Vectorize Seamless Procreate Patterns in Adobe Illustrator

1. Welcome: Creating patterns in Procreate has never been easier, and if you watched my previous classes, you know that in the Procreate app, you can create any kind of pattern, whether it's simple or complex. But what if a client is asking you to deliver a vector file? Here we go. By the way, welcome. I'm Nina, even though everyone knows me as Di Ujdi. I'm an artist, illustrator, and pattern designer. In this class, I want to show you my method for vectorizing Procreate patterns in Adobe Illustrator. We're going to cover everything, from preparing and exporting Procreate files to learning about different ways to vectorize them in Adobe Illustrator using the Image Trace tool or Pen tool. Besides just vectorizing, I'm going to show you how to easily reassemble that same pattern in Illustrator by using your own custom actions. We're going to focus on achieving the best results while being time-efficient. This class is beginner friendly, but the basic knowledge of Procreate and Adobe Illustrator will be super helpful. By the end of this class, you will know how to vectorize Procreate patterns in Adobe Illustrator, which means you'll be fully prepared in case you need to deliver those vector files. If you're ready, let's get started. 2. Project: The project for this class is very easy. You're going to start with one finished pattern you made in Procreate and you're going to vectorize it in Adobe Illustrator. Once you finish vectorizing your pattern, click on the Create Project button, share your thoughts, and add two versions of the same pattern, one already made him Procreate and the other one that is vectorized in Illustrator. It's going to be wonderful to see them together to make a final comparison. Also, feel free to support your fellow classmates by liking and commenting on their projects. It's always easier and more fun to learn, grow, and create together. I personally cannot to wait to see what you'll make. All right. I think we're ready to start now. 3. Procreate - Pattern Basics: Hey guys, welcome to a different set-up. In this part I will show you how my Procreate patterns are structured, and why that's important when it comes to vectorizing it in Adobe Illustrator. The pattern that I'm showing you in this class is already finished. It's a complete swatch, and it looks like this when it's repeating. This pattern is made in a way in which I make all my Procreate patterns. It consists of multiple layers that are mainly separated by color, position, or type of elements. As you can see, I have two groups. One is for flowers and one for greenery, and each group has multiple layers for different elements. Making a layered-Procreate pattern like this is great for keeping the pattern editable, so that you can always make adjustments and color changes. On the other hand, having everything separated into different layers is what makes the process of vectorizing it a lot easier. But let me show you the example. If your pattern is like this one and everything is merged together like this, then it won't be possible to vectorize it using the methods that I'm going to show you without completely redrawing everything in Adobe Illustrator. You'll see exactly what I'm talking about in the next steps. Nevertheless, in case you want to learn how to create layered and editable patterns, you can check one of my two classes: create an intricate, editable pattern in Procreate, or create a dense half-drop pattern in Procreate to see my whole process. The first one is for beginners, and the second one is for intermediate levels. As I said, I'll leave the links for you in the glossary source. Let's go back to the gallery. This is my original pattern file and before I continue working on it, I want to duplicate it. I will just swipe left, click "Duplicate" and let's call this one Pattern For Adobe Illustrator. In this way, I can make as many changes as I need without losing anything from the original file. 4. Procreate - Plan Ahead: All right. Now let's take a better look at this pattern to determine how we want to vectorize different parts. My main goal here is to decide what parts of the pattern I want to vectorize with the Pen tool, and what parts I want to vectorize with the Image trace tool. If I'm using the pen tool, that means I will redraw everything from scratch again in Adobe Illustrator. If I'm using the image trace tool, that means that I can convert my rest of images into vector graphics in one single click. This is just a glimpse of what we'll cover in the next videos when we start learning more about Adobe Illustrator. But it's important to mention it now because the file preparation process will depend on the tool that we'll use later. When it comes to this pattern, I want to use the pen tool to redraw the stems and leaves because I'm not very happy with how they look. I know that I can improve them and make them more accurate in Adobe Illustrator. For the flowers and textures, I will use the image trace tool. By using the image trace tool for these parts, I can keep that more organic hand-drawn feel when I vectorize them, and the whole process will be a lot easier, and time efficient. Let's see how we can prepare these different parts depending on the tools that we want to use. 5. Procreate - Layer Preparation: If you're planning to use the Pen tool to redraw your Procreate elements in Adobe Illustrator like I will with the greenery part, the preparation process is very easy. All you need to do is save the main patterns watch as a JPEG image because you will use it as a drawing guide later. I'll just go to "Actions", "Share", JPEG and I can AirDrop it to my laptop. If you have Apple products, that's the easiest thing to do, but if that's not the case, you can also save it to "Files" or add it to Dropbox or whatever it is easy for you so that you can send it to your computer. Now when it comes to the Image Trace Tool, things are a bit different. What we want to do now is to prepare each layer accordingly so that this tool can recognize the elements correctly, and so that we can reassemble them again as a pattern in Adobe Illustrator. Our interests should now be in determining what layers have elements inside the canvas and what layers have elements that are cut off on the edges. So in this case, the layers with the central part of the flowers are inside the canvas, and the layers with the main flower petals and textures have elements that are cut off on the edges. This differentiation is important because once we use the Image Trace Tool to vectorize these elements, they will naturally change a bit and what's on the edges will not form a perfect seamless pattern again. Let's start preparing the layers with elements that are inside the canvas. First of all, I will turn off the background so that the files we save later have a transparent background, and I will also turn off the rest of the layers and just leave these two visible, and all I need to do now is to change their color to black so that the Image Trace Tool can recognize them correctly. Okay, I will just select the black color and drop it. I will now turn off this part, and since this is a clipping mask, I need to deselect it, and I can now drop the black color here as well. That's it for now, I can also turn off this layer as well. I will now bring back the main flower petals. So when it comes to elements that are cut out on the edges, the preparation process is a bit different because as I said, if I just image trace them in Illustrator as they are now, the pattern repeat will not fit. So in this case, I'll need to make a repeat out of them, inside Procreate. If you upgraded your Procreate app to the newest version, Procreate 5X, it will be a lot easier to finish this step because of their new snap tool option. Let's first of all re-color this to black, and I will now duplicate this layer so that we have four layers in total. I can turn off these ones and just leave one of them. When I select this arrow to transform tool, you can see that my flower illustrations are cut off on each of the canvas sides, so when I select them, the whole canvas area will be selected, which is exactly what we need to proceed. If that's not the case with your pattern, you can always create another layer and add color to