Transcripts
1. Introduction: [MUSIC] I love stripes. Stripe patterns are everywhere, from fashion to interiors and architecture as well
as the nature itself. Stripes have been around for
thousands of years so it's a pretty evergreen
design trend that has well-worth heavily investing
in for your portfolio. Stripe patterns are easy to make using Procreate
or Illustrator. But what if you want to make
a seamless pattern out of your own hand-painted
motifs. I'm Becky Flaherty. Did I mention I love stripes? I'm a UK illustrator and my specialty is service
pattern design. I've been working as a
full-time artist since 2015, selling my artwork
online, and in that time, I've been constantly
tweaking and refining my process
to come up with new methods and techniques for creating patterns
and illustrations. I sell my artwork
through print-on-demand platforms such as
Threadless, Society6, and Spoonflower, as well
as doing freelance work on licensing my designs to arrange small and
large companies. My friends tell me
that productivity and workflow are my superpowers. In this Skillshare class, I'm going to teach you
everything I know about how to paint and make seamless
watercolor stripes. Stripes are a really simple
motif to paint so you don't need any fancy art skills in order to jump right in. You'll learn how to paint in a way that makes
for easy editing, as well as how to
scan and digitize your artwork and remove
the paper background. I am all about simplifying workflow so you're
going to find lots of shortcuts and actions for automating parts of
the process too. My favorite is an
action we can set up to remove the paper background
by just pressing one button. We'll break down the process
for making the stripe seamless and then
building them out into a varied pattern tile. I'm also going to show
you my best tips for exporting to sites
like Spoonflower where you need a smaller file
size and how to avoid those dreaded white
lines that can sometimes appear
when doing that. This is an
intermediate-level class for students who are already
familiar with the basics of pattern design
of Photoshop and are ready to learn some
new skills and techniques. By the end of this class, you'll be ready to
start painting and creating your own
watercolor stripe patterns, ready to upload to your
print-on-demand stores, add to pattern collections
that you already have, or just simply build
out your portfolio with some solid
evergreen designs. You'll also be able to
use the shortcut actions I'll be teaching you in
lots of other areas of your workflow to speed up boring parts of the process like removing paper backgrounds and quickly separating
motif from scans. I can't wait to get started
and I will see you in class.
2. Class Project: [MUSIC] As you have
probably guessed, your class project is
going to be to create a seamless pattern from some
stripes that you've painted. I'm going to be using these Ph Martin's liquid
watercolors in this class, and I like to use
these for stripes, especially as they give a nice uniform even tone
throughout the stroke. Sometimes with pen
or tube watercolors, the solid pigment
particles can travel around and pull than the
area you've painted, which can make it a
little trickier to patch the stripes together
when they're dry. It's certainly not
impossible though, but I recommend
making it as easy as you can for yourself
just to begin with. If you don't have any
liquid watercolors or inks, then I suggest
using a watercolor that mixes smoothly with water. It doesn't have any larger
particles of pigment in it. Yellow ocher and burnt
sienna, I'm looking at you. Whatever color you do choose, you will always
have the option to recolor it in Photoshop
later if you want to. Once you get more familiar with the techniques and process, you can move on to use
any paint that you like. I'm going to be using
two different brushes to make stripes today. This flat brush is the
best to start with, as it's easy to
get a nice, thick, smooth stroke which doesn't
vary too much in width. I'll also be making some more varied stroked with
this round brush. Any brand and size
of brush is fine, just use whichever
you have on hand. As for paper, I like to use a fairly smooth textures 250
gram paper like this one. A smoother paper
will make it easier to remove the
background afterwards. You also need a scanner for
digitizing your artwork. If you don't have any of the
materials I've mentioned, you can still follow
along with this class, as am going to upload a copy of my raw scan to the
resources section, which you can work
with and create your own stripped pattern. Why not change the colors around when you make
your final tile, or even make some
rainbow stripes? When you come to upload
your finished pattern, you can either upload a
low-res image of the tile, an image of it in repeat, or even apply it to a mock-up
if you're feeling fancy. Be sure to take some
time to have a look at other student's work and give some friendly
feedback, too. Let us jump straight in
to the first lesson.
3. Painting: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're going to be looking at
how to paint the stripes. First thing we need to do
is to mix up some paint. I'm going to be using this concentrated
liquid watercolor. You only need to use a few drops of this and the rest we're going to make up with water so
we get a nice light wash. I'm just going to put one
drop of this in here, and then the rest I'm going
to make up with some water, and then just give it a mix with the paintbrush and
it's ready to go. Just to show you the
difference in quality and look you get using
more or less water, I'm going to do
stripe here, which is the one that I just made, which is watered
down, and you get this nice see-through light
quality to the paint. Then if you look
at this one here, which is undiluted paint, it's almost a different color. It's a lot more saturated and darker than undiluted paint. Experiment and see
which one you prefer. One thing to keep in
mind though is that when we come to scan these
and process them, it's actually a lot easier
to take a lighter color and make it darker than it is to take a darker color
and make it lighter. It can end up looking a bit blow night if you try and
lighten the color too much, so do bear that in mind. I prefer to work light and then I've got the
options to take it darker. Let's start to practice
making some stripes here. We want to focus on
making these straight, but also having a little bit
of natural variants in it. These are hand-painted watercolor stripes
that we're making so it is nice to have a little bit of movement
within the stripe. But if you want something more uniform and that does
look more straight, then work on practicing
nice straight stripes here. What we're looking
for is the beginning and the end of each stripe
to be the same width, and that's why these flat
brushes are good ones to start off with because they
don't spread out too much. Another thing we want to
focus on is having the tone even across the stripe where
this water is pulled here. It's quite a lot different
in color to the other side. What we're going to
do is just carefully drag this pool of
water away from the edge and back into the middle and then spread it evenly along the
rest of the stripe. Now you can see the two ends of that match up a lot better. This is one of the
reasons I prefer using these liquid colors
is because you do get a lot more
of an even tone. It is absolutely
possible and I do paint watercolor stripes with the regular pigments that
come in tubes or pans. But the grainy texture of those, you can end up with a lot more variance
throughout the stripe. When you're just
getting started, it's much easier to use
these liquid watercolors. We're just going to
carry on like this, practicing some
of these stripes, getting our entry and our exit points the same width
and the same tone. Then next, we're going
to practice making some more wobbly finish
stripes with the round brush. With them on these stripes
here with the flat brush, we had a much more even pressure throughout the stripe
and it was nice and smooth from the
shape of the brush. With the round
brush, you can get a lot more variance
in the width of your stripe by increasing or decreasing the
pressure you apply. I start off lightly here
and then push down. I get a much wider stripe. What we need to practice
is beginning and ending our stripe on the same
width that we started with. You'll also find with
this round brush that the water is a lot more
likely to pull at the edges, so you'll need to bring that in. Let's have one more that
will go at the shape beginning and then ending on a lighter pressure
so that we have the same thickness and then evening at the paint
throughout the stripe. I'm being quite
careful to only be dragging the paint within the stripe that I've already
painted so that you don't end up with double
lines on the edges. That's one way of using the
round brush to do a stripe. You can make another type of stripy shape by using
the brush this way up and just directing
it along the paper and you get a wavy line
with a flat top on it. Just drag it across,
pressing up and down, and you get this
nice ripple effect. Then again, being
careful to begin on my end on the same width and checking your paint
away from the edges. Those are just some basic shapes that we're going to
be working with. Have a practice of those. Once you've got those mastered, we can have a go at making the proper stripes within the guidelines that we're
going to set up now. Now that we're nicely warmed up, we're going to paint our
final stripes that will be scanning and using on the computer to make
the stripes that off. I'm just going to make up
some guidelines here by rolling lines across the page. They don't need to go right to the edge and they don't
need to be very dark. They're just to give us
something straight to paint along to keep us in a
mostly straight line. You don't need to
worry too much about how far apart all the lines are, just leave enough room for
your brush stripes in-between. Then we're going to also roll some vertical lines here to mark our entry and exit
points so that we can see which bits we need
to have the same width them, and then we'll be painting
in-between the lines. I'm going to use this nice
turquoise color here. I'm going to line my brush up with the line that
I've just drawn, and then just in
one smooth stripe, drag across the page with a
little bit of variance and wobble and then finishing with my brush at the same angle
as it crosses the line. Then go back over and
pull the paint back into the middle so that we've got an even tone
throughout the stripe. You can see here I've made the stripe a little
wider at this end, so I'm going to
need to go back to this side and widen up a
little bit here as well. These two edges now match. I think I want a bit
more paint on my brush this time because I felt like I was running
out at the end there. Again, lining the brush up, I'm making a nice smooth stripe. You'll find it easier
if you move more of your arm across rather
than just trying to move your hand and then bringing
that paint across again. Try not to make this stripe wider at the end
like I did the other one. Then we're just going
to carry on filling the page with these
flat stripes. You will need about
four to five stripes to make a pattern tile with. That's our set of flat stripes
done with a flat brush. I'm just going to draw up
some guidelines now for making some thinner stripes
with the round brush. These guidelines will be a
little bit closer together. Same as before, we're
going to stop on this side and take it for
one edge right to the other, starting with a slight
pressure and then adding these wider punches with a heavier pressure and then taking it back up to a
light pressure as we cross the line again and then just pulling any
excess paint back into the middle just to even out
the tone of the stripe. Then we'll do another one. I'll try to make this one
a little bit thinner. Just quickly sweeping across in one smooth stripe and then just go back and pull
the paint across again. Then you'll see up
on this one here, this is patch writing.
