Transcripts
1. Whimsical Rotation Patterns in Photoshop Intro: Hello, I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this Graphic Design For Lunch class: Create whimsical rotated patterns in Adobe Photoshop. Graphic Design For Lunch is a series of classes that teach a range of tips and techniques for creating designs and for working in applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. Today we're going to create some patterns using rotation. These patterns end up looking really, really complex, but the really cool thing is that they're pretty easy to make. Now as you're watching these videos, you'll see a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you're enjoying the class, do two things for me. Firstly, give it a thumbs-up, and secondly, write in just a few words why you're enjoying this class. These recommendations help other students at Skillshare to see that this is a class that they too might enjoy. Now if you'd like to leave me a comment or a question, please do so. I read and I respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and I respond to all of your class projects. Now if you're ready, let's get started creating what look like really complex patterns, but which are pretty easy to create.
2. Pt 1 - Build the First Rotation: This first pattern paste that we're going to create, we're going to use throughout this class because it's got hypes, a functionality built-in to just this one pattern. I'm going to choose File and then New. If you want to follow along and do what I'm doing, then you probably want to make your file the same size. I'm making one that's 400 pixels buy 400 pixels in size, so resolution doesn't really matter, RGB Color mode, and I am using sRGB as my color profile. Now, I'm using Photoshop CC 2017. If you're using that, you can actually save this as a preset. I've actually gone ahead and saved this so. You can see here that I've got a pattern preset and I just called it pattern 400 by 400. It would be easy for me to be able to create this document anytime. If you're working with earlier versions of Photoshop, you also have that ability, but the new Photoshop CC 2017 just seems to make this a whole lot easier and a whole lot smarter to do. If you want to just save that as a pattern preset as you go, that's a really good idea. But anyway, we're just looking at creating a 400 by 400 pixel document. I'll click "Create." Now the way I'm going to build this, is going to be appropriate for any version of Photoshop. The earlier versions of Photoshop have a little bit of trouble putting strokes on shapes here. What we're going to do is we're just going to bee using the rectangular Marquee tool. First of all, what we're going to do is just select everything. We're going to select the entire document. With that selection in place, we're going to choose Edit, and then Stroke, because this is one way of adding a stroke to a shape and it's going to work for us well here. Now, it has to be on the inside because this line around here is all the way around the outside, so you want to be able to see your stroke. I'm going to make mine three pixels. This is going to be a fairly fine pattern. Once you've got that and you've selected your color as black, just click "OK". You probably won't see much of a change, particularly if you're working on a dark background because what you've done is you've just added a black stroke around the inside edge of the document. At this stage, you'll go to the Layers palette. You need to have your Layers palette visible. You're going to select the only layer that's visible because you made a transparent document. This is the one with the stroke around it. You'll choose Layer, New, Layer Via Copy. Then immediately you're going to choose Edit Free Transform. Then we're going to make our transform settings up here in the Tool Options bar. It's really important that you do it this way. What we're going to do is we're going to set the width to 95 percent. Now, I don't have this little lock turned on, which means that my height is still left at a 100, so I'm going to make it 95 as well. You've got your lock turned on then you just type in one of these values and both of them are going to be set to identical amounts. For the angle, you'll type minus three degrees. Now, it might look like this shape is just outside the edge of the Artboard, but it won't be, so just click the "Check mark" hear or press Enter or return on an earlier version of Photoshop. At this stage you don't want to do anything except get your fingers ready because you need to press Control Alt, and shift. You're just going two hold Control Alt, and