it, and then before proceeding with this step, just select them both, and then you can scale it proportionally as a full square. This is important for this step and that's also something I'm mentioning in my classes for making patterns in Procreate. So, in this case I do not need it, just delete it, and I will select this one and go to "Transform" tool. At the bottom part, I have "Transform" set to Uniform, and when I click on "Snapping", you can see that Magnetics and Snapping is on and Distance and Velocity are set to max. This will help me arrange these blocks very accurately, just a quick explanation of these two settings. Distance is determining how far away the selected object will be before it snaps to center or a guide or another object, and by setting it to max, which is 50 pixels, you will have a better control without having to go very close to the guide or another object before it snaps. Velocity is determining how fast these snapping lines show up and how many of them show up. You can always play with these settings to see what works best for you. Okay, so let's make this better. My canvas is 3,000 by 3,000 pixels, and now I just want to scale this one by half and it will be 1,500 pixels. I will do the same thing for the other one, I will bring it back, select it, and put it in this corner, and you can see how perfectly it snaps to place. I'll do the same thing for the rest of them until I have my pattern repeat. Something to be very careful about while doing this, is not to accidentally nudge the layer, it happens to meet a lot of times, so you can also zoom in and check if everything is okay, and it seems fine, so I can now just merge these four layers together and we have our little pattern repeat, so let's turn it off for now and let's bring back the texture, I will also re-color it to black, and I will do the same thing with it as I did with the white flowers, so we'll duplicate it, and I will scale it, so that I can create a little pattern, and that's it, the texture is prepared and I will just merge it. Let's start it off for now. All right, everything is prepared and now we can export these layers. So when it comes to saving these files, we don't have to do it one by one, because when you go to "Actions" and "Share", you can see the option to share as PNG files. So all we need to do is to turn them on so they are visible. I will turn on the line work, the flowers, this pattern repeat we made from the main flowers, then I will also turn on the texture. It all looks messy and not visible right now, so just watch what is visible in the layers, okay. All the layers are turned on, and I can now go to "Actions", "Share", and then select "PNG" files, and I can just AirDrop them to my laptop. Okay, let's start with Adobe Illustrator. 6. Illustrator - Basics & Actions: Here again, we're now in Adobe Illustrator and I'm going to walk you through some of the basics and also my workflow setup when it comes to creating and vectorizinmpg patterns. First of all, I'm going to open a new canvas in the size of 1,000 by 1,000 pixels. When it comes to the color mode, I will leave it in RGB color but you can also use CMYK. It all depends on what you need and what your printing company is using. When it comes to resolution, I will set it to 300 ppi. But keep in mind that if you're working only with vectors and not using for example any raster effects, this canvas resolution is not at all important. You can set it to even 72 ppi and it wouldn't make any difference. The resolution that is important is when you finish your pattern swatch and when you want to export and save it, but we'll talk about that later. Now, I will name it, and just click "Create". Now, before we even start with vectorizing and reassembling our pattern, I want to show you how to create some amazing custom actions that I always use while making patterns in Illustrator. These actions are super useful and they save me an incredible amount of time. Honestly, I cannot imagine making patterns in Illustrator without them. As you know, to make a pattern repeat, you need to design and considering what's inside the Artboard and also what's on the borders, and the elements that are on the borders need to repeat perfectly. Let me just quickly set this example pattern so that you have a clear idea of what I'm talking about. I will just use some squares. I will position them here at the bottom, and I will also position them on this left border. Now let's fill this space in the center. These elements are inside a canvas and I can just now recolor them. These elements are inside a canvas and nothing will change. These three elements are on the left border and these three are at the bottom. If we're making this example to be a pattern, we would need to select the objects that are on the left border. Do the right-click, Transform and then select Move. Now we would need to add zero pixels to vertical, because we're not moving it vertically and since we're moving it horizontally, we need to add 1,000 pixels in horizontal because that's the size of our canvas. If your size is different, then just add the size of your canvas. Now, we need to click "Copy", because we don't only want to move these elements, we want to duplicate them. Let's click "Copy", and here they are in the same position as the elements on the left border. If we want to complete this pattern, we also need to move the elements that are at the bottom. We will do the same thing. Select them, right-click, Transform, Move, and now we need to add zero to horizontal because we're not moving it horizontally, and we need to add minus 1,000 in vertical. Again, click "Copy" to duplicate it. That's it, we finished this pattern example. As you can see in this way, we need to click and then search, and then click again and add the numbers each time we need to do this which is actually very often when you're creating patterns, because a lot of times you need to adjust the elements and move them and do this process so many times. Instead of doing all that and wasting an incredible amount of time, we can create our own custom actions and do the same thing in just one click. What's super nice to know is that you can create all custom actions depending on what you often use in your everyday work flow. Let me show you how to do that. I intentionally deleted my own actions so that you can see the whole process from scratch. First of all, I will delete the elements that I just moved and duplicate it. Let's delete these elements, also these, and this is how it looked when we just started. Now let's go to the action window. If it's not open for you, you can go to Window and select "Action". In this way you can open any window you need, whether it's align, Artboard, color, brushes, etc. My action window is currently in the button mode, so I'll just click on this burger menu and deselect the button mode. Now you can see that here I have a folder full of default actions. I think everyone has that and we can just click here to collapse it. Now we can create a new one by clicking on this folder icon here, and let's call it Pattern Actions. Great. Once we have the folder, we can click on this plus icon here to create a new action. We can now name it, Move Right, because what I want to do now is to move the objects from the left border to the right border just as we did a few moments ago. I will now select the function key to be F1, and I can set the color to red. All that is left to do now is to click "Record". But keep in mind, once the recording is on, every click and move I make will be saved. Make sure you don't make any mistakes while doing that. Let's click "Record", and I will do the same thing we did just a few moments ago with the elements that are on the left border. I will select them, do the right-click, Transform, and select "Move". I will add 1,000 to horizontal, add zero to vertical and I will click "Copy", that's it. All I need to do now is to press the "Stop" button and stop recording. If you look right here, you will see every move you made while recording this. If you click on this burger menu here and go to button mode, you will find your saved action. Also, this is a great reminder of the function key we used. Let's test it out before proceeding with the others. I will now delete this and let's select what's on