Quite do that properly. Before that dries, I'm just
going to paint over that one again just to even
out those two edges. Then pull the paint
back away from the edge and then just repeat that time
here on this stripe. Then just keep making stripes in this way, painting across, varying the pressure and then remembering to pull the
paint in from the edges. You'll see on this bottom
stripe where I've gone a bit astray with the
straightness of the stripe there. When we come to put this
into a pattern tile, we might find that that adds something to the pattern with
the variance or we might find that it is
glaringly obvious as a mistake so I'm
just going to paint another stripe underneath just in case that ends up being
one that we can't use. But these are all things
we can decide when they come to put the pattern
together on the computer. I've gone a bit wider at
this end with the stripe, so I'm going to need
to go back to the left here and just widen that
one up a bit as well. Then just even out the paint
throughout the stripe. Let me get those
stripes painted. You see up here where
these have dried, you do get a really nice even
coverage across the page, which is why I like using
these watercolor inks. It's not impossible to get
that smooth finish with the watercolor pans and tubes, but they do tend to have
a few more chunks of pigment in it which makes
it very a lot more, and that can make the
cleaning up and making it seamless more hard work than it needs to be when you're
just getting started. Now we're going to taste some of these wavy lines that we did with the brush pointing straight up and down
against the page, so taking over the line. I'm using my guidelines as a guide to keep the
top edge straight. Then making sure that where we cross the edge without much, we need that much
over that side. These stripes use
quite a bit more paint than the other ones
and so you may find you need to reload
your brush and paint back in from
the right edge. You should find
that the pink flows nicely to the edges of where
you've painted quite easily. Then just pulling that back in, I'm making sure the two
edges are quite similar. As I said before,
it doesn't matter if there's variance
in the middle of the stripe because
that bit isn't going to have to match
up with anything else. We use a slightly
different color for this one because
it's nice to have some variants in color
throughout the stripes. Just brush it on the
page and then check back to I think it was
when you started so you can copy that when you
take it over the line. I'm just going to do one more of these wavy stripes and then that will be my page filled with stripes ready
for scanning in, and we'll learn how to do
that in the next video.
4. Scanning: Now that we've
done our painting, Let's have a look
at how to scan in our artwork ready
for digitizing. Let's start by opening our
Image Capture software. It will start out by initially
doing an overview scan. Mine's upside down,
but that's okay. We can turn that around later. You see I've got
this brown thing underneath it's a A4 notebook. The reason I put that on
top of any paper that I'm scanning is that when
you paint on paper, it can get buckled and a bit wobbly, especially
with watercolor. Those buckles and kinks in the paper can end up not being
flat on the scanner bed. If you only have
that one sheet done, even if you press down on
the top of the scanner, it still doesn't press
it down quite enough. But by putting a stack of papers or a book on top of your paper, you can really press
down and have that paper be really flat against
this scanner bed. Then you will have everything sharply in focus when
you come to scan. Let's have a look at some of the settings that I
use on the scanner. You want to be
scanning in color. Then for your resolution, you want to choose the highest resolution that you can scan in. If yours only goes up to 300, then that's okay, that's the minimum
you want to scan in. But if you can scan higher, I definitely recommend it
because it will allow you to use your work at
a much larger size, which I'll come
to explain later. The minimum you want
to scan in is 300 DPI. That will allow you
to print your work at the same size
you're scanning it. But if you can scan
at 600 or 1200 DPI, it would allow you to
print your work at two or four times the size
that you've painted it in. As I said before, we will
come to look at this in more detail when we reduce image size later
on in the class. I'm just going to
leave mine at 1200. I am going to leave
all these as they are, because I'm going to drag out a binding box around the artwork by
clicking and dragging. You want to keep it
quite tight around the edges of just the
artwork you want to scan. That's because if we
scan the whole page, our document size will end up being quite big because
it will be saving data for the parts above
and below the illustration, but we only need the
painted parts so we can save our file size by
using this binding box. Then we'll leave the
rest of this area clear. I'm going to set a place to save my scan because I
like to keep my work organized right
from the beginning and save in this
watercolor stripes file. I'm going to create a
new folder called scans. Then just save in this one. I'm going to give it a name, that way I'll be able
to remember later. As you can see, I
didn't put stripes, I put stipes, so all the way through
this class anytime I'm calling a file name stripes, it actually says
stipes, but never mind. I'm going to save it
as a PNG just because that's what I prefer to
use and I'm going to do a bit of manual image
collection on this. If you see, if I
take the saturation down to normal levels, it can look a little bit more faded compared to how vivid
it looks in real life. The first thing I
normally do is to bring the saturation
up just a little bit. That brightens up to how
lovely it looks in real life. Then with the brightness, when I'm scanning watercolor, I normally take that
down a little bit, because it just helps with
removing the background later. Sometimes watercolor
can look a bit overblown and over
brightened when its scanned, so I normally take
that down just a little bit so there's more
contrast with the paper. Then the tint and temperature. I'm not going to touch for
this one because they just adjust the white balance. The paper is looking
pretty white and the colors are looking
true to themselves, so I'm going to leave those
as they are for this scan. If you find that your paper had a yellowish or
greenish tinge to it, you can play around
with those to bring the paper back
to looking white but, as I said, we don't need to do anything with this one here. Now that all those
things are set, I am going to hit "Scan"
whilst pressing down on the top of the
scanner bed to keep that paper ironed nice and flat, but also being careful not to shake my hand around
as I'm doing that. I'll speed this part
because it takes quite a while at 1200 DPI. There we go, that's a
stripes file or stipes file. We can find that by
clicking on Finder. There it is, in our folder. As you can see, the
file size is quite big, at 92.4 megabytes. That's because we've scanned
at such a high resolution. If you've scanned at 300 DPI, yours will be a bit smaller. But we can work on reducing image size on the
final tile later. In the next video, we're going
to be taking our file into Photoshop and looking at how
to remove the background.
5. Removing the Paper: Here we are in Photoshop. We can start by hitting
Command O to open my file. Then I can find my Scans folder. Then just double-click on
this watercolor stripes file. Then I will open in
Photoshop. Here's our file. I'm going to hit Command zero to bring it up to full screen. Then the first job
you'll need to do is remove this paper background. I'm going to zoom in with, command and brushes so we can really closely see the
paper texture here. This texture here, if we
were to just click with the Magic Wand tool to try
and select it to remove it. As you can see, it
does a pretty good job of knowing what's paper
and what's paint, apart from a few little
specs here and there. That's because we've used really hard definite strokes
for the stripes here. Sometimes if you're working
with watercolor and you've got some lighter
blends and bleeds, or if you've used a really
light watery color, you'll find that
it's not so good at knowing what's paper
and what's paint. But as I said, we've done okay here if you've used
darker stripes like mine, hopefully you'll have a
similar results of this. As you can see in my settings up here for the sample size, I haven't set point sample, and I have the
tolerance set to 30. Those are my default
settings for scanning watercolor into photoshop and I didn't really
ever change those. As you can see, there's a few little
specs here and there, which we need to clean up. I expect if I zoom in here, I'm going to hold
down set and drag downwards on the
edges here there's still a bit of
refining we need to do to help it distinguish
between paint and paper. Let's have a look
at how to do that. I'm going to de-select what I have selected here
with Command D, and then I'm going to go
to my adjustments panel. If you don't have that,
you can get it by going to Window and finding adjustments. Then I am going to click on
this little graph icon here, which is the levels
adjustment panel. Using this little white
eyedropper at the bottom, I'm going to click around on the paper and use the selection to tell Photoshop that this is white so I click on
a light area here. It won't really make
a whole bunch of difference because
that already is white. Whereas if I move this and
click on the dark areas, for example this dark dot here, it will tell Photoshop that that is white and
adjust everything accordingly and that
looks great now because that's a paper
texture has gotten. However, if we zoom out, it's adjusted everything
and that is a way too blown out and it's messed up the selection from that.
