other side. Now select all the objects by pressing the Command key whilst you drag and enclose all your elements to select them in an easy way. Click on this icon to distribute the spacing horizontally in an equal way. Now that your elements are distributed, you can match the layers. Now we're going to create the vertical repeat. Press and hold Alt and duplicate your layer four times. Move the top layer so that half of it is placed outside of the canvas. Select the inside part with the Rectangular Marquee tool, press the "Layer via Cut" shortcut, select the bottom layer, hold shift and drag the top part to the bottom of your canvas. Select all the rows and press "Distribute Vertically." If you don't know if your assets are touching the side of your canvas, zoom in and check that there are no white pixels in the borders. The Snap function helps to attach it to the document borders, but sometimes it doesn't work well and so it's always good to check. Great, you've created your blog pattern repeat. Go to Edit, Define Pattern, Okay, and let's press "F" to change our screen mode to be able to visualize it on the other window. Double-click on the pattern field layer and select the new pattern from this menu. You can start comparing the patterns that we're doing on the drop-down menu when you click on the Pattern thumbnail. Remember that you can use different elements to make these exercises. If you do this, by the end of this lesson, you'll have designed six patterns that could work as a little collection. After checking all the pattern, go back to your document and make a group with a block repeat so that we can use it again as it is. Half Drop Pattern Repeat. Right-click over the Block Repeat group, down to Duplicate, and change the name in here to Half Drop Repeat. Merge all the layers together. Select the second and fourth row with the Marquee Tool and press "Layer Via Cut". Move the layers so that each item is placed in between the others. You have two ways to go forward. You can select what's inside and press "Layer Via Cut" and move what's outside to the other side or because these layers already work as a repeating tile, you can duplicate them holding out or subtract them, and then merge them. With the second method, you can move the row until they look right to you. Now you know how to turn you repeating tile into a pattern, go and check it out. Brick pattern repeats. Duplicate the block repeat group again. Repeat what we've already did, but instead of doing vertically, do it horizontally. Merge all the layers, select two of the lines and cut them into another layer using the "Layer Via Cut" shortcut. You will move the layer to the sides so that each umbrella is located in-between the others, we won't have any umbrella to cut, and therefore, it will be much difficult to calculate the distance. In this case, I'd rather duplicate it holding out, whilst I drag it and merge it, then I can move the whole line until I like how it looks. Turn your Brick Repeat tile into a pattern and go and check it out. Two directional. Up until now, it's been quite easy to make the repeating patterns. It's been just duplicating elements on practicing the Layer Via Cut repeat. When you start using more than one direction or element, the level of difficulty increases a little bit. We're going to make a two directional pattern by flipping some of the elements vertically. As we've just done the Brick Repeat, let's duplicate the whole group, change its name, and work with what we have. Let's try flipping the two rows that we already moved by pressing "Command T" on your keyboard, right-click on top of them, and then going down to Flip Vertically. If you're using one of your elements and your pattern looks good, great. With my pattern, I am noticing something that isn't quite right. Here is where things can get tricky and you'll have to start being aware of the composition. When flipping these two layers around, all the sticks ended up together creating a tool horizontal line effect. I'll turn this into a pattern so that you can see it clearly. When you test your pattern and try it out on a very small-scale, these will be visible to the eye almost instantly. It might be that it gives you some sort of ideas to try, but then it's good to make it more obvious and make it look as if you did it intentionally. I'll erase the group that didn't work and this time I'll duplicate the half drop repeats to try with this one. Let's grab two of the rows and transform them vertically. Even if I feel that it works much better, there is still a visual effect that I'm not entirely happy with. It might be due to the position of the top part of the umbrella in relation to the stick that doesn't seem to work completely. I'll see what happens if I flip the items horizontally as well. Much better. Let's turn this into a pattern and see how it looks. You can compare old patterns and new patterns in here. Multidirectional. A multidirectional pattern might seem more difficult to compose but if you intuitively follow a similar structure as a half drop or a Brick Repeat pattern, it will be very easy to make. Let's duplicate the umbrella from the Practice initial group and fit it into the guide. Press "Command G" to create a group with it and name it Multidirectional Pattern. I'll place my elements by eye following the half drop or Brick Repeat scheme. Once they are positioned, I'll start rotating them and creating the repeat on the sites. You can use a distribute function or calculate the distances by eye. Remember to always merge the split elements so that they move at the same time. To create the rest of the pattern, I'll just duplicate what I have already done and rotate the rest of the elements. If you have your layers merged, you can use the Lasso Tool to select each element and either use the layer via cut shortcut to place it into its own layer or rotate it right where it is. I hope that you're able to follow me as we have done this exact process several times already. The process is always selecting the elements on the side with the Marquee Tool applying the layer via cut shortcut and moving what's outside of the canvas to the other side. Remember to always merge the split elements so that they move at the same time. Having your screen like this allows you to compare both your repeating tile and pattern whilst being side-by-side. This can be