the left border. All I need to do now is to press the function key on my keyboard, and press F1 at the same time. Well on, some magic in action. A little side note to use any of the function keys like F1, F2, F3, etc. You need to press it in combination with the main function key which should be named Fn on your keyboard. I'm using a MacBook and that's how it looks here at least. Now let's go back to recording the rest of the actions. I will now click on the burger menu to dislike the button mode so that I can see all the options. Now let's make the action for move to left. I will now delete the elements that are on the left border, and I can click on this plus icon. Here let's call this one Move Left. I will set the function key again to be F1, but I will also use Shift. That means that when I press this shortcut, I will need to press not function and F1, like I did for the previous one. But I will need to press function F1 and Shift at the same time. Let's place the color to be orange and click "Record". We'll do the same thing as before. I will select the objects that are on the right border, right-click, Transform, Move. As you can see, vertical is already set to zero pixels and that's exactly what we need, but when it comes to horizontal, this time we need to add minus 1,000 pixels. Because this time we're moving it from the right border to the left border. Now let's just click "Copy", and stop recording, and we just saved in our direction. Next one is to move everything up. Again, let's click on this plus icon. We'll name it, Move Up, function key can be F2 this time. I don't know, blue color, and let's click "Record". I will select everything that is at the bottom. Again, right-click, Transform, Move, and now we need to do the opposite. In horizontal, I will add zero pixels because we're not willing it horizontally and vertical I will add minus 1,000 pixels to move it up. Again click Copy and just stop recording. The last one, I will delete the objects that are on the bottom. Again, press the icon, let's name it, Move Down, and I will do the same thing as I did before. I will select F2 and I will use it in combination with shift, I will select the color and record. Select the objects, right-click, Transform, Move, and just this time add 1,000 pixels in vertical and simply click "Copy", and let's save this one. We are done. You can see how fast this was to set up. The best thing is that doing this in five minutes will save us so much time later. Now when we go to the action window and click on the burger menu, we can go to the button mode, and let's scroll down until we see our new actions. I always leave it in this mode because anytime I can just take a look and remember the shortcut I created and what function keys I need to press for it. You'll see throughout this class that we'll use these actions very often. Now that we have everything set, we're ready to rock and roll. Just kidding, let's get into vectorizing. 7. Illustrator - Pen Tool: In this video, we'll use the Pen Tool to redraw elements from our Procreate pattern. Pen Tool can be a bit tricky to use correctly at first, but once you understand the logic of how it works and practice a bit, it becomes a lot easier. Also, I'll show you some additional editing tricks I used to achieve the desired results. Here is the folder with all the files I previously exported from Procreate. As a start, I'm just going to add the main JPEG pattern swatch image that we will use as a drawing guide. I can just drag it and drop it. You can see that it's smaller than the size of my camera, so I will go to the Transform window and add 1,000 by1,000 pixels. I will now go to the Align window and I will align it horizontally and vertically. The next thing on my list is to create a new color palette and save the same colors I used in this Procreate pattern. I will now go to the Swatches window and I will click on this folder icon, and I will create a new color group. You can see it here. Now all I need to do is select the Eyedropper Tool. It's here in the toolbar menu, or you can just press "I" on the keyboard. Now let's select one color. Again from the toolbar menu, I will just click on it, drag it, and drop it in my color palette. I will do the same thing for the rest of the colors. Just drag it and drop it. That's done. Now let's press "V" for the Selection Tool. I can select the image, go to the Transparency window, and lower the opacity of the image. Finally I can go to the layers and just lock it. When it comes to this pattern, if you remember, I decided to redraw the stems and leaves because I wasn't very happy with how they look. I wanted to make some small changes and adjustments. When it comes to stems, I want to create more accurate lines which is very easy to do in Illustrator. Regarding the leaves, I want to improve them, change them a bit, and even reposition them. As you know, Pen Tool is here in the toolbar menu. It's this little nib icon here, and you can click it to select it, or you can just press "P" on the keyboard. It's very easy to remember. I will now turn off the fill and select the outline, and change it to black color. In the upper menu, I can also change the size of the line it can be six, but I can always change that later. Let's see how the Pen Tool works. The basic logic of the Pen Tool is that by using it, you click to create anchor points, and by placing different anchor points you're making a path. If we just click and then place different anchor points, you can see that my line is not curved, it has straight angles. If I want to stop making it I can just press "V" on the keyboard, that's the basic Selection Tool. To deselect a line, I can just press anywhere outside the line, and it's now de-selected. Let's delete this and create another one. Just press "P" to select the Pen Tool. Now, if I want to create curved lines, I need to start a path by clicking, holding it, and then dragging. You can see these handles will start appearing. I will just position the handle in a direction of my line and I will place another one so that you can see, and you can see that the line is now curving. Also you can see the size of the handles, and also the angle in which you will position it will determine how the next line will go. If it's like this, then the next one will curve in this direction. I will now press "V", and I will delete it. Now let's remake the stems for real. Just press "P" to select the Pen Tool, and I can now just simply click and create a regular pinker point or I can just create one where I will drag the handles. I want to make sure that when I'm dragging the handles I don't drag them like this or like this, but I drag them so that this one is pointing in the direction in which the line will go. For the next one, I'll go somewhere up here where the curve ends and starts going in a different direction. Again, click and then drag the handles so that you can position the line correctly. As you can see, it seems correct. This upper handle is showing me where the next part of the line will go, and I can just finish it by clicking here. Press "V" and just de-select it by pressing anywhere outside the line. This can be a bit tricky to get perfect right away because you need to get the fill for it. The best way to master it is really through practice and basically trial and error. Also, you can see that my path is not perfect at all. It's very hard to create an exact replica right away, and you don't even need to attempt to do that. What I mostly do when working with the Pen Tool is to create a good path that is very close to the original. Then I can go in and edit if something is not working. Now I will show you a few different ways in which you can edit the path you made with the Pen Tool. First of all, one basic tool that you can use to edit the path you made is the Direct Selection Tool and you can find it here in the toolbar menu. You can select it here or just press "A" on the keyboard to access it. Now when we zoom in and select this with the Direct Selection Tool, you will see all the handles appearing. Sometimes the line is not correct because of the angle of these handles. You can just click here and change the angle if that's the problem. Another thing that might be the problem is also how the anchor points are placed. For example, if