I'm going to undo that. What you want to do is click
on not pure white part, but something that's
a light gray area. That will help flatten out
the rest of the colors and make this white background
a lot easier to select. Now you can see that's
nice and flat and smooth, and that is going to
be really easy to select all of that
white in one go. I'm just going to
zoom back out to full screen by hitting
"Command Zero". Now you see if I use the Magic Wand tool to try and select the
paper on this layer, we're actually
still going to get exactly the same thing as we have before selecting
the same areas. Because this is just an
adjustment layer is not made any permanent changes to
what's underneath it. What we need to do is to merge these two layers so these
changes become permanent. But as you can see, this adjustment layer not only affects the white and the layer, it also changes the colors
of what's underneath. I'm going to duplicate these
two layers emerge them, so I still keep my work in colors underneath. I'm
going to de-select that. I'm going to select
both of these layers by clicking on that one and then shift clicking on the
one underneath it. I'm going to hit "Command J"
to duplicate those layers. Then right-click, and then
merge those two layers. Then you can see if I just
hide this adjustment layer, we've got this one
on top which has the adjustments applied to it and the colors
really are this color. Then we've still got all
working copy underneath. Now, at this point, I'm going to add a layer
of black underneath, which will help me see where I've more clearly a bit later on so I'm going to do
that by adding a layer. Then I'm going to
click on this little circle icon and add a solid color fill and I'm going to choose
black for that color. Then I'm going to
drag that one down to the bottom layer
underneath this one. I'm going to go back
to my top layer, which is the adjusted layer. With the magic wand
tool selected and you see I've got point
sample selected up there and the tolerance
is set to 30. As I said, I don't ever really changed those for doing scans. Certainly not for
this watercolor work where it's quite defined
edges like this. You should find those
settings work really well for this type of work where we're scanning quite defined stripes. The one thing you
do want to make sure you have checked
is contiguous. What contiguous means, it means that when
you select a pixel, it will select all other pixels that are connected
to that pixel. For example, if I
select this white, it's only selected areas of white that we're
also connected to it. If there was a small area of
white inside these stripes, it wouldn't select that
unless I had contiguous unchecked and then it would select all white
within the document, whether it was part of our
main selection or not. Make sure you have contiguous checked because we
didn't want to be selecting lighter areas that
are inside the stripes. Now, we don't want to
make the changes and do any cuts on this levels layer. We want to use this layer
underneath which has got the real colors on it and make all our cuts and
edits on this layer. Make sure you have
this layer selected. I'm going to zoom in here
by holding Z and dragging. If we zoom right in on
the selection here, you'll see it's done
a pretty good job of coming in nice and tight to the edges of our
watercolor stripe. If I hit "Delete" here, you'll see that the edges are pretty tidy done
there but there are one or two parts where
if we have a lookup here where there's still
a few light bits and it's a bit messy and places. Let's undo that, delete and make a few amendments
to the selection. I'm going to go up to select and choose,
modify, and expand. I'm going to expand
my selection by just one pixel and
you'll see that takes in just a
little bit tighter. Hopefully that should
skip out a lot of those white patches that we were seeing on the edge and that's
looking a lot better now. I'm going to undo that again. Then this one more
thing which I like to do when I'm working with watercolor so I'm
going to go to Select, Modify and Feather this time. I'm going to feather on the
edge of just half a pixel. If I delete that again, you'll just see it
softens the edge ever so slightly and I think that looks nicer when you're working
with watercolors. Let's just undo
that deletes again. At this point what
we want to do, instead of deleting like this, what I'm going to do is
to use a layer mask. If we were to just delete all of that layer,
all of the white, and then we decided there was something we needed
to add back in, we wouldn't be able to do that because the delete is permanent. But if we use a layer mask, what that will do is just
hide the pixels that we don't want to see and then if we want to
add them back in, we cant do because they're
hidden and not deleted, it's called a
nondestructive method. Now in the moment
we have the white selected so if I
use the layer mask, it will show the white
and hide everything else. I'm just going to undo that. What we need to do is invert our selection by hitting
Command Shift I, and that will have
everything else except the white selected now. See the marching ants
have moved away from the edges of the page and that
just ran the stripes now. Now, when I click
on the layer mask, it's going to show the stripes and hide all the
rest of the white paper. Even though I was going slightly slower to explain
that process to you, it does still take a few minutes each time to work through
that, removing the paper. When it's something
that you're going to be doing over and over
again in your work, it's nice to be able to add a shortcut action
to speed things up. I'll just show you
now how that works. I'm going to right-click
and delete the layer mask, and I'm going to go back
up to this layer here. With the magic wand tool, I am going to select this white again and then I'm going to hide this levels layer and then go back down
to my original layer. Now, I have an action and a keyboard shortcut set up
so that when I press F1, it will run through all of
those steps we just did, the selecting,
inverting, modifying the selection and it
will just go ahead and play all the
way through those and perform all those for me. Now as you can imagine, that's really handy
to be able to remove the paper just
by pressing one key. Let's have a look at
how to set that up now, so that moving forward, you'll be able to remove
these backgrounds with just one press of the key. Let's drag this action down to the rubbish bin
and then that one's gone. I'm going to go back to
my layers and I'm going to delete this layer mask and turn this levels
layer back on. We want to get to
the point where we've made our selection and we are ready to make
the changes to them like expanding and feathering. We're going to
select the white on this levels adjusted
layer and we're going to hide it and click onto
our proper working layer. This is the point
at which we would then want to play our action. We're going to get to
our Actions panel, and if you don't have that, you can go to
Window and Actions. Use this before,
you'll probably see a set of default
actions up there. What I would do is come down to this little
folder and add a new set and you
can either type your name or whatever you
want to call this set now. I'm just going to put Skillshare
and then click "Okay", and then we're going to
click on the little plus icon down here to
start a new action. You need to put in a name. I'm going to call
this, Remove Paper. If I don't put the name of the shortcut here
in the description, I will forget what
the shortcut key is. I'm just going to
add F1 to the end of this description because I know that that's the
key I'm going to use, and then you choose your
function key down here, which is the key
that you will press to make the action happen. Now, you might
find, for example, if I choose F4 here, it will come up with one
of these pre-populated, and that will be
because the F4 key is already doing something
else in Photoshop. For example, if I choose F5, I know that that's the
color pop out shortcut, so it will give
you the option of using Shift or
Command for those. You can choose to override those things if it's a
shortcut you don't mind using. If you know it's the
shortcut that you do use, then obviously,
you'd want to use Shift and Command with that. I'm going to go
ahead and use F1 for this one because it's not a shortcut for
anything else I use. I'm going to go ahead
and select that and de-select Shift and Command. You can choose a color, which you'll see later if
we use this in Button Mode. The colors will
help your button to stand out and you
can easily spot it. But I don't very often
used Button Mode, so I'm just going to
leave that as it is. At this point,
everything's setup. We have a title, we have this right set, we have our function
key selected. I'm just going to go
ahead and click Record. As I said, if this is a
shortcut for something else, it will give you a
little pop-up saying, are you sure you want to
overwrite this? I definitely do. I don't use that toggle
elastic command, so that I'm fine
with doing that, and then you'll see this
little red light will come on down there because
we are now recording. Anything you do from this point, it's going to record
what you are doing. Let's go back to our layers. If you remember, the first
thing that we did was go up to Select, Modify, and Expand by one pixel, and if you go to our action, you'll see it's added
that step in for us, and then the next thing
was go to Select, Modify, Feather by half a pixel. Then finally, the last
thing we did was to invert the selection with
Command Shift I, and at this point,
we're ready to hit the layer mask and
make the selection. Now that's complete it
so we can go back to our actions and press
Stop Recording, and now we have this
Remove Paper action setup. We can go back to our
layers and test it by deleting this layer mask, and then we go back up
to our levels layer, make sure we're on this one, we can select the white, hide this layer, and then go back down to this bottom one, and then at this point, we can press F1, and it will go through
all those steps for us. The reason that I'm deleting this layer mask each time
rather than using undo, is that it would undo
each step separately. If I click on Undo, it would
just undo the layer mask, and then you'd have
to press Undo again to undo the Select Inverse, and then undo the feather, and then undo the expand. At this point, we
would be back to just having our
original selection. It's quicker to delete
the layer mask than to undo all those
different steps. Let's have a look at Button Mode because there's
different ways that you can play these actions. If you don't want to
use one of the F keys, you can just tap on one
of these buttons here, you'll see where the colors
make them stand out easier. If we click on Remove Paper, that's now played through
all those actions for us, and if we take it
out of Button Mode, there's another way that
we can play the action. If I just go back to where we were before we change things
so that we are back there, and that's how it should be. You can go to your actions,
click on the action, and then click Play, and that's another way
of playing the action. There you go, you
have three options. If you don't want to use
a keyboard shortcut, you can either play the action, you can use Button Mode. I recommend using a keyboard
shortcut if you can, because it really is the
quickest way of doing it, and it's going to save you
loads of time going forward. Now that we have our background
removed, at this point, I'm going to delete the
levels adjustment layer, and the merged copy
that we made with it. If you decided that there were any little things that you
wanted to edit, for example, I can see this little
light blip here, and this is why I put the black background in because it's good at showing up
these small pops. If you wanted to change this, you can do that easily because
we use the layer mask. If I right-click on this and just disable
the layer mask, you can see all of that paper is still there if we wanted
to add some back in. But in this case, we
want to take some out. With that layer mask selected and hitting B to
get our brush tool, you'll see to the
left here you have either black or white selected, and depending on
which color you use, it will either add or
remove from the selection. As you can see, black erases. But if we were to use white to add some back
in, for example, say that there was something
up here that we'd taken out too much, and it
looked like this. For example, we can press X to switch to
white as our color, and as long as we're
on this layer mask, we can draw that back in. The selection had
taken out too much. You can add it back in
by painting with white. Remember, black to
conceal, white to reveal. Once you fixed any little bits
like that on your stripes, you are ready to move
onto the next step. I'm just going to
press Command 0 to go back to full-screen view, and at this point, I am going to duplicate this
layer by pressing Command J. I'm going to hide
this bottom layer, keep it as a backup if I
need to get back to it. I'm going to right-click
on the layer mask and click Apply Layer Mask and now we have our
finished stripes, backgrounds all removed and we are ready to move
on to the next step, which is separating
these stripes out onto separate layers.