very handy when designing more complex patterns. At this point on this pattern, I'd like to introduce a second element. If you're using your own elements, I would suggest for it to be smaller than the first one. Use it as a compliment and start putting it on the empty spaces. Now it's very visible how the Brick or Half Drop Repeat scheme has been used to create this composition all along. Once the gaps are filled, turn the file into a pattern and check it out. After you have finished, you can start saving your patterns in JPEG or TIFF format as they will be ready to print. Save your file in a PSD format as well. If you want to prevent it from taking too much space in your computer, make sure that you erase layers that you aren't using. I hope that this lesson leaves you feeling like a pro when using the Layer Via Cut and other shortcuts and provides you with some solid tools to create structured and balanced patterns in the future. You're welcome to go through this lesson again, using your own elements. The more you practice, the more you will internalize these shortcuts. If you do go through this lesson again, think about what size you want your patterns to be. You don't necessarily have to use an [inaudible] document and your pattern can be much bigger. If you want to design a shower curtain, let's say, then go for something larger. If you want your patterns to be used as a complement on a pocket or a mug, then the sizes that we've seen are probably fine. In any case, try to be mindful about the size before you start designing. Measure your elements in Photoshops and compare them with your measuring tape. If you're not a 100 percent sure about what you want, then go for a bigger size and resize later. Simple patterns can be a great complement from when designing collections and if you use different assets to cover the different exercises, you'll have a mini collection of six or eight when finishing the Practicing the Fundamentals lesson. I like to save my files in a JPEG format as I create verses of them. I have already talked about how to save your files in the shortcuts lesson, but if you want to hear more about it, you can quickly jump to the Exporting Patterns lesson, and then come back into this one. If you do these exercises again with your own assets and save them properly, you will have them ready to use by the end of this class. If you make your own patterns throughout this class, share them with us in the Project and Resources Gallery as I would love to see them. In the next lesson, we're going to create our first pattern with all of our elements. We'll do it in a structured way and you will see how easy it is. 16. Creating a Structured Pattern: This class is all about giving you the knowledge and tools that you need to create repeating patterns. This is why I decided to create two lessons showing you two different approaches to creating a similar pattern point of the same elements. I used these two methods in a very instinctive way. Depending on the situation, I think that it's good to show you both, so that you can choose the one that suits you the most. These lesson and the next one are going to be a bit different from the rest. I already showed you in a very detailed way how to create repeating patterns in the previous lesson. Instead of narrating step by step what I'm doing, I film myself first and then analyze the steps I took. I focus on showing you the method, the composition I had in mind when positioning my elements by eye, and some problems I face when designing it. The first thing I always do when creating a pattern of any type, is duplicating the folder containing my original assets. It is very important to do this, as there might be a point where you might need them again after they have been merged with other elements. My pattern was made following the brick repeat structure, and so I decided to organize my items from the very beginning. Some elements are bigger and heavier than others, and so I separated the big elements from the small ones, and placed them in different groups. Using groups when working is very important. As you know, I very rarely name my layers, but I always make sure to try and keep my groups organized. To create the main structure, I use the bigger elements, so I only left that group visible. I work with the big elements first, following the brick composition to create a strong, well composed structure. We already did this in the previous lesson when designing them multi-directional pattern, and so I assume that you have an idea on how to do this. When placing the elements, I made sure to use them all, and once they were placed correctly, I started rotating them. Then I started duplicating them, making sure not to place two of the same elements side by side. I was also being aware of the direction that each of them was facing to make sure that the composition would work well in every way. Once they were displayed, I worked on the vertical repeat. I first decided which of the elements would look better in relation to the others. Rotated them, and then merged them into a single layer to apply the layer by cut shortcut to all at the same time. As always, I moved the outside part to the other side and merged them so they worked as one. One of the trickiest parts of creating a repeat is the corners as they have to work both horizontally and vertically. I normally do one side first and then the other. If you don't remember how to do this, go back to the previous lesson and make the very first pattern where we saw how to do this. As I was having the brick repeat in mind, I decided to repeat the horizontal elements individually as this would allow me to distribute the lines separately. Always remember to merge the elements that you split to avoid them moving separately. If this happens, you would notice it in the repetition, and so it's good to avoid it straight away by making sure that both half are in the same layer. At this point I got a bit confused. The brick repeat was very clear and suddenly it wasn't. I didn't realize that when adjusting the spacing between the top and bottom elements, I moved the whole line and it wasn't aligned to the third layer, but to the second one. It took me a while to understand what was happening, but once I noticed the mistake and moved it, then everything made sense again. These things happen all the time. Sometimes you