this one is not correct, I can select it and then I can drag it to reposition it. I can just do that by clicking-and-dragging it, or I can use also a arrows on my keyboard to do that very delicately. It can go up, down or right and left. I'll just reposition this a bit, and this one looks good. I will now create another stem with the Pen Tool to show you my favorite editing tool in action. Let's recreate this one. Press "P" for the Pen Tool, and let's start by clicking-and-dragging. You can see how I'm positioning this. This line goes like this and this could be a good place for an anchor point, because after that, the line will go slightly in a different direction. Let's just press "V" and then click outside. We have another path created, and this one as well needs a bit of editing. Instead of using a Direct Selection Tool like I did in a previous example, this time I'm going to use my favorite editing tool and it's called Smooth Tool. You will find it here in the toolbar menu. When you click on this Sharper Tool, you can open more tools and select "Small Tool". Now let's press "V" and select this line. Let's select the Smooth Tool, and with it we can just go over the line to fix it a bit. If you don't like the results you can just press "Command Z" to undo, and then you can just drag it on some other part of the line. You can now see how wonderful the Smooth Tool works and how the results are very nice. This is really my favorite tool because it's so simple, and easy, and very fast when you want to fix your lines. I will now create another stem. Let's see maybe it can do this one, press "P". This time I will make it a bit messy by using a lot of anchor points to show you more editing options. This is me going absolutely crazy with the amount of anchor points. This example is finished. If you went over the top with anchor points, there is also a quick illustrator fix that you can use, and it's called Simplify. I sometimes really wish I had this in real life when I over-complicate things. The line is selected, and now I will go to the main menu, click on "Object", go to "Path", and click "Simplify", and this little window will appear. Now if I want, I can drag this to have the smallest number of anchor points, or I can drag it to have more anchor points, as you can see in this example. Also I can click on this button and it will give me a default result that Illustrator is suggesting for me. Let's click that, and now we have three anchor points. You can also click on these three dots to see the Option window, and there you can adjust the settings even more. I personally haven't really used these additional settings because the default options were always good enough. But it's good to know they exist. Let's click "Okay", and that's it. Since I'm not totally happy with this part, I will just grab the Smooth tool and go over it, and this is much, much better. In conclusion, all these tools for editing your path are very useful. The one you will use, or what combination of tools you'll use, will depend on the specific path you're editing. If you need a small fix, use the direct selection tool and adjust the curves or anchor points. If you want to adjust the overall look of the path, you can use the Smooth tool, and finally, if you over-complicate things, use the Simplify tool. Before I continue drawing the rest of the stems, I need to create a pattern made out of my base image because as you can see, these stems that are on the edges are cut out and I cannot see how they were made, so I need to create this better. I will now just unlock the base image and I can select it. Now what I want to do is basically copy this image and place it here on the left and on the bottom so that I can see what's on the edges. As we have our wonderful custom actions, I can do that in a one click. If I want to move this to left, let's see, my action is Shift+F1, so select it, use main function key Shift and press ''F1''. Yay. Now let's do the same thing, but I want to move it down. Move down is Shift+F2 press, the main function key Shift+F2. Wonderful. Let's solve this one here. This one goes to the left. Main function key Shift+F1. I will now select them all, I will group them, command G, and I can now just lock them. As I said, I will now continue drawing the lines, and besides using the Pen tool as I showed you, I will mostly use the Smooth tool to adjust them a bit if needed, and I will also use Direct Selection tool. All the stems are finished. As you can see, I only drew the stems that are inside the canvas and also the ones that are crossing the left border and the bottom border, because these stems will now be repeated. Let's start with this one on the left border and to repeat it on the right border, I will just use my custom action. All I need to press this ''Function F1''. There it is. It makes me so happy each time I do this, because I don't have to write the numbers. Remember, if I'm moving it by 1,000 pixels or minus 1,000 pixels, it's super easy. Let's now move the ones that are on the bottom. I will press ''Function F2''. Perfect. I can now select them all and group them, Command G, and I can change their color to the original color, and for now, I will lock this layer. Now I can start redrawing the leaves. Everything you learned a few moments ago about the Pen tool and different editing tools is something we'll also use when drawing the leaves. Only this time, we will be creating closed shapes. I will adjust the size of the outline to number 2 so that I can see what I'm doing, and I will choose a different outline color. Let's go with black again. Basically, I will do the same thing as I showed you a few moments ago. I will click and drag. To start the line, I'll position the handles, and then I will create another anchor point. As you can see, I have small curves here so I will position a few more anchor points to be able to recreate that and then I can go back to creating less anchor points. You can see that also here because the leaf will be hidden behind the flower, I'm not really worried about these lines. I'm only worried about the lines that will be showing, like the ones up here. We're almost finished. Now, once you place the final anchor point, just click on the first one and close the shape. Now while everything is still selected, we can just go to the toolbar and click on this arrow here. Now what's on the outline will go to the fill and the outline will be deselected. Let's see if there's something that I want to fix. This part looks good. I don't mind about this part because it's not going to be visible and also this part looks okay. If I want it, I can again use the Smooth Tool to go over these parts, and also if you need to, you can zoom in, press "A" for the Direct Selection Tool and then click on the anchor and change the handles if that's the problem. Also, if you have a lot of anchor points as we did with the lines, you can just simplify them by going to Object, Path and then clicking on Simplify. So far, I'm very happy with this one, so I will now create another one to show you one useful trick. Once more, I will press "B" to select the Pen Tool and you can see here in the toolbar menu, Fill is black, but the stroke is deselected, so to change that I can just click here. Let's do the same thing as we did before. Start dragging the handles, place another anchor point, now let's zoom in so that I can show you this useful trick. Instead of making this rounded corner by myself, I can just make one sharp corner and I will make it a bit further away from where my original leaf is ending. Now let's go back down, I'll zoom out. Now to finish, I will click at the beginning, and let's fill it in again. Before I completely add it, this leaf, I want to show you this useful tricks. Let's zoom in on top and press "A" for the Direct Selection Tool and just press this anchor point. You will see that this little circle will appear. It happens with all sharp corners because you have a possibility to make them round. All you need to do is select this little circle and just drag it. You can make it as round as you want or as little, so I will just round it a bit. Okay, nice. As usual, I will select it and use the Smooth Tool. I think this part looks horrible, now it's much, much better. Also, another thing is that once you