6. Cutting the Stripes to Separate Layers: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're going to be
looking at how to get each one of these stripes on a different layer so that we
can easily move them around. I'm going to teach
you the quickest way that I find for getting different items onto
different layers because it can be
quite time consuming. We're going to be working
on this layer here, which is our completed
cutaway layer and has all of the
paper removed from it, only has these stripes on it. To begin with, I'm going to duplicate this layer
by pressing Command J. Then I'm going to click
on this little "fx" here and I'm going to add a color overlay to this
layer. It can be any color. Just click "Okay" and then you'll see that it's
applied the color to everything on this layer and it's a thing you
can turn on and off. The reason I want
everything to be the same color is because
I want to be able to use the Magic Wand tool to easily select things
of the same color. If I just select with the Magic Wand tool on
this layer at the moment, you'll see it's not selecting everything because it's still selecting the things that are underneath because this
is just an effect. I want everything to
actually be this color. What I need to do is apply this color overlay on
this effect to the layer. I'm going to right-click and I'm going to click
"Rasterize Layer Style." That's the reason we duplicated this layer because
this effect is not permanent and everything on this layer actually is green. We still want what's underneath. What we can now do is, use the Magic Wand
tool on this layer to select these stripes
and grab everything, and then we c an move
to the layer below. We know because it's a
direct copy pixel for pixel, that we'll also be selecting everything on that
layer as well. It's just an easier
way of selecting things and we know that we
have everything selected. With this selected, we can then hide this layer and then make
sure we're on a real layer. What we need to do is cut
this by pressing Command X. Then we're going to
paste it back in place in the same position with Command Shift V. Then let's now move this to a new
layer all by itself. Those are the few basic
steps that I go through to cut and paste things
to different layers. Now I have actions set up for some of these steps
that we've gone through. For example, you could
say I have a step and action for the
color overlay, which I'll go through now. Let's just undo that cut and
paste that we did before, and now that's back
on that layer, and let's also delete
this color overlay layer. I have an action setup
so that when I press F2, it makes the color
overlay, rasterizes it, and then moves it down to the
bottom and also hides it. Let's go about
setting that up now. Just delete that layer and
go back to our top layer. Then we go to our Actions, our Skillshare set, and we will press the plus
icon to start a new action. I'm going to call this
one Colour Overlay. I'm not going to give this
one a function key because I already have one set
up in my main folder, but you can choose
a function key. Once you're ready,
you can hit "Record." We get back to our layers, and the first thing
that we did was to duplicate this
layer with Command J. Then we need to go down to the fx and we're going
to put a color overlay. At this point, it will remember the color
that you choose. You can use any color, but if it's a color
you're going to be seeing over and over again, you can choose a color
that you like the look of. I'm just going to choose a blue color and
then hit, "Okay." Then we're going
to right-click on the layer and choose
Rasterize Layer Style. I'm now going to leave
this on top for now, but I'm going to hide it. At this point, we are
done with our actions, so we go back to
our Actions tab. We'll just click on "Stop" for the action and that's
when I stop recording. Let's go back to our layers. When I delete this top layer, we can go back to
our actions and we can play this color overlay just to check if it's working. There we go, that's
not there and hidden. I also have an action setup
for the cutting and pasting. That's called Cut to New Layer, and I've used F3 for that one. Let's take a look at that now. On this layer with
my Magic Wand tool, even though this
layer is hidden, you can still select the objects on this
layer, like this. If I go on this layer
and I select that, it's not grabbing everything. That's because we're
on this layer, so it's selecting the
colors on this layer. But if we go on this layer above, even
though it's hidden, we can still select the colors
that are on that layer, so I can now click and
select this whole stripe. Let's say I want to now remove this stripe to a new layer. While I am on this layer, I can use my action which is, Cut to New Layer, F3. I need to make sure
I'm on the layer with the watercolor on it. Just click on to this one
here and I can press F3. That will run through
all those steps for me and cut that onto a
new layer and hide it. As you can see, that's now
on a layer all by itself. Rather than undoing
those multiple steps, I'm just going to click on these two and then merge them
back together again, instead of doing all
the different undos. Let's just merge
those and then we can record the new action for cutting and
pasting those layers. Then we want that action to stop after we've selected from this top layer and then moved onto this layer
as our active layer. That's where we want
the action to stop. On this layer, let
us go ahead and select this stripe and then choose this layer as our active layer because this one has a nice
watercolor on it. Let's go to our actions. Let's get to our Skillshare set and I'm going to
add a new action. Let's call this one
Cut to New Layer. I'm not going to give
this one a shortcut key, but you're welcome to. Now let's hit "Record", then
we go back to our layers. Then the first step
that we need to record is cutting it with Command X and then
Command Shift V to paste it back in place. Then I like to hide the
layer once I've cut it, especially if I've
got a sheet like this with lots of
different pieces on it. It can be quite tricky to see at a glance and remember which ones you have and haven't cut, so if we hide them as we go, it's easy to see
which ones are left. That's everything for
that one recorded nice. We can get back to
our Actions tab and stop the recording. Now we can test that
this action is working. Let's go onto this top layer, which has the hidden
colored stripes on it, and let's select the stripe here and then we move down
to this as our active layer. At this point, we can
press our shortcut key or go to the action
and press "Play". Then when we get
back, that stripe is now cut to a different layer, so we've got these two
here on separate layers. As you can see, we
can now click on that and drag it to move
it around easily. To further speed things up, I'm going to show you
now how I work my way through a document
like this with lots of different pieces of artwork
and quickly cut and paste them to new layers for
processing into a pattern. First of all, I'm going
to make this layer here visible and I'm going
to drag this down to the bottom of the
document as part of my regular shortcut
because it will be useful to have it at the
bottom for this next part. We want it visible
because it's going to provide an easy
way to get back to this layer without having
to keep coming back to our Layers panel to click on it and then clicking
up and down on here, I'm moving away from our
document to do that. These are all vital
seconds we can save. The point at which
we've just played our shortcut and we've
cut a new layer, will be on that layer. If you have the Move tool selected and you click
on a different layer, that will take you
to that layer and it will be the active layer
you're working on. As you can see, if I click on these visible parts down here, that then takes me back
down to that layer, which is the layer
that I want to be on for using the
Magic Wand tool. Now if we want to get back onto our watercolor
layer to do the cut, if you hold down Command, you get your Move tool back
and then you can click onto that layer and then
that will take you back to your watercolor
layer as your Active layer. It doesn't work if you
click within the selection. If I Command click in here, that doesn't do anything. You need to come on
to click on something else on that layer like this. I click on this stripe, that
will take me back up to my active layer and
I'm now ready to press F3 to run
through that shortcut, and then that will
cut and paste and hide that stripe for me. Then from the beginning again, we want to come on to click
on our color overlay layer. Then with the Magic Wand tool, select the next stripe
that we want to remove, and then we want to Command
to click on something else on that watercolor layer and then press our
shortcut action again. Then Command click
on the stripe, come on to click on
the watercolor layer, and run our shortcut action. Then come on to click
on the overlay layer, select our stripe, Command click on something
else on the watercolor layer, and run through
the action again. Command click on
the overlay layer, select a stripe, Command
click on something else on the watercolor
layer, and run our action. Command click, select.
Command click, shortcut. Command click, click. Command click, shortcut. Command click, click. Command click, shortcut. Command click, click. Command click, shortcut. Command click and at this point, there is nothing else left
on the watercolor layer. We will have to go down here by hand and navigate back
onto the correct layer, then run our shortcut. That is how I quickly
move through and get all of the different
parts on two separate layers. With all these selected, I'm going to group them with Command G just to
keep them tidy. Then this layer underneath is what we were cutting
and pasting from. There may be a few tiny specks of other bits left
on that layer, but they're not part
of the stripes, so you can go ahead
and delete that layer. That is my workflow
and the actions I use for quickly
speeding through this task of moving
each thing to a separate layer for then
processing into a pattern. I'm going to put
all these steps one by one into a document
and upload it to the Projects and Resources
section so that you can refer back to that as you're working through your patterns. In the next video,
we will look at how to make your
stripes seamless.