move an element or a block of them, and suddenly what made sense before seems to be a complete mess. In this cases, the best thing you can do is stop and take a step back to try to figure out what's wrong. If you start moving things too much, you will end up using much more time than if you take a moment to think it through. After all the elements were placed, I swapped a couple around with others as they were side by side. As you just saw, I zoomed out my compass a little bit, as this helps me to have a better look at the composition as a whole. After being happy with the look of it, I turned it into a pattern to make sure that the core structure of my pattern was looking balanced. Always check your pattern in a very small scales to see how they work. Don't get too worried at minor things as you won't probably spot them when the pattern is printed at a 100 percent, but if there is something that is too obvious, then you would have to go back and amend it. After checking my pattern was good, I went back, lowered the opacity of the whole group and locked it. Locking the group would prevent me from moving the elements that were already displaced correctly, and lowering the opacity would allow me to work on the rest without getting confused. I started placing these smaller elements around the big ones, feeling the blank spaces. If you're using words, be careful when swapping things horizontally, as they might end up mirrored when printing them if you don't do it correctly. I quite like to work this way as the composition is very likely to work appropriately from the beginning. Designing a pattern is just moving assets around until they work well, and the whole artwork looks as a balance whole. One of the most testing things when creating patterns, as funny as it sounds, is your patience. Once my pattern looks finished, I set the opacity of the big elements to a 100 percent, and turned the told into a pattern. Even if I thought the pattern was quite well balanced and composed, there were some minor areas which I thought could benefit from some small elements in it. It's great to be able to compare both your pattern and your toll to spot where the holes or problems are. Once you amend something turn your toll into a pattern again and check it out. Once you're finished, save your pattern in a PSD format and we will export it in the exporting our pattern lesson. I hope that you were able to follow this lesson, and so the benefits of analyzing the creative process that I went through when making my own design. I think it's important for you to get a wider perspective of the process and not just the detail step by step. In the next lesson, I will show you a second approach to designing a repeat in pattern using the same elements. 17. Creating an Organic Pattern: As much as I like to work in an organized way, there are many times where I approach repeating patterns in a more organic and freestyle way. Making patterns this way is a lot of fun, it's like solving a puzzle where all the elements have to fit well with each other. As always, the first thing was to duplicate the group containing my original assets to use later. This time, I didn't separate the small and big elements and worked with all of them at the same time. I started arranging the elements in a way in which they would fit well together. This is a fun process that I like a lot. I feel like I'm making a puzzle or playing a game. It's a matter of transforming the elements, rotating them, flipping them horizontally and vertically until they fit. Once I used all the elements and liked how they were displayed, I duplicated the whole group to be able to use it again. Now, pay attention because this is another way of working which I use a lot. I merged one of the groups and I created their horizontal repeat with the whole elements at the same time. After I double-check that the borders were properly placed, I lowered the opacity and then locked it. I did this so I could differentiate the elements that had already been used from the new ones. Using the group that I had duplicated earlier, I started moving my assets around so that they would fit, making sure to balance the big and small elements around it. As I had already created my structured pattern, and notice that the palm stands out more to the eye, I made sure to place this in a balanced way and not duplicate it too many times. Once the middle gap was filled, I merged all the elements and created the vertical repeat. A better step to take would have probably been to duplicate the group first and then merged all the elements to save them in separate layers. Thankfully, I had set the original folder and so I could use those to fill the middle gap. These are things that you start thinking about after designing many patterns. It's incredible how your composition skills tend to level up the more you practice to the point that you almost always get it right from the beginning even if you're not using any type of structure. To fill the middle empty space, I decided to place all the elements on the bottom of the page. This allowed me to see the gap and have all the separate assets available and ready to use. Once the gap was filled, I created the horizontal repeat again and started building the middle area. I noticed this area here, which is very common we're working these way, and use a lasso and eraser tool amend it. I decided to select and duplicate the elements that I wanted to use instead of using the original assets group. I could also have lowered the opacity of the repeated layer and locked it. But I thought that displaying the separate elements with a repeat in the background could have been very overwhelming and confusing. I would rather select the ones that I want to use using the lasso tool and use layer by a copy shortcut to duplicate them into a new layer. I saw that this roller blade was placed exactly the same way as the one above. So I use a lasso and layer by a cut shortcut to change its position. If you need to erase, move, or make space for other elements, use a lasso and layer by a cut or copy shortcut. It's important to take your time observing the pattern. Once you finish see if you can spot things that aren't working right or holes that need to be filled. I always fill the large spaces with big elements and then start filling the gaps with the smaller ones. Once you're done, check that your pattern looks balanced, and amend things if necessary. I hope that by now you have a solid base to create repeating patterns. You can use these shortcuts and methods, not only for conversational but for any type of patterns. In the next lesson, we're going to separate our colors into different layers using more advanced selection techniques. Press Command S to save your pattern and meet me in the next lesson. 