do this, let me show you I will select it with the Direct Selection Tool, you will see that these anchor points will be positioned in the same parallel position. If you don't like that, you don't want these hands to be uniform, you can simply just click on one of them and just change the position or even change from the angle. Like this a bit more. These two leaves are finished, and what I wanted to say is that, once you know how these tools work, it's just a matter of playing with them and discovering what works best for you and the type of design you're working on. Personally for me, the Smooth Tool is the best option so they can create the shapes that I like. I will now quickly redraw the leaves using the same techniques and I will also redraw these parts of the stems that I completely forgot. The leaves are finished. As you could see, I redrew them, then I edited them and I had some problems with this one because I wasn't happy with the final result. But then I went in and made it wider and a bit bigger. Now everything is fine. I also finished these wider parts of the stem and now I can select them, and I want to recolor them. Pay attention to what's happening in the toolbar when you're recoloring things. Because if I now just click the color, it will only recolor my outline and that's not what I want. Let's undo this and we need to activate the fill. A fill is in the background and stroke is at front, that means the stroke is activated. To activate the fill, just press "X" on the keyboard or you can just press in it here. But the easiest one is just X. Now I can select the color. I will group them, Command G and I will lock the layer. The next thing to do is to position the leaves that are crossing the borders so that we have a pattern repeat. As you can see, some of the leaves like this one is crossing this border and also the upper border, this little part here, so I need to repeat it on the right and also at the bottom. Let's use commands. Function key and F1. Here it is. Now let's move it down. Let me see. It's Shift F2. So the function key Shift F2. Let's see what's next. Let's also bring this one down, function key Shift F2. We need to bring these two up. We'll press Function key F2 this time. I think I've positioned everything and now I can select all the leaves. I can recolor them, group them, Command G and again, I can lock this layer. The next thing on my to-do list when it comes to Pen tool, are these lines, let me show you, that go on top of the leaves. I will not remake them in the same way, I want to change them a bit so it's not necessary for me to see what's happening on the original image. But if you want to see what's happening on your original image, unlock the layer, select it, go to transparency, and just lower the opacity so that you can follow what's happening underneath and it will bring that back. Also, I think I will now turn off my base image so I don't get distracted while making these lines. I will also lock the leaves. Let me show you now how I will draw these lines that go on top of the leaves. Let's select the outline and recolor it to black. I will also change the size of the stroke to four maybe. Let's press "P". Basically we'll do the same thing as we did with the stems. Just press and drag to create your lines. This time I will finish the lines somewhere up here so that's going to be different from my original pattern. See, I will smooth it out a bit or maybe I can also fix the angle here. I will also press "A" for a direct selection tool, I can click on this anchor and just move it a bit here. See, I think this looks nice. What I'm going to do now, as you can see, this line is a bit boring and also the end of the line is square, and I do not want it like that. I will now select the line and go to the upper menu, click on "Stroke" and you can see that here, I can, for example, change the end of my line. It can be rounded or it can be like this or as you can see at the bottom, I can change the whole profile. Now it's uniform, that's the standard one but I can also use this one. You can see how wonderful it looks. That's it you guys. I'll now just continue drawing the lines until I finish. I will also move them using the custom actions as I did with stems and the leaves. I'll speed this up and I'll see you in the next video where we'll learn more about the wonderful image trace 2. 8. Illustrator - Image Trace: Here we are again, drawing with the Pen Tool is finished, and now I can show you how to vectorize elements from your Procreate pattern using the Image Trace tool. Here, I'll cover the basics of this tool, and also show you different ways in which you can edit and adjust those results. By the away, one big congratulations to you for using the Pen Tool and practicing, because it can be a bit challenging, especially if you're a beginner. Even though it is absolutely possible to vectorize the whole pattern only with the Image Trace tool, and without the Pen Tool redrawing, what we learned in the previous video is a strong base knowledge, that will be helpful here as well. I will now go back to the file with PNG images I saved from Procreate, and I will select them, and just drag them, and drop them here. Let's zoom out. If you add them like this all at once, they will be stacked one behind the other, so just de-select by clicking anywhere outside the images. Now I can select one and drag it. Let's see what we have here. If you remember, when saving and preparing these files in Procreate, we made a distinction layers, that have elements inside a Canvas and layers that have elements that are cut out on the edges. Now we have two files with elements that are inside the edges, and these two files with elements that were cut out on the Canvas edges, and we needed to create a little repeat out of them. The first thing I want to do is to change their size. These two that we just colored in black and exported will be in the same size of the Canvas, so select one, and go to the Transform window, and add 1,000 pixels. I will do the same thing for the other one. Now, when it comes to these two that were made into repeat pattern inside Procreate, they will not be in the same size of the Canvas, but in the double size. Instead of 1,000 by 1,000 pixels, they will be 2,000 by 2,000 pixels. Let's select one and add the size, 2,000 pixels, and let's do the same thing for the other one. The main reason for that is because in Procreate, we duplicated and scaled the original layer by half of their size, and now we need to double their size. I hope that makes sense when I say it out loud. All in all, let's start with these main flowers in repeat so that you can see what happens. I will now bring back the base image, and I will turn off the band drawings so that we can focus better. Now let's select this image, and let's align it to our Canvas. I will align it to the upper boarder, like this, and also to the right border. Now you can see how these flowers fits with the original image. I will now select the image, and in the upper menu, I have the Image Trace button. But instead of just clicking that button and getting default results, I will press this arrow here and I will select "Sketched Art". The difference is that with this option, the Image Trace will only vectorize what's black, and it will keep my transparent background transparent without turning it to white, so let's click that and see the results. The Image Trace is created, but if I want to adjust the results a bit, in the upper menu as well, I have this button for the Image Trace Panel. When I click on it, I will have this little window, where I can see all the options available. Playing with the threshold is the main option, but if you click here in advance, you will also see other options as well, and you will also see that here, Ignore White is selected, and that's why my transparent background stayed transparent. My biggest advice when it comes to these settings is to play with them, and see what works best, because there is no secret recipe that works for all images. But here are a few useful things to know. What I'd like to do now is set the view to outlines with source image. If we zoom in a bit, you can see that the more transparent black is the original image, and these outlines are to tracing results that will have once we