7. How to Make a Stripe Seamless: In this lesson we're going to be
learning how to take our stripes and then
make them seamless. To begin with, we
want to make sure we have our rulers turned on. You can get to that by going to View and then enabling Rulers. You're also going to
want to uncheck snap because we will not turned
off for this next part. Let's zoom in here. We're going to click
on the Ruler on the left of the screen
and drag out a guideline, and place it just
at the beginning of where our stripes
start, and then release. Then pan over here and drag out another one to go
with the right side. These are going to be the left and right edges of our repeat, and then we're going to start
working on this stripe here and let's zoom in a bit by pressing "Z" and
dragging downwards. I'm going to drag a guideline
from the top until it just touches the edge of this
stripe and then release it. I'm going to drag
another one down that just touches the
bottom of the stripe. If we come across
to the right here, we know that we need to
manipulate this stripe to line up here at the top and here at the bottom in order to be seamless and I'm going to lock guides at this point so that we don't
accidentally move them. This watercolor stripe
is our active layer, I'm going to hit "Command T" and then I'm going to right-click,
and choose "Warp". Let us zoom in a bit so
we can see a bit easier. We're going to click towards
the top of the stripe, and then drag it up until it just it touches this
guideline we've set up here and then with
the bottom click and drag so it just
touches there as well. You'll need to pan
over to the other side because that can sometimes
move this around a bit, and then just line up those two with the guidelines again. Let's go back over here to make sure that
that's still okay. Once you have both edges lined up with the
top and bottom, you can then hit "Enter"
to set the transformation. You might find it jumps
a little at this point, but that's okay because it
should just jump on both sides the same amount and on that
layer with the move tool. You can just press the up arrow key just to put it back in place and reassure
yourself that they are still lined up with
the guidelines. Let's press "Command 0" to
go back to full-screen view, and the next tool we need is the rectangular marquee tool. You will need to go in
and turn Snap back on. At this point View, Snap, and make sure that's enabled. Then using these left
and right guidelines to snap tool you
have to make sure you avoid the top
and bottom ones. With these snapped
in place we're going to press "Command C"
to copy that selection. That is just going to
copy everything inside the box and we'll cutoff
those edges of the stripe. With that copied I'm
going to go to File, New, and then create a new
document from the clipboard. Click on "Create" and then "Command V" to paste
that stripe back in. You'll see that it's cut off at the edges where we set
up our guidelines. I'm going to go to Canvas Size and I'm going to increase it. I'm going to make the height
the same as the width, so let's change that to 9,000. That will just give us a
bit more space to work in. I'm going to get the
move tool again, and I'm going to drag out
some guidelines and snap them to the edges of the
Canvas so that if we change the canvas
size at a later point we know where the edges on the left and the right
of our repeat are. If I just zoom that right, you can see these guidelines are setup on the left and
right of our repeat. What we're going
to do now is put this stripe into repeat. I'm going to use an
offset filter which will bring these edges
into the middle. You need to go up to Filter
with that layer selected, and go to Other and Offset. You can have this
number be anything, a horizontal but keep
the vertical at zero. You'll see if I just drag this slider along you
can see down here, this is the same and it's just moving it in
from the edges. Let's set this up 3,000 because that's an even number
to be able to remember, and then let's zoom in and get a closer look at where our
two edges are meeting. Here is where the two
seams are joined together. You can see if we zoom in well, we were careful to get our two seams lined up
with these guidelines. There's not a lot of work
we need to do there, so I'm just going to
use the eraser tool. Let's choose just a
irregular hard brush here. I'm going to make it
a bit smaller with the open bracket tool. With a few clicks just erase the bit that was
sticking out there, and then just even this part
up on the bottom as well. The next job is to even out these two areas of
different tone here. If you remember, we set the
offset to 3,000 pixels. I'm not going to set
up a guideline at the 3,000 pixel mark
across the canvas. Now the easiest way to do this
is with the marquee tool. If you go up here to the Style, if you choose "Fixed Size", and then you make
the width 3,000 pixels or wherever you
set your offset at, the height doesn't matter and then just click anywhere
on the canvas and it will make a selection box
that is 3,000 pixels wide. If you drag it over to the edge, it will snap in place there. You can drag a guideline and snap it and know it that is
exactly 3,000 pixels across, lined up with the
offset of your seam. With the marquee tool again, we need to switch it back
from fixed size to normal, and then I'm going to drag
a box from anywhere along this line and snap it to
that guideline there. To bring this tone up so
that both sides match, so that lighter part here matches up with the other side, I'm going to create a
levels adjustment layer. Let's go to our Adjustments panel which if you don't have. We can go to Windows
Adjustments, and then I'm going to click
on this little graph icon here and that will create
a levels adjustment layer. Because we have
this part selected you can see in the layer mask is only going to make changes to this part over here,
and not that part. Now I want to hide this
guideline and you can do that by pressing
"Command" and "Colon", and then let's zoom in
and see the join here. On our Levels panel, I'm going to use this middle
slider and just move it to the left or the right to adjust the levels of the part
on the right-hand side so that they match what's
on the right-hand side. I think that looks like
a pretty good match. We've got that part
matching up with, and if we pan over here you can see we need to
solve this edge out now. If we look over here
on our layer mask, you can see this white box means it's showing the adjustment. It's like this box
and the black means it's hiding the adjustment
outside the box. What we need to do is setup
a gradient fill in here so that it goes from showing it fully here and not showing it
all on this edge. What I'm going to do
with this layer mask; make sure you've clicked
on it and you have that selected and that's
what you're working on, I'm going to come over here
and use this Gradient tool. If you don't have it, you may
have paint bucket showing. If you just right-click
on it and then you can get to choose
the gradient tool. With the gradient tool selected
and black as your color, we're going to go over
here and command-click on the layer mask and that will bring that
rectangle box up again. With black as your color, you want to drag from
the part you want to hide across to the
part you want to show. You'll see that will set a
little gradient fill in here, and that's night blended
out the difference on both edges nicely for us and that is
now nice and smooth. You can see there's
just a little bit of work to do over here, merging and stitching
these two parts together. Making sure we've got our
watercolor layer selected, I am going to use the
clone stamp tool. Let's just zoom in first so we can see what
we're working. The clone stamp tool, which you can also get with a
keyboard shortcut S. I'm going to use a nice
soft brush for this part. Let's make the
brush a little bit bigger with the
close bracket key, and then what we're
going to do is to clone parts from this side
and just bring them over to there and parts
from the other side and bring them over to that slide to just merge
together at the join. But before we can use this, we are going to need to merge the levels layer
because at moment it's just an adjustment over the top so
anything we drag over, is going to be affected
by the layer mask. Let's click on our levels layer and then shift-click
on the layer below it, and then we're going
to right-click and merge those two layers together and then that
changes them permanent. Then with our clone stamp tool, we can option-click somewhere
over here and then just click and drag to clone parts of that side over to the side, and then come over
here and option-click, and then just clone
some of those back-and-forth
until you've merge the textures to either
side of the sea. Then as we get
close to the edge, I'm going to Command-click on this layer thumbnail
and that will select only this
layer because we don't want to draw outside
the edges of the stripe. I'm just going to
make this brush a bit smaller and then
option-click again, and then just merge
down the edges as well, right up to the
edge of the stripe. I'm going to press "Command
D" to deselect that, and then if we zoom by
to full-screen view, "Command zero", you can see
that we've now blended out that join and we have got
a fully seamless stripe. If we go back up to our
Filter, Other Offset, and then we just use this
slider to adjust the offset, you can see no matter
how far across we move it to either side, we've got this nice
seamless stripes. I'm just going to cancel that, and I'm going to undo
the other offset that we did because I want to keep that seam at the 3,000
pixel mark for later. Now that we've done that, let's go back to
our main document. Now, we've made one of these
flat stripes seamless, let's take a look at how to do one of these more
wavy stripes next. Let's get our guidelines
setup for this one. Let's drag a guideline down from this top row here and just line up with the
top of that stripe. You might want to make sure
you have snap turned off if it's not going exactly
where you want it to. Then lets just adjust
this guideline here. You need to unlock guidelines. Now you can click on this one and then
let's just line it up. She was pretty much in line. Then let's drag another
one down at the bottom. Then we can go over here,
and as you can see, we've got quite a bigger
distance to move this one so let's make sure we're on this watercolor stripe layer, and then we're going
to hit "Command T", and then right-click and choose "Warp" and then let's just move this up bit by bit until we get it to line up with those
two guidelines. There we go. That's lined up nicely. Then we compound over here and make sure the site
is lined up to, that needs to be dragged
down a little bit. Then go back and
check over here, and that's still lined up so
we can press "Enter" to set that transformation that you can see it did jump down a bit, but we can use Command and the up arrow key to just
get that to line up again. I think I'm going to
hit "Command T" again. I think I'm going to need
to do a bit more here so let's hit "Command T" and go to "Warp" and let us just
drag this up a tiny bit, and then that will
back down a bit. There we go. Just needs
a bit more fine tuning. Make sure the other side's okay. Then hit "Enter" and those two sides are lined
up much better now. Let's go back to our full
screen with command zero, and then we're going to
go to View and turn snap back on again and
get Marque tool, and then avoiding the
horizontal lines, so we just going to snap
with the vertical lines,. I mean from the previous