18. Colors into Different Layers: In order to be able to try our pattern in different colors, we have to separate each of them into its own layer first. In this lesson, I will show you some advanced selection techniques, and guide you through the possible challenging scenarios that you might encounter. Every case might be a bit different and you'll be able to judge when to use certain methods and when to use others. With a bit of patient, you'll be successful in separating your colors into different layers. I'll choose the pattern which I created in an organic way in the previous lesson. I'll save this pattern with a different name and create a folder called colorways, and save the file as colorway1.psd. I let this folder in here which I will erase. I know I have a file saved as separate assets where I can find all the original ones, so I can do this without fearing losing them. First we'll look at the channels panel and see how to extract just a blank lines from our image. The channels panel is by default located next to the layer stuff. If you don't see it, go to the Window tab and down to channels. As we are only interested in extracting the black line over drawing, we need to first turn our image into a black and white well contrasted one. To do this in a non-destructive way, we will use an adjustment layer. An adjustment layer applies color or tunnel adjustments to an image without permanently changing its pixel values. Go to the Window tab and down to adjustments. Click on this icon and all your colors will be turned into gray values. If you move the handle to the left, your colors will appear black, and if you move them to the right, they all turned into white. Move all of them to the right to remove all of your colors and only leave your original drawing. We need our black lines to be a 100 percent black, and that's why we're going to increase the contrast. Click on this icon to display the levels and move the black and white handles to adjust. Once it's done, close the panel. If you want to modify any of these adjustments again, just double-click on the icons and the panels will appear again. Now that our image is looking good in black and white and it has a good contrast, we're going to extract the black line using the channels panel. Go to the channels panel and make sure that the RGB layer is selected. If you click on this icon, the white areas of your image will load as a selection. You should now see a dashed line bordering them. As we need to select the black line, we're going to invert the selection by pressing Command Shift I. When the selection is done, go back to the layer panels and either make the adjustment layers invisible or erase them. We could create a new empty layer and fill it up with a black color but in this case, we're going to extract the line from the assets using the layer via cut shortcut. The reason to do this is because it will make the selection of colors much easier and precise to make. Press the ''Layer Via Cut'' shortcut and your black line will be separated from the rest of the colors and placed into its own layer. Make your black line layer invisible, and let's start selecting the colors. You can close the adjustments panel window and erase the adjustment layer if you wish. I'm going to show you slowly how to separate my first color step-by-step. After that you can go ahead and separate all of your colors following the same method and adjusting the steps depending on the needs of each color. I'll start with a green color, as I think is going to be the most challenging one, and I can show you some problems that you might have as well. I'll go to select on the top menu and down to color range. I already showed and explain how this works. So you should already have an idea on how to use these selection method. I'll pick the green mint color with the eyedropper tool that appears by default. In the preview window, you should see what's being selected when moving the fuzziness bar. If I move it to the right, then more colors and shades will be selected. As we only want to select one single color, we need to have a good contrast black and white in the preview's window. Let's select one of these options in the drop down menu, to see what is being selected in a clear and better way. I'll choose the black matte. Note that you can move around your image with the preview's window open by pressing the Space key on your keyboard, and clicking and dragging the image when the hand icon appears. You can also zoom in and zoom out. If I set the fuzziness number to the default 32, and I click on the roller blade, I can see that the green within my palm turns gray or black. This means that it's not being selected. If I click on my palm, then I can clearly see that the other green disappears. I'll set to none the selection preview as it's hard to know where to click. Look at the small preview window and see what happens when I select different greens. I'm not sure why I have two different greens in my image. I might have done something wrong when coloring my assets. The good thing is that I can add colors to my selection. If you press and hold Shift on your keyboard, this plus symbol appears on the side of the eye tool. I'll click on the green areas which are a bit different to include them in this selection. I'll turn the selection preview back to black to see this selection better. I note that the selection seems a bit unprecise. You might have pixels like this lying around or notice that the borders of the blocks of colors, aren't very neat. Don't worry too much about this as we'll polish our selection in a minute. Unfortunately, there is no default number to get this right, and every case is quite different. The important thing is to see that the block of color is selected with not too much background included. These judgements come with experience that you understand these tools when using them across different situations. Even if my selection is not perfect, I'm