finish the process. This is a great way to make the adjustments and try to get as close to the original as possible. If I make the adjustments in the threshold, you can see that these outlines will be changing a bit. Now bring it back. For example, if I zoom in even closer, and maybe pull it Paths to be 100 percent, you can see that the outline becomes completely distorted, which is definitely not the look I'm going for, so bring it back to 50 percent. If I move corners from 50 percent to zero, you can see that this little corner right here will become rounded, and I will now play with this settings a bit because I want to have rounded corners. Now that I'm happy with the results, I can just click the "Expand" button that is in the upper menu to finish Image Tracing. My shapes are now filled with color, and also in the Layer window, you can see that all the shapes are now turned into a group of vector elements. I will close this window. As you can see, everything fits nicely with the original Procreate button image. Not perfectly because in the process of vectorizing, things will change a bit. Also not to forget to mention the brush you used in Procreate will have a big role when it comes to Image Trace later. I use a native Procreate brush here called Studio Pen, and it makes these clean strokes that are great for clean vectorizing. All in all, depending on the brush you used, the Image Trace results will be different. We can now turn off the base image so that we can focus on our next steps. Now, you might be wondering for the past few minutes about these elements that are cut out on the corners. Let me show you what we'll do with them, and why we even positioned everything like this, and why we even prepared this particular layer differently in Procreate. The reason is, to create a perfect pattern, repeat. We can now delete these cutout pieces one by one because they would mess up with our new vectorized repeat. I will select this and ungroup it, Command Shift G, and now I can just select what's on the edges, and delete it. I will delete everything that is cut out. Also, I will delete the unnecessary parts that are outside the Canvas. Basically, I will only leave what's inside, and what's on the borders, but it's not cut out. While doing this, just make sure you don't accidentally delete the elements that you need. This is how our almost prepared pattern looks like. I have elements that are inside of Canvas, and also elements that were not cut out, and that are on the edges. The cut out elements that we deleted will be simply replaced with full elements that we have on the opposite borders. But before we use our magic custom actions to move pattern elements from one side to the other side, we should check these elements to see if there's something that needs to be edited and adjusted. I will zoom in to get a closer look and see if there are some mistakes or parts that I don't like. Now the editing tools I showed you in the previous video will come in handy. This flower doesn't look so good, so let's zoom in. You can see that this line is a bit distorted, it has a lot of anchor points, and it needs to be fixed. Here, I could use a simplified tool or I can even delete the anchor points manually. To do that, go to the Toolbar menu and press this into icon to see the whole group, and here you can select Delete Anchor Point tool, or you can simply press "Minus" on your keyboard to access it. The trick with this tool is, you can just press on the anchor point to delete it. But what I like to do is hold Shift and then press on the anchor point. This way, the results will be better, because the other anchor points around it will adjust to this new situation. Let's undo this. If you, for example, just click on the anchor point without holding Shift, you can see that you will get more straight and harsh line. Let's use the option with the Shift, and you can see the difference. Let's press "Minus" again to access it, and I can also delete this one. Nice, this looks much, much better. I can now select it, and to finish, I can also use Smooth tool. This one is done. Let's see the other ones. Everything else looks very good, and now we can continue. Editing is done. So let's make this pattern complete. I will now select the elements that are on the left side. It's time to use our wonderful custom actions to move them. To move them right, main function key F1. Now I will select the ones that are on the bottom. To move up, main function key F2. The pattern is complete. It's super fast and easy. I can now select them all and group them, Command G, and I will recolor them. As you can see, I accidentally recolored outline, so I can just press here to change that, and then I will delete the outline. Since this layer is finished, I can go to the Layer window and just lock it. I think it's time to also create the background for our pattern. In the toolbar menu, I will just select the Rectangle tool, and all I need to do is click. Now I will add 1,000 pixels by 1,000 pixels, and click "Okay" which changed the color. Now I can just align it horizontally and vertically. The next thing to do is to send it to back. I will use the shortcut Command, Shift, left bracket. You can see in the Layer window that the background is now at the bottom. You can also do this by making the right-click, then going to arrange, and here you have the option to send to back, but it's a lot easier to just use the shortcut. I will also lock this layer as well. Now we can go back to image tracing the rest of the elements we need to add. I will now grab this image within the inside of a flower. Let's bring it here. All I need to do is position it vertically and horizontally so that it's in the center of our Canvas. Just as before, while this image is selected, I will go in the upper menu and click on this arrow and select "Sketched Art". Let's go to the Image Trace panel and set the view to outlines with source image and I will just zoom in to see if everything is as it should be, and everything looks very good. That means I don't have to adjust the settings, and all I have to do to finish is click "Expand". You can see that this one has a lot of anchor points and it's very very messy. For this one, I will use the Simplify tool. Everything is selected and now I will go to Object, Path and click "Simplify". Everything looks a lot better, and I'll just use this default simplify suggestion that I have, and all I need to do is click outside the window. These elements look good, so I will just select them and recolor them, and I can now lock the layer. As you can see how this pattern is coming together nicely. Now let's bring the line work. Again. I will just align this so it's on the center of the Canvas. I will select it, go to the upper menu, click on this arrow, and select "Sketched Art". Once more, I will go to the Image Trace panel, and set the view to outlines with source image. Let's zoom in to see the results. For this line work procreate, I used another native brush called ink bleed. As you can see, it has a very nice texture, but the results I'm getting with the Image Trace tool are simplified. I might go into the advanced settings and change the path to be a bit higher, so we get those distorted lines. Let's play with the threshold a bit. This looks a lot better, so I'll go to the upper menu and just click "Expand". All right, everything looks good. When it comes to these lines, I'll skip the editing because I already adjusted my settings when I'm image tracing them, and because I want to keep these lines a bit more organic. I will now select them and recolor them. Now is the time to create a clipping mask and place the line work inside the borders of these yellow parts of the flower. When I'm creating a clipping mask and illustrator, I like to do everything inside the Layer window, because I have a better overview of how the layers are positioned, and it's easier to later drag them and reposition them as needed. Here is the group of yellow flowers. I will now unlock them, and here is the textured line work. When it comes to this clipping mask, as I said, the line work needs to be inside the borders of the flower. To make that happen, I will select the group of flowers, and I will duplicate them. Command C to copy and then Command F to paste in place. Now I