selection we made that these are
9,000 pixels apart, so they'll fit fine into the document we're
going to paste them in. So I'm going to
hit "Command C" to copy and then go to
this document here. I'm actually going to
save it at this point I think just in case
anything goes wrong, it's always good to
save as you go along. Let's just quickly
save this one. Click "Save" and then we can paste the striping
with Command V, and then with my move tool, I'm going to Click
and "Drag" this. I'm going to press "Shift" while I drag because
I didn't want it to move to the left or the right I want it to stay
lined up with the guides, so I'm just going to Click and "Drag" that whilst
holding down "Shift", and then it will still be
lined up with the guides. Then, as before, we need to bring this repeat and so I'm going to go to
Filter, Other and Offset. I'm going to leave it at 3,000 and whether you've had
as you're setting. I'm going to click "Okay" and then if we zoom in and you
put the guidelines back in, the shortcut for show and hide the guides is Command and colon. Let's zoom in and actually, I don't think we're
going to need to do a whole lot of work here. I don't think the
levels are going to need adjusting there at all. They're quite
similar either side, so it's just the texture
we need to even out. If you find that yours
were different on this stripe and that's
where the stripe here you needed to
do the levels you'd repeat the process we went
through for that one. As I said, I think we
just need to even out the texture here. I'm
just going to zoom in. I'm going to use
my eraser tool and just smooth out this joint
here at the top and bottom. Then we're going to
use on this layer, I'm going to Command click on the thumbnail and then I'm going to use the
clone stamp tool. Let's option-click over here. Clean some of this
texture across. Just match the two sides so that the textures that even down
and then if we zoom out, you can say that that's
now nicely blended. Let's go back into our
other document and let's have a go at one of these more complicated
stripes next. Let's use this middle one here
because I think balancing this dark edge with the lighter color for this side is going to
be of a challenge, so let's have a go at
tackling this one. Let's hit command D
to deselect and then we'll command click on this layer to make sure
we're on the right one. Let's turn Snap off again and then let's zoom
in so we can see what we're doing and
then drag guideline down here to the top and a
guideline to the bottom, and then we compound
it over this side and hit command T and right
click and choose Warp. Then we can click and drag this up until it lines up with the
guideline we put in place, and then drag bottom up as well. Just keep clicking
and dragging and slowly warping into shape until it lines up
with your guidelines. That's pretty close
there so let's get back over here and check. I'm not mostly lined
up over there, so that we can just hit "Enter" to set
that transformation. Then we need to copy this layer, so let's zoom out, and we need to use
our marquee tool. Needs to turn Snap back on and then going high enough up
to capture all of this in, snap it to the edges, and hit command C and then go into your other document and
paste that in with command V. Then ask before going to hold down shift
while we click and drag this up because we
want to keep it lined up with the left and
right guidelines. Then we're going to perform the offset function to go up to, Filter, Other and Offset. Then we're going to leave
that 3000 as before, and then as you can see
when we zoom in here, we can have quite a bit
of work to do matching up this darker side here with
the lighter side over here. Let's just use our erase tool for us to blend out this scene. Then at this point
I'm going to save the document before
we go any further. We want to bring back our
guideline at the 3000 pixel mock so we can draw the layer mask in
for this adjustment, so I'm going to press Command
colon to bring that backup. With our marquee tool, we're going to drag a box here. I think it's going to be
easier to bring this side up to the darkness of the other sides and to try and correct the darkness
on that side. Let's drag out a box here, and then making sure we're
on this correct layer, we're going to go up to
our adjustments panel, and put our levels
adjustment layer on here. Then with this
middle slider here, let's zoom in so we can
see what we're doing. I'm going to use the
middle slider on the adjustments panel
and just move this around and try and get the two sides to match up
in the middle at least. Maybe use these ones as well, and I think this is actually
a slight difference in heu between this ETAs this one here is a bit
more of a greeny shade. I'm just going to try and
get the levels to balance. I think that's as close
as we're going to get it, now I'm going to
command click on this layer mask here
and we we'll re select our box and I'm going to use a hue saturation
layer mask so I go to adjustments and click
on this hue saturation. Then I'm going to
very fine tune this hue slider here just to make this right side a
little more of a greeny blue, just to get it to balance. Clicking into this box
here I'm going to use the up and down
arrow keys just to really fine tune and
just move up one at a time and do the same
with the saturation. I think that just
needs desaturating, just a touch. There we go. That's balanced out nice,
so we just need to work on this side and use the gradient fill on the layer mask
to solve that out. We're going to come
on to click on the layer mask and that will
bring up our box again, and we're going to go back
to our gradient fill tool, making sure we have black. We're going to go from this darker side to
the lighter side, and then do the same
to command click on that layer mask with
the hue saturation and drag that across as well. Now we've got these two sides
that balance out nicely. Now we need to merge these two adjustment layers with our watercolor
stripe layer. With the top layer selected, I'm going to shift
click on the bottom, and then right click and choose merge layers and those
changes and I permanent. We're going to use
our clone stamp tool, and working on this layer, I'm going to command
click on the thumbnail so that we only have
this layer selected, we didn't go outside the edges. I'm going to option click to select the part
I want to clone and then just clone
from each side across. I'm going to take some of this darker blue over
and across a bit. I'm link up here
and do the same, and then I'm going
to bring some of this lighter blue
back over again. Then as you're
working, don't forget to zoom out every now and then just to check
how it's looking. I think I might need to
do a bit more work here, just bringing some
of this across, I bring sometime from there. Another way you can get these darkened burnt edges is sometimes called is to
use the burn tool over here, and I'm going to use a larger brush so let's
make this nice and big. Just drag it gently
along the edge. You see if I zoom in here, it just darkens up the
edge a little bit. You're going to be
careful not to overdo it. You can see here if I just
go over and over this, it just makes it black
rather than the dark blue, so let's undo that. Just go very sparingly
with this on the edges just to
darken them up a little bit and then I think I might go back in with
the clone stamp tool again and just bring some more of this dark
blue over to there. Just blend out that
seam a little bit. Let's see that now and
see how that's looking. Let's de-select that. And yeah, I think my blending
quite seamlessly nice. Now that we've looked
at the ways to make these three different
kinds of stripes seamless, the next job is to bring all of the stripes into this
document one by one, make them more seamless
and we will then be able to put them
into a repeating tile. The next video is going to be a speeded up time lapse of me working my way through
the rest of the stripes.
9. Making a Pattern Tile: [MUSIC] Now that we have our stripes tidied up, let's have a look at
how we can put this together to make a pattern tile. Now one option you
have is to just use these four stripes and
repeat over and over. I just select all these, drag them up here a
bit and then copy them one after the
other down here. But as you can see, it does start to look a
bit samey after a while. You can easily see
these are repeated and there's not much
variance within the pattern. What I like to do is to
use the offset tool to bring the same across to a different point
on each stripe, so there's a lot more
variance within the pattern. Let's move some of
these offsets if we bring our guideline backup. You remember everything was
merged on this line and I prefer not to have all the same stacked one on
top of each other. We'll leave this
top one where it is and let's select this
next one down here. I'm going to up to
Filter Other Offset. Let's move it along by another 3,000 pixels and click, "Okay." Then come down to this
next one and click on, "Filter Other Offset" and let's move this one
along by 4/3 in pixels. Then the bottom one
filter other offset and let's change this
one to 5,000 pixels. Then those offsets
will be nice spread throughout the tile and that will stacked
upon that guideline, which we don't need anymore. We can just drag that off to
the left to get rid of it. Let's look at some options for varying up the
repeats on these tile. I'm just going to hold down Option and Shift
while I click on this top one here and drag it
down to make a copy of it. One way of varying this
one up is to press, "Command T" to
transform and then we're going to right-click
and flip it horizontally. Then let's just make
another copy of that one. We can hit, "Command T" again, and we can flip
vertically this time and then you'll see we've got three different variations
on this one stripe. But you'll notice this top one here looks too merit
with the one below it. What I would do is
click on this layer. Then go up to Filter and then we can just
use this option at the top of repeating
the last offset filter and then that's
brought it along. Although it is a mirror copy, is not mirrored at
the same points. Let's just take this one back up here and then let's get rid of these two because we
don't want those two repeated straight
off to each other. Then to help me keep track
of which layers I'm copying, I'm going to rename
these layers A, B, C, and D. Then I'll easily be able to know
which one I've copied. I'm going to select them all and holding down
Option and Shift, I'm going to drag out another copy and then
select all of those. I just move them up
to near the top, so I've got room to
drag another set down. Then let's copy these three and Option click to drag
another copy of those 10. Now if we zoom out to
see how this is looking, you can see down on
this right-hand side, these little dips on these
stripes and standing out as being really obviously repeated one onto each other. That's the thing we're going
to have to correct to make this tile look a bit more
seamless and randomized. I think I'm also going
to change up the order of these stripes in
this last repeat here. Let's move this one up and drag it up holding Shift and
drag this one down. Being really careful to
hold down Shift because we don't want these to move
to the left or the right. That's another way you
can switch things up, is by changing up the order
of the stripes in each set. That's a bit more randomized. Let's click on this layer here
and let's go up to Offset. That's my board lift
dip over to here, moving it along a bit.