happy to have the palm, lemons, and other mint area selected, so I'll press ''Okay''. Click ''Okay'' and zoom on your image. To polish and include all the border pixels in the selection, go to select, modify, expand, and set to one pixel. If we wouldn't have extracted our black area, this would have selected a black pixelated line on the borders as well. But as we have separated it already, we won't have to worry about this. Press the Layer via Cut, a new color will be separated into a different layer. It's good to check our color over a dark background to see how it really looks and be able to polish it. Create a new layer, and fill it up with black. When we do this, all the faults will become visible. When you separate your colors using this method, you may experience two issues. The first one is the one you're seeing having undesired pixels lying around your asset is very normal and common. The second one is having some semi-transparent pixels within your assets that should be a 100 percent solid. Let's focus on the first issue and I'll explain how to fix the second one when it appears. I'm sure that it will. To get rid of undesired pixels, place your mouse on the layer thumbnail, press and hold the Command Key on your keyboard and these dotted lines should appear. Click on the thumbnail to select all the layer solid content. As we need to get rid of the tiny almost transparent pixels outside of it, we need to invert the selection. Use a shortcut Command Shift I. I'll zoom in so that you can see what happens. Press the Backspace key on your keyboard to erase all that's not part of the solid block of colors. When the selection is active, you can press the Backspace key multiple times, and with every time, more pixels that are not a 100 percent solid will be erased. Now here's where the second problem I appear. This might happen as a result of erasing invisible small pixels multiple times, or when making our color selection with the color range method. I'll show you how to fix this too and from now on, you will have to start using your own criteria to polish every color. To recover them and bringing their opacity back, you have to do the following. Duplicate the layers as many times as necessary by holding alternate keyboard and dragging the layer up the layer stack. You will start seeing the colors come back to life. Once your blocks are solid again, you can merge all the layers created. The last step to achieve a solid, beautiful color and get rid of similar color shades, is to apply a color overlay to it. On the bottom of the layer panel, click on this icon and go down to color overlay. You can also access this window by double-clicking on top of the layer. If you click on the color thumbnail, you'll be able to choose any color that you want. Let's pick the original color with the eyedropper tool that appears by default and press ''Okay''. Watercolor is looking good, name it, and make it invisible. I am going to move my black layer to the bottom of the panel and make it invisible. I will only use it when checking each color separately. I'll repeat the process with the purple color. Always make sure you're standing in the right layer. If I move the fuzziness bar, the blue starts getting selected. I'll bring it down to 32 and press ''Okay''. Go to select, modify, expand one pixel, press ''Layer Via Cut'', and activate the black layer on the bottom to see what happens. It seems to be okay. To double check that there are no unwanted areas selected, I'll duplicate the layer. See what happens. I'll merge the two, load the selection by clicking on the layer thumbnail while pressing Command, invert the selection, and press the Backspace key twice to make sure I get rid of it. Double-click on the layer, click on ''Colorway'', select the right color, press ''Okay'', and then name the layer and make it invisible. With the yellow I'll apply the same process. Pink, same process. Blue, select color range, and here I noticed that I have two shades of blue. I select one, and then add the other one, press and hold Shift, and when the plus symbol appears, click on the other areas or colors you want to add. Adjust the handle until I'm happy. Expand by one pixel, press ''Layer Via Cut''. Make the other colors invisible, and again, these color seems okay. But I'm going to check by duplicating the layer. This time, I'll apply the color overlay beforehand to unify the color. Double-click on the layer, colorway, select the right color, and okay. I'll use a combination of the two method I have already shown you to polish it, until it looks good. When it looks good, I'll name the layer and make it invisible. To be able to have more options when creating new colorway, I'll save the white areas as well. I'll do it with a black layer visible to see it clearly. Once you have followed all the steps that we've already seen, press ''Layer Via Cut'' to extract the white from the original layer, and name it and make it invisible. As you can see in my original layer, there were some pixels left out. These usually doesn't matter and I'd like to get rid of it. Now may call your layers visible and bring the back line to the top. This is the color which looks more neat and it's good to have it at the top. The blue color, which for example, was left looking a bit sad, now looks fine. In the next lesson, we're going to explore different colorings and make use of those beautiful colored palettes that we created in the color palettes lesson. So open that folder and have it ready before we start. 