have two groups and I'll select one of them. I can do that here in the Layer window and I will drag it up. Here is our clipping mask sandwich. Yellow flowers are on the bottom and also on top, and in the middle we have the textured line work. It's important to know that I want to make any changes to the bottom layer of the sandwich, because that will be our clipping mask background. The next step is to convert the line work and the upper part of the yellow flowers into a compound path. Now, these layers are just groups made out of different vector shapes, and by converting them into compound path, we're going to simplify them a bit and we'll be able to finally create that clipping mask. The upper layer with yellow flowers is already selected, and now I can just go to the main menu, click on Object, Compound Path, and then "Make". As you can see, you can also press Command 8 as a shortcut, so let's click "Make". In the Layer window or layer is now called compound path. If I want to release that compound path and turn it back into a group again, I can just select it, do the right-click and then press "Release Compound Path". Let's do the same thing for the line work. I can select it here inside the Layer window, and now I can just press the shortcut Command 8. That's done. Now I can hold shift to select both the textured line work and the upper layer, and I can now create a clipping mask. To do that, you can go to the main menu. Again, click on "Object", Clipping Mask, and then Make. Also we have a shortcut Command 7. Here it is. As you can see, these two layers are now converted into a clipping mask, and if I expand it here in the Layer window, you can see that this one is the border and these are the line work. If I turn off the visibility for our bottom layer, this is how everything looks. I will now select both of these layers and group them, and I can also lock them for now. We can now bring back the petal drawings. As you can see, the pattern is almost finished. We only need to work on our final image with a texture. I will now drag the texture image on the art board. Since it's underneath the existing layers, I need to bring it up the shortcut is Command shift, right bracket. Or you can do the same thing by doing a right-click arrange, and then bring to front. With this texture, I will do the same thing I did with the main flowers. I will align it on the upper border, on the right border. We can now image trace it. I will go in the upper menu and select "Sketched Art". Let's open the Image Trace panel to see outlines with source image. As you can see, a lot of these small grain particles are not visible, so I will just adjust the threshold a bit. That looks better. To finish, I will just click "Expand". As you can see, the texture I vectorize is pretty simple, but of course there are many different textures we use in Procreate, whether to add an additional touch to our pattern to draw elements with it, or add dimension shades. All in all, the whole subject of vectorizing textures is huge and complex. Since we're covering the basics in this part, I decided to leave that whole texture topic for another time and for a whole new class so that I can show you everything I know, and also we can cover different examples and see what works best. Before I ungroup this Layer, I want to make sure that everything in my Layers is locked, because once I select this and hit "Command Shift G" to ungroup, you can see that my Layer window, will be filled with millions of these particles. This looks very messy now, so let's clean it up to be able to create a repeating pattern out of it. I will now zoom in, and on the right border, I will select everything that is crossing the border or is cut out on the border. I will do the same thing on the upper border. I can now delete the rest of the particles that are outside the canvas. I will now zoom to the left border and delete also the outside particles. I will do the same thing on the bottom border. If I leave some of the particles that are outside, it's not a big problem. The only thing I need to make sure is to leave the particles that are crossing the border. This looks good. I can now select the particles that are on the left border. I want to make sure to catch what's on the edges, and if I also select some more it won't matter. It's selected and now I can move it onto the right border. I will use my custom action main function key F_1. Let's do the same thing for the bottom border, and the custom action is main function key F_2. Wonderful. This texture is now in repeat, and I can finally select everything, "Command G" to group it, and as you can see, my Layer window is back to normal. I will now recolor this texture, and the only thing left to do is to create more clipping masks. Now as you know the logic of how to make a clipping mask, it's going to be a lot easier. This time I making two clipping masks with this texture, one for to stems and one for the leaves. That's why I will select it and I will duplicate it, "Command C" and then "Command F" to paste in place. In the Layer window, I will turn off the visibility for one of them. Let's make clipping mask for the leaves first, I will find leaves in my Layer window. Here they are. I will unlock them, and select them, and now I can also duplicate them, "Command C", "Command F". I will select the texture and drag it in between the leaves. Once again, we have a clipping mask sandwich, and as before, we need to convert these groups into compound path. While the texture is selected, I can just press the shortcut Command 8, and turn it into a compound path. I will do the same thing for the upper layer with leaves. Select it and then Command 8. To create this clipping mask, I need to select them both, and just press command 7. As you can see, it's super easy and fast, especially if you're using the shortcuts. I can now group these two, unlock them for now. Let's bring back the visibility for the texture we duplicated. Now is the time to create a clipping mask for the stems. If you remember, we created two parts of the stems differently, so let me find them here in the Layer window. Here are the stems, and here are the wider parts of the stems. I will unlock them. When I select these wider parts of the stems, you can see that we created them as closed shapes. When I select the other part of the stem, you can see that we created them as lines. In the upper menu you can change the size, you can change the stroke, and you can change the profile. But what I need to do now is to unify these two parts. For example, if I just select them both and go to pathfinder and click on this icon, "Unite", I would get these results. These results are definitely not the look I'm going for. Let's undo this, and I'll now show you how to do it correctly. The thing we need to do before clicking the "Unite icon" is to convert the lines into shapes. In that way, both of our groups will have the same types of elements. The lines are selected and I will go to Object and click "Expand", and in this Expand window I have Fill and Stroke selected, and I can just click "Okay". As you can see, the lines are now turned into closed shapes. A little note, only do this once you're absolutely happy with how your lines look, because you will not be able to convert the shapes back to lines later. I will now again select both groups, and I can click on this "Unite icon". That's it. Everything now connects with each other correctly. We are now ready to make the final clipping mask. The stems are selected, and I will duplicate them, Command C, Command F. Once more, I will select the texture and drag it in between the stems. Let's convert these two layers into compound paths. Just press "Command 8" and select the texture and again, press "Command 8", and I will now select them both, and press "Command 7" for clipping mask. To finish, I will group these two, unlock them. That's it you guys. The vectorized pattern is finished, and I cannot wait to put it in repeat and test it out in the next video. 