Let's click on, "Okay." Then I'm also going to hit, "Command T" right-click and
flip that one vertically, just to add a little bit of
the difference to that one. Then let's click
on this one here. We will go back up to offset
and let's change this one to 2,000 pixels to move
it along just a bit more. That's been taken it
off the edge here. Then let's hit, "Command T" and right-click, and let's flip this one
horizontally and press, "Enter" to set that
transformation. Let's have a look at
the other layers. I can see this one is repeated here and here, and up here. Let's click on this one
and let's go up to Offset. Let's change this one
to a different number. Then hit, "Command T," and let's flip this
one vertically. Then let's select
this bottom one and we'll apply an
offset to this one. Let's go up here,
Filter Other Offset. We will change this to, let's make it 3,000. Then we have this layer and this layer,
and here as well. Let's hit, "Command T" and let's flip this
one vertically. This one up here, looks a bit mirrored, so let's offset that
one to leave out 3,000 and then this one
down here let's hit, "Command T" and right-click and flip this one horizontally. Then if we have a look through
the rest of the stripes, I don't think there's any other repeated
within the pattern. Now that that's all offset
flipped, and turned around, you can see we've got
a nice random array of different stripes
within the same pattern just by using the
same four stripes. Now we've got our left and our right edges or
worked out seamless. It's now the time to tackle
the top and the bottom seams. I'm going to drag
another guideline and snap it to the top
and to the bottom. You need to make sure you have snapping turned on for that. Now, I'm going to
give up to Image and go to Canvas size. I'm going to add some
bit more Canvas space to the top and the bottom, so I'm going to
change the height to 9,500 to see if that
gives us enough room. I think I might need
to add a bit more. Let's go to Image
Canvas Size again and change that
to 10,000 pixels. Then click, "Okay."
That's given us just enough frame to
add another stripe at the top and the bottom there. We know that these top
and bottom seams are 9,000 pixels apart because that was what our
previous Canvas size was. We need to choose which of these stripes we're
going to drag up there. I'm going to go for this
one because I know that these three stripes
come before it. I'm going to click on this one and holding
down Option and Shift, I'm going to drag a
copy of that up here. That should just cross the line. Then we know that we're
going to have to move all of these stripes and spread
them out a little bit more to get the
spacing sorted out. Once you've dragged
it up, let the top spent a bit of time moving these different stripes around and so I'll speed
this part up now. But what I'm doing
is either clicking and dragging with the
Shift key held down or using the Move tool and pressing the up and
down arrow keys to just spread these out a bit more and make
a bit more space for the extra stripe that we've repeated at the
top and the bottom. We know that that needs to be
repeated from the top here, 9,000 pixels downwards
because if you remember, our Canvas guidelines are setup at the 9,000 pixels apart. If you couldn't remember what
Canvas size did you use? For example, if you
had a strange size, a good way of checking that
is to go to the Marquee tool. Then making sure that you have snapping turned on, which I do. If you just click and drag a box from the
guidelines on each side, you'll get this little
box come up and you'll be able to check your
Canvas size and there you can see mine is 9,000 by 9,000 pixels and that's the size of the guidelines
that I'd set up. If you couldn't remember
your Canvas size, that's a way of being
able to go back and check what the size of
your repeated setup is. Now that we've double-checked what the repeat on our Canvas
for the top and bottom, I'm going to de-select that with Command D and with
the Move tool, I'm going to click on
this stripe up here. Then I'm going to hit, "Command J" to duplicate this layer. Then I'm going to press
"Command T" to transform that. Then I'm going to come
up here to these boxes which show the position on the Canvas of our selection
and it's the y-axis, which is this one
here at the up and down though we want
to move it along. I'm going to click
into that box. Then after the number, I'm going to type plus 9,000, and that will move it 9,000
pixels down the y-axis. We don't have to do the maths
on working at what that is. We just type in plus 9,000
and it works out for you. Then you can press, "Enter" and enter again to set
the transformation. Now that these two
stripes are in place, 9,000 pixels apart, we're going to
need to spread out the rest of the stripes to fit nicely in-between those but we don't want to drag
these two around. I'm actually going to select these layers and just
lock them nicer, so we can't
accidentally move them. Click on it and go
to the padlock. Then click on that layer, then check the
little padlock icon and I wouldn't be able to
accidentally move these. Now I'm just going to
fast-forward while I spread out these layers again, using the up and
down arrow keys or by holding Shift and
dragging up and down. That is now our pattern
tile finished and setup. If you wanted to
crop the Canvas, so you only have the parts
of the pattern showing, you can use the Crop
tool and snap it to the guidelines that we've set up along the top and the bottom. Then I always make sure that I have delete cropped
pixels turned off. I know that on the
right edge and the left edge here we don't have any pixels
going off the edge. But for the top and bottom, if I wanted to go back and change anything and
correct anything, if I tap to Delete
Cropped Pixels checked, it would take away
everything off the edge and I wouldn't be
able to go back and fix it. I make sure I have Delete Cropped Pixels unchecked
before I crop the Canvas. Now I'm going to press,
"Enter" to set that. Then that is our
finished pattern tile. I'm just going to hit,
"Save" before we go any further and now we're going to look at a way you
can test your pattern. I'm going to go to
the Pattern's panel, which if you don't have
that you can go to Windows, go to Patterns, which probably I
don't have checked. Let's click that and now I
do have it. That was weird. Anyway, [LAUGHTER] let's go to our Pattern's panel and click, "Create New Pattern"
and this will make a pattern from the
whole Canvas that's showing, and let me just undo the crop. If you hadn't yet cropped, you can still use this pattern
tool but you will have to create a box with the Marquee
within those guidelines. Then it will then
use that selection to make the pattern from. If you hadn't yet drop-down, you'll need to drag
that book site within your guidelines. Either with this area
selected if you've not yet cropped or you can just use the Canvas if
you have cropped, we can go to the
Create New Pattern plus icon and then
just click, "Okay." Then that will add that as a pattern swatch to
your pattern's panel. Then if we come down here to our layers and add a new layer, and we click on that swatch, it will add that pattern to the layer and then if you double-click on
this little thumbnail, you can change the scale
of the pattern and make it smaller and get a good feel for how it's looking in repeat. If we leave this at 50 percent, while we have a look
at the pattern, you can see it stripes
nice and evenly spaced. There is no really
dark patches or very light patches that are
detracting from the pattern. Set it as a pattern swatch over your layer and then have a look and see if it works nicely in a smaller scale and
then after that, we'll be ready to resize and
export our pattern tile.