19. Exploring Colorways: Being able to turn your art works into different colorways is a great way to expand your portfolio and reach out to a wider audience. The same pattern with different colors can fit different collections and be used across different seasons. We already did the exercise of creating our own beautiful color palettes. In this lesson we're going to make use of them, and try our pattern into different colorways. As always, you can modify the colors of your palettes as you try them on your design. Try to be patient and know that sometimes certain combinations are hard to get right from the beginning. Before discarding a palette that you like, try the same colors across different layers, see how they look on a light or dark background. If there is one color that is giving you trouble, repeat it across two layers. You will have reduced your palate even more bringing it from five to four colors and it might look even stronger. See what happens. Challenge yourself and make sure to end up this lesson with at least three different colorways to share in the project and resources gallery. Exploring different colorways is a great way to make a full use of your pattern, not only personally but commercially. Having different colorways will give you the possibility of reaching out to more clients with different tastes and needs. Before modifying our colors, let's save this document as "Colorway 1.psd", and also in a JPEG format. To create a second colorway way prevent myself from overriding the first one, I'll save the same document as "Colorway 2.psd". Remember those color palettes that we worked in the color palettes lesson? Now is the time to make use of them. The great thing about separating colors is that it allows us to work on different colorways and be sure that our colors will look solid and uniform. I'll choose one of the color palettes pages that I created on the color palettes lesson and drag it into this one. With a marquee tool, I will select the one that I want to use and copy it into a new layer with a layer via Copy shortcut. I will place the color palette on top of my document and start modifying the colors. I'll double-click on top of each layer, go down to "Color Overlay", click on the color thumbnail, and with the eyedropper tool that appears by default I will start selecting the colors from the chosen color palette. You might have the impression that the colors aren't working well. I would suggest that you finished changing the whole pallet and then modify it if you want. Colors influence each other, and it might be that in the process of turning your palette from one to another, they might not combine well. If when you finish applying them you want to modify any, that's totally cool. The fact that you have a limited number of colors will give coherence to the image regardless of the selected color. Once I'm done and I'm happy with how it looks, I'll press Command S to save the changes made to the Photoshop file, and then press Command Shift S to save a copy in a JPEG format. You can also check how your pattern looks by turning your tile into a pattern. After having saved my document, I'll explore any colorway. Before doing anything else, I'll save the document under "Colorway 3.psd". I'll choose another color palette, copy it into a new layer, and start modifying my colors. This time I will use a black background. In this case because I'm using a black background, I don't really need to have my line black as well. In fact, the parts of my image which are only lines are getting lost. I'll apply a light color to it, and then using a mask, leave only those parts visible. First, I'll apply a mass to the whole layer. Remember that you can apply a black mask by pressing and holding Alt once you click on the mask icon. The mask has made the whole image invisible, and so it's very difficult to guess what do I need to mask? To be able to see the hidden areas, I'll lower the opacity by double-clicking on it and moving their handle. I'll use my brush tool and making sure that the foreground color is set to white, I'll start painting the areas which I want to make visible. Once I'm finished, I'll double-click on it and turn the opacity to 100 percent. Change the other colors and once you're done, press Command S to save the new colorway, and then Command Shift S to save a copy in a JPEG format. Press Command S to save the new colorway, and then Command Shift S to save a copy in a JPEG format. The fourth of the colorways will be the most easiest and fun. Again, before doing anything else, save the document under a new name to prevent from overwriting the previous one. I'll save it as color palette 4. This time we will only use two colors; the background, and the black line. Erase all of the colors and only leave the line and the background one. Double-click on both layers and apply different colorways. Once you finish, save your document in a PSD and a JPEG format. Know that to create the slides of this course, I mainly use this method. In the next lesson, I will show you different ways in which you can visualize your pattern across different products. I find that this is one of the most exciting parts of the design process. 20. Exporting Your Pattern: We have already covered how to save files in a JPEG and PSE format. In this lesson, I will show you more ways in which you can save your patterns to use across different mediums. We will also clean our Photoshop Preset Manager in order for our program to run smoothly and appropriately. I'll show you three ways of saving your files: PSD, JPEG, and PNG. PSD. It's very important to always save your patterns as a Photoshop file, as this format will maintain the quality of your image over time in a perfect state. It will preserve the layers, individual elements, adjustment color layers, layer masks, and separate backgrounds unless you flatten your image. Your Photoshop files will allow you to use your patterns again in the future. When saving files, I always make an effort to keep them organized. I learned this the hard way when I started working for clients. Sending or receiving a very heavy or unorganized file to a client or supplier, will only lead to problems and confusion. To quickly erase invisible layers, click on the top icon on the Layer panel and then click on "Delete Hidden Layers". Know that all the groups and layers have to be unlocked for this option to become available. If you feel uneasy erasing layers as you aren't unsure if you want to keep them, you can always save two versions of the file under two different names. The organized file with only the necessary layers can be named for example, as pattern Organized.psd, and the other one containing invisible layers that you want to keep can be named as pattern Layers. You can choose the names that you want, but the most important thing is that you can differentiate them. If you want to upload your files to a print-on-demand website such as Redbubble or Society6, then you will have to upload an image in a JPEG or a PNG format. JPEG. When you save your files in a JPEG format, you will lose your layers and your file will be compressed making it much smaller in size. To maintain a good quality for printing, you have