9. Illustrator - Final Pattern: It's time to wrap this all up. In this video, I'll show you how to put your vectorized pattern in repeat. We'll test it out and compare it with the original procreate pattern, and we'll also see how to save it correctly. So let's start. I will first of all turn on my base image, the one I used as a drawing guide. I will unlock it, select it, and delete it. Now I can create a pattern holder, at least that's what I call it. It's an invisible border around my pattern that is going to help illustrator recognize where my pattern is repeating. To do that, select the rectangle tool in the tool bar menu and click on the artboard. Since my pattern is repeating exactly on the borders of the artboard, all I need to do is to add the size of my artboard. I will add 1000 by 1000 pixels. I will select this object, go to Align, and align it horizontally and vertically so it fits correctly. When it comes to fill or outline, it needs to be invisible. In the toolbar menu, whatever you have selected, for example I only have fill selected, so I just have to click this little icon called None, and this object will become invisible, and now I will send it to back. I will use the shortcut; command, shift, left bracket. You can see in my Layer window, it's positioned at the bottom, and that's exactly the position it needs to have. I will now unlock the rest of the layers. Then I can select everything and group it, command G. All I need to do now to create a pattern is to simply select this group and drag it to Swatches window and just drop it in. Now let's zoom out and select the rectangle tool and make one huge rectangle, and now I will fill it in with my pattern. You guys, this makes me so happy. It's just the best seeing the finished pattern and how it repeats endlessly. I will now zoom in to check and see if everything is repeating correctly. Everything looks perfect and the pattern is finished. We can now make a little comparison test. I will delete this rectangle and let's see how this vector pattern looks compared to the procreate pattern. Once more, I will open my folder, and I will add the JPEG pattern swatch image. I will drag it and drop it, and I can resize it to 1000 pixels. Now before I convert this image into a pattern, in the upper menu, I need to click "Embed". Now I can also just drag this and drop it in the Swatches window. I will delete the image, and now I can create two rectangles to make comparison. This one is vectorized, and this one is from procreate. All in all, I'm super happy with these vectorized results. You can see how sharp they are, and also they don't look that much different compared to the original pattern. Now if you want to delete this procreate pattern test you made so you don't get confused in Swatches window, you can just drag it and drop it in this little bin. I will delete this test and our last, final stop is to save our vector pattern. Of course, always save your Adobe Illustrator original file. When you want to save a PNG image of your final pattern swatch that you want to print, you can go to File, Export, Export As, and in Format, select PNG. We'll name it Vector Pattern_final, and also I will click "Use Artboards", and then just click "Export". Now in this window, it's important to set the resolution to 300 ppi. This is that final resolution I talked about in the beginning of the class. In the Anti-aliasing, I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly, always but always use Art Optimized Supersampling. It will make all the difference because if you use Type Optimized, you will have problems with the white lines that will appear where your pattern is connecting. I know a lot of us freak out when we see that and we think we didn't do something correctly when positioning the elements, but these bugs with white lines are mostly a problem with Anti-aliasing in Illustrator. All in all, select the "Art Optimized", and now you can just click "OK". This one was saved for printing, so we saved it in a higher resolution. But another thing I want to show you is how to save your pattern for social media. I will now go to file and I will open a new artboard. This time I need to use the same size as the size of the regular Instagram post, which will be 1080 by 1080 pixels. I will keep the RGB color and in the resolution, I can add 72 ppi. Now let's create. I will now go back to my original artboard and grab this rectangle tool to create a little rectangle that will be filled with the new pattern. Now just press command C to copy, go back to the new artboard, and press command V to paste. You can see that in the Swatches window, your new pattern will appear. We can now delete this, grab the rectangle tool again, click and add the size of our canvas, 1080 by 1080. Let's align this. Now when it comes to saving patterns for social media, we want to protect them so that they don't get easily stolen, and we add our signature on top of it and we save it in a smaller resolution. But here is one easy and simple trick to protect your pattern even further. You can now select the rectangle and make it a bit bigger. You can drag it like this or you can press "ALT" to drag it proportionally from the center, and this is nice. Now what I'm going to do is to rotate it a bit. You can see the arrow is appearing and I just want to rotate it randomly just a bit. It's really important just to use some small number and a random rotation. So in this way, when we save this pattern, the pattern repeat will be distorted and it will not fit. So if someone wants to use it, it will have a hard time finding your exact rotation. I will show you that in a few moments. But first, let's scale this pattern repeat a bit. I will select it, go to Object, Transform, and Scale. Now what I want to do is deselect "Transform Object" so that "Transform Patterns" is the only thing selected. In this way, I can only transform what's inside the pattern. I can go here to Uniform, and just scale it until I'm happy with the results. This looks good, let's click "OK". The next thing I want to show you is also how to move what's inside the pattern in case you're not happy with how everything is positioned inside the artboard or you want to make a little adjustments. The rectangle is selected and I will go to Object again, Transform, and this time I will click "Move". Let's put it to zero, and you can see that here I also have "Transform Objects", deselect it, and the only thing selected is "Transformed Patterns". Now if I want to move it horizontally a bit, you can see that just the pattern is moving inside our rectangle. So let's position it, and also let's position it vertically. This looks very nice and I will just click "OK". Now we can save this as a PNG image as well. Once more, go to File, Export, Export As, PNG, use PNG as the format, and click "Use Artboards". I will name it vector pattern Instagram. Now let's click "Export". In this window, it's important to set the resolution to 72 ppi and again when it comes to Anti-aliasing, I don't know how to pronounce that. But all in all, leave it as Art Optimized, and let's click "OK". I will now bring that saved image here, so that I can show you how our rotation worked. This is the image we saved for social media and we created that little rotation so that now when I repeat this and I want to create a pattern out of it, you can see that it doesn't fit. If someone wants to steal your image and saves it from social media, when the person tries to put the image in repeat, they will have a big problem because the repeat will not fit anymore and nothing will align correctly on the edges. Now you know how to save your patterns for printing, and how to protect them and save them for social media. That's it for now, but stay tuned for the next video to see my face again and hear some final info. 10. Thank you: Hey again. I just wanted to say, thank you very much for spending time with me and watching this class. I hope you enjoyed and learned new skills. Once you've finished the project for this class, share it so that we can support and inspire each other. By the way, don't forget to rate and review this class so that I can also grow and learn from you. As always, if you have any questions or something I was showing wasn't clear, feel free to ask anything in the discussion section of this class, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. To get notified about my next classes, follow me here on Skillshare. You can also keep in touch with me on Instagram @DIUJDI. I'm sending you lots of love and good vibes, and I'll see you in the next one.