10. Resizing and Exporting: Now that we've made
our pattern tile, the first job that we need to do is to check that it is
repeating properly. There's two ways we can do that. The first way is, where we added it as
a swatch up here. We can create a new layer on our layers panel and add
this pattern to that layer. At first, it'll look like nothing's happening because it's just a direct copy of the
pattern above the pattern. But if we zoom in on this corner here and with our move tool, if we just drag
it down slightly, you can see it's a copy
of the pattern above. I just don't do
that and then drag it across and down a little bit. You can pan across this top edge here and check that is
all repeating properly. There's no lines in it. Then down the left edge here to make sure
that is repeating properly and that there's no skips or glitches
in the pattern. That's a quick way of testing the pattern within the document. Another way to do it, I just delete this
pattern layer here. I'm going to click on this top layer and then
scroll all the way down to the bottom
and shift click so I have everything selected. Then I am going to
with my Marquee tool, drag and select
the whole canvas. Then I'm going to press
"Command J" to copy everything. Then I am going to
right-click over here on the layers and go down to merge layers and that will merge all the layers that
we just duplicated, so that's now in one
flat layer there. On this layer I'm
going to hit "Command C" to copy that and then go to " File New" and choose the clipboard
to create new canvas. You will see here, it
says 9,000 by 9,000, which is our first good sign that the title is going to work because we've got the canvas size and copied
the right amount. Choose new and then "Command V" to paste your tile
into the document. Then underneath my pattern tile, I'm going to put a
dark color fill layer. I'm going down here to this
little circle icon and choose solid color and then just use any dark color to
put a dark layer underneath. Then we're going to
make sure we've got our pattern layer selected
and go up to Filter, Other, and Offset. Then in this box here, I'm going to put 100 pixels
across and 100 pixels down, and that's just going
to shift it across and down by a hundred pixels. Then we'll be able to
zoom in to the corner. Then just like we did before, we can pan across and down to check that there's no glitches
on the edge of the canvas. Let's take a look at what that would look if there
was a problem. If I go back into the watercolor stripes file with the different layers
and I'm going to select this area here, which isn't the whole canvas. Then if I copy that and go, new from clipboard, you'll see
it's not the 9,000 pixels. Then when I paste it
into this document and then perform the
offset filter again, just offset it by a hundred
pixels across and down. Then if we zoom in here, you can see this top stripe
is just a straight line, whereas cut straight
through a stripe. Then on the left edge here, if we zoom in, you can see
we've got this glitch, whether stripes don't line up. If you're seeing
anything like this when you're testing the pattern, the first thing I
would do is to go back into your document with the layers and check
your canvas size in the guidelines so drag out with your" Marquee
Tool" and just double-check that's what
you think it should be and then if it was
a problem with the top and the bottom repeat, I would check if those
are 9,000 pixels apart. The best thing to do
is just delete this bottom one and then copy and repeat the top layer
down again by 9,000 pixels. Then if it was the right and left seams that there
was a problem with, then it would be a
case of going back and checking the seamless
parts on those tiles. Let's go back into tile document with the
flattened layers and get rid of these spare background layers and then we're going to save this document as
our pattern tile. I'd like to save two copies when I'm working on a pattern, I'll save the layered
file as the repeat, and then flattened copy, which I will save as the tile. Then from here I would also save a flattened JPEG copy of
this tile or a PNG copies. I'm going to hit "Command"
option S to save a copy. Let's choose PNG. Just save this one as a tile. Now you'll see this is
taking quite a while to save and that's
because if you remember, I scanned at 1,200 DPI, so the file size is
going to be pretty big. If you've scanned at 300 DPI, then your file size
should be a bit smaller. Now if you've ever
uploaded to Spoonflower, you'll remember they have a
40 megabyte upload limit. If we just open this
file now and Finder, you'll see that the
file size for this one, the 1,200 DPI tile
is 45 megabytes, so that would be too
big to upload to Spoonflower and we need
to reduce the image size. But before we change
the image size down, I'm going to save a new
copy of this so that we're not making changes
to this original document. I'm going to press "Command
Shift S" and save this as a new document and
change it to Spoonflower, and save that as a PSD. We can still keep our
high-resolution copy and then make this newer
lower resolution copy. Let's have a look
at our image size by pressing "Command Shift I," and you'll see
here we've got this 1,200 pixels per inch size. When I'm reducing the
size of an image, I always use Bicubic
Sharper (Reduction) method for the revamping. Because I find that gives
the least amount of loss of quality when you're taking down
the size of an image. Now if you remember
back when we were doing our scanning
and I said that scanning at a higher
resolution allows you to eventually print
much larger size, so you can see these stripes are seven and a
half inches wide, which is pretty much the
size we painted the mat. Now when you upload
to Spoonflower, you only need to upload
at 150 pixels per inch, which is eight times smaller than the resolution
we have at the moment. If I'm to make this
eight times smaller, I can in theory
make the width and height eight times bigger and still keep the
image quality. I'm just going to click on
this "Resolution" here and change this to 150
pixels per inch. I could make the
size of this up to about 56 inches wide because that's roughly
eight times bigger. But for Spoonflower, the largest size that
you would need is a 24 inch width because that's the size of one of
their rolls of wallpaper. I'm going to change this
width here to 24 inches, and we got a resolution at 150. As you can see here
in the preview, we still got a good
image quality there, so I'm going to go
ahead and click OK. If you had scanned
300 pixels per inch and then went and change down to 150
pixels per inch, you can then increase the width of your
tile by two times, that's the maximum that you'd
want to increase it by. If you'd scanned at
600 pixels per inch, you could increase your
width by up to four times. Now this next part I'm
going to show you is the most important thing to do after you've
resized the tile. I don't know if
you've ever resized a pattern tile for
uploading to Spoonflower, and then notice
there is white lines on the edges of the
seams and the pattern. If I set this resize
copy as a new pattern, and then if I add a new layer, I'm going to put a dark
color fill on this layer, not on layer mask, a color fill. Let's put a solid color fill on this layer with a dark color and then I'm going to add a new layer and apply
this new pattern to it. If I zoom in here, and I set the scale to 50 percent and let's
pan across here, you'll soon find, let's zoom in here, these gray lines that appear in the pattern after
you've resized it. Those lines are really there, they're not a rendering issue and they will print like that. When you resize a pattern, you do have to check
for these lines. But luckily, there is a
really easy fix for them. The reason you get these lines is that when you
resize an image, you're changing the
number of pixels in it. For example, before we started, this was 9,000 pixels wide, whereas now it's only
3,600 pixels wide. When you resize something, Photoshop is basically remaking that image with a new
amount of pixels. The way it does that,
it will look at what is around each pixel to tell it which pixels to
leave in and which pixels to take out when
it remakes the image. Now, if you've got just a standalone illustration in the middle of a document, it's not going to matter too
much if those pixels don't line up perfectly on
one edge and the other, because we're not relying
on the edge pixels matching up like we do
with the seamless pattern. When it's looking at
these pixels on the edge, it's also taking to
account that there is nothing to the left here, and on the other side
there is nothing on the right-hand
side and using that nothing zero pixel information for putting the new
pixel together, which is why you get
these lines that are actually made up from
semi-transparent pixels. If I just get rid of this, I'm going to add a
new layer underneath this pattern tile and
strike this will under, and I'm going to add
a solid color fill underneath in a dark color. Let's make it black so
it really stands out. Then I'm going to
go up to Filter, Other, Offset, and I'm going to
perform 100 pixels to the right and 100 pixels
don't Offset again. Then if we zoom in
this corner here, you can see these
pixels that were on the edges of the tile, they are now semi-transparent
because it's used the nothing information to the left for making
this new pixel. This is why it's
important to add a contrasting color underneath. You'll see if I turn
this black off, you don't even notice them, but that would still print up. Funny. You can see
it on the stripes, there is a light
color showing in. I recommend if you've got a
dark tile to use or white layer underneath to help these semi-transparent
pixels show up. Now the good news is there
is a really simple fix to help fill in these
semi-transparent pixels. If you go to your
pattern tile layer and make sure you
have that selected, then hit Command plus
J several times, I would say at least
three or four. Then if you select and
merge those layers, you'll see that those
semi-transparent parts have now stucked-up one on top of the other and canceled out
the transparency. Then if we now add
this as a pattern, and let's add the old pattern and zoom in on one of
those glitches on it. Zoom in and find one
of those dark stripes. Change the scale to 50 percent. Hide that layer underneath
so that we can see. You've got this stripe that
was from the old pattern. If we now add the
new pattern on top, it's going to be a slight jump because we offset this pattern. But as you can see,
that has now faded and there's no more stripes and
glitches in this pattern. Anytime that you're reducing image size on a pattern
tile in Photoshop, always remember to
perform this offset with a contrasting color
underneath to check for any transparent pixels on the
edges of the pattern tile, and then you can duplicate three or four times and then merge the layers to
get rid of that, and then your pattern will
be ready for exporting. First of all, I'm going
to save this document as the Spoonflower pattern tile. Just replace the old one. Then I'm going to Command
Option plus S to save a copy of this as a flattened PNG for
uploading to spoonflower, and we'll see how the
file size compares. You see this one will
save a lot quicker. Then if we go down to Finder, you find the file. You'll see we got this
3,600 pixel copy, which is now only 9.9 megabytes, so that's a much better size for uploading to Spoonflower. It's always better to scan at
the highest resolution you can and then reduce down at the last moment
that you need to. I've got this nice small tile that I can upload
to Spoonflower, but if a later date I wanted to license this for
duvet covers and they wanted a 56 inch wide tile
at 150 pixels per inch, I still got that
original scan that I can go back to
to do that with. What I would suggest doing
is once you've finished your pattern tile is to
export a 300 DPI copy, and then also 150 DPI copy
for exporting to Spoonflower. You could even do 72 DPI copy for uploading
into the project gallery.
11. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Thank you so much
for taking this class. I really hope that you've
enjoyed it and find it useful. Now that you have
felt the basics of making seamless
watercolor stripes, why not have a good
painting some stripes in different mediums and seeing
what you can come up with. Don't forget to upload
your finished patterns to the project gallery or any
work in progress shots, if you would like
feedback or help from myself and your fellow students. I'm available here by the Discussions tab to answer any questions that
you might have. If you're happy for me to share your photos on my
Instagram account, then leave a note of your
username so that I can tag you and if you share any pictures
of your work on Instagram, use the tag #RFSkillshare so
that others can see it too. If you'd like to know more
about me and my work, you can find me on
Instagram @Bekkiflaherty, and on my website,
rebeccaflaherty.com. If you find this class useful, I would really appreciate
if you could leave a quick review as
it helps me be more visible on the
platform and helps other students who are
in this class too. Of course, be sure
to follow me here on Skillshare to get notified
when I publish new classes. Thank you so much for watching, stay creative and I
will see you next time. [MUSIC]
Rebecca Flaherty, Surface Pattern Designer | Illustrator