to go to File, Save As, and select "JPEG" in the Drop-Down menu. It is very important to bring the quality number to its maximum number, 12. These files will then be ready to use in either a Bluetooth print-on-demand website, or sent to print to print supplier. PNG. A PNG has the ability to display transparent backgrounds. These files are a bit heavier than the JPEG format, but tend to maintain the quality of the image in a better way. If you make your background invisible you will see this squared pattern, which means that there is nothing there. Go to File, Save As, and go down to PNG. I like to keep a large size file and press "Okay". Now let's see the benefits of saving these type of file. If I go to Redbubble and upload a PNG file then I can select the background color I want, and try the same pattern over many different backgrounds in different products. This is not exactly having a new coloring, but it could expand also the possibilities of a single pattern as you might find that different backgrounds work well on different products. To maintain Photoshop running smoothly and prevent it from freezing when being launched, is important to clean our Patterns Preset Manager often. Every time you define a pattern it will be stored in Photoshop as a preset. Pattern tiles, especially big ones like 32 by 32 or even 64 by 64, are very heavy to store and it can make Photoshop slow down a lot when it opens. If you're working on a collection and you're defining patterns for a whole week to see how they look, you might find that Photoshop takes ages to start. If you're finding that this is the case, you should reset your patterns to their default settings. If you select the bucket tool on your toolbar and select "Pattern" from this Drop-Down menu on the top bar, you'll be able to see all the patterns that you have saved when clicking on the Drop-Down menu. If you press on this wheel, you can directly go to Reset Patterns. If you want to save your pattern entire collection, you can go down to Preset Manager and this Window will appear. You can enlarge the thumbnail to see them clearly. Here you can select more than one tile and save them as a package. I'll select these seven coloring style by pressing "One" and then whilst holding shift on my keyboard, selecting all seven. Then I'll press "Save Set". You can choose or create a folder in your computer to save them. I'll name mine under Colorways and press "Save". I'll do the same with the practicing fundamental tiles. After saving the patterns that I'd like to save, I'll delete them and then press "Done". It's important to keep this window clear from patterns when closing Photoshop. Next time you launch it, it should open much quicker. I'll close Photoshop and open it again. When I go to the Pattern Window, you can see only the default patterns in here. If for whatever reason I want to load my patterns again, then you'll have to go to the Drop-Down menu and down to Load Pattern. Select the collections that you previously saved and they will be back in here. I will advise you to always reset them before closing Photoshop in order for it to open and run smoothly. If you took my previous lesson, you'll know that I like to make emphasis on the importance of having your files well organized. In the next lesson, I will talk about why it's important to start building a library of your own to succeed as a surface pattern designer. 21. Your Patterns Everywhere!: Being able to visualize your pattern across different products is one of the most exciting parts of the design process. Having an idea on how your pattern would look in real life might help you shape your career as a surface pattern designer. You may find that you love how your design looks in stationary and that's what you want to do more, or that certain style looks better in women's wear fashion. You might learn that live colorways are better suited for home wear or that you absolutely love how your design looks over wallpaper, and that's what you'd want to dedicate your time to. Showing your designs to the world before even producing them can also help you to test how your fans or followers react to certain products before even entering production costs and all that. In this lesson, I will show you two different ways in which you can visualize your pattern across different products. There are two ways in which you could visualize your pattern, CADS and mockups. CADS which goes for computer-aided design is basically a computer software like Illustrator that is used to create technical flat drawings. This can go from clothes, accessories to stationery items, furniture, and more. A mockup, on the other hand, is a realistic model of what a final product would look like. They're great for presenting a final product in a real-life context. It facilitates getting feedback and seeing the reaction of an audience and can also help reveal problems that are so apparent when focusing on the repeating tile or pattern, color clashes or scale considerations. Mockups are also great to put in your portfolio or website. If you want to see your pattern displayed in mockups, you can search them on Google. There is a ton of amazing paid ones and a couple of good freebies. Creative Market is amazing and you can find whatever you want for a very reasonable price. Mockup World is another great website which can redirect you to places where you can download some freebies. You will probably have to create an account or give credit to the other, which I think is good to do. There are also some print on demand websites such as Redbubble and Society6 where you can visualize your patterns in a ton of products. The benefits of doing it in this way is that you can visualize and commercialize them at the same time without having to produce them. You can click on this icon and clicking here to start downloading them. CADS are a great way to visualize your patterns into different products. If you go to the project and resources gallery, I have left a file containing a couple of CADS for you, an eye mask, a pair of socks and a t-shirt. If you open the file, you can create a new pattern filled layer at the bottom of each group and change the scale. In the socks folder, I left for you a layer with some color blocks which you can modify with the tools that we have already seen in this class. In the mask, you can use two patterns and start visualizing how a simple and a more complex pattern can be a part of the same collection and work together when sharing the same colors. One very important thing to know is that patterns work great in a 100, 50, and 25 percent scale. But when you want to use any number in between them, you'll pardon my loose definition. To fix this, you will have to right-click on top of the layer to rasterize it and then apply a sharpen filter to bring its quality back. Share with us how your pattern looks across different products in the project and resources gallery. If you use different colorways, even better. In the next lesson, I will dig deeper into how to save your files for different mediums, and we'll see how to maintain Photoshop [inaudible] in order for it to run smoothly. 22. Building a Library: Having a library of well organized files can have a huge impact on your career as a Surface Pattern Designer. I try to be as organized as possible when designing, but there are some when I'm more into the creative flow than being organized with my files. If I have learned something is to whenever I finish a new pattern or project, I organize everything that I have done. It might be that in one year, you need to use that pattern or that really cute plain drawing that you did once, and where did I leave my file? You might not even remember how you named it. In this lesson, I'll show you how I organize my files, and you can follow me or start building a method of your own. Keeping an organized library has been incredibly important for me during my career as a Surface Pattern Designer. I keep it in Dropbox where I know it's safe, and I can access it from wherever I am without taking up too much space on my computer. This also makes it really easy to upload things to it whenever I work on a computer, iPad, or phone. I'll show you the way I organize my library, but you should find a method that works for you. I have two main folders, one contains the main image library and the other one, I use it as an inbox with all the images that I still need to process or organize. If I scan something, take a photo or buy any much bundle in the Internet and I don't have the time to organize it, I leave it here and sort out later. In my main library folder, I keep all my visual material classified. As I'm not just a Surface Pattern Designer but a graphic designer as well, I keep material in separate folders. If I click on Surface Pattern Designer, you will see all my folders in here. For this class, I created a folder within the Conversational and called it London-Barcelona. Probably someone else wouldn't understand this name, but as this is my library and I also keep things in my head, I would remember what it means. As this is the end of the class, I have already organized my material. I have a folder called Final Pattern containing all my final PSG, JPG and PNG files, colorways. As you can see I had a lot of fun and explored with many different options. Drawings, I know that my initial drawings both isolated and colors will be stored in here. All the fundamental patterns that I created, I'm sure that I can sell these in some cute items. All the mockups that I downloaded from Redbubble to use as examples for this class, and a final one called old versions with some files that I'm not sure if I want to erase yet. By organizing everything I'm helping to stop myself from losing files, erasing them by accident or taking ages to find them, which after all so much time and effort would be a total shame. It gives me peace of mind and you never know when something might be useful in the future. From my previous class I created this one, where I organized all the botanical flowers, foliage, animations, separate drawings, and even some patterns that I tried. I know it's kept safe in here. At the moment, I might not need it but who knows in the future. I'm not always super organized, but I try to make time to sort images out every couple of weeks or months. I also try to organize the material whenever I have finished the project. When you work on making patterns, you can recycle or use the same images across different designs. If I have the time to paint new things, I love to do it, but there are sometimes where it's just easier to make use of images that I have already worked in. Keep your files organized and your future you, will thank you for it. Join me on the next video, where I will share my thoughts and I will say goodbye to you. 23. Final Thoughts: Congratulations for making it to the end of the class. I hope that you have learned not only to create repeating patterns, but also how to digitize hand drawings, and sketches to use across different creative projects. You can expand the methods and tools that we have seen in this class to make illustrations, graphics for t-shirts, posters, and really anything that you can imagine. Anything that involves mixing drawings with Photoshop of course. I will be creating new classes in the future where these techniques we have seen will be very useful. I'll expound on how to create repeating patterns which involve watercolor elements, and the repeating methods that you have learned in this class will be crucial to be able to follow them. Please share your thoughts, questions, different mock-ups and applications of your pattern, and if you decide to print it, please share it with us too. If you like this class, please follow me and you will be notified when my new class is out. You can also follow me on Instagram to see what other type of arts I like to do. If you upload your artwork to Instagram, tag me so I can share it in my feed with my followers as well. Please also leave a review if you found this class useful in any way, enjoyed and their it's something new. Let me know if this class met your expectations, what did you enjoy the most and what can be improved. All of your comments will be very valuable for me when I make my future classes. If you'd like me to teach something new, also write it down in the comments as I will take notes, and it will serve me as a guide for my teaching career. After all this class serve for you students, and I'd love to hear what your expectations or needs are. I hope that you enjoyed this class as much as I enjoyed recording it, I have learned a lot from the process and I hope that you have learned a lot too. Thank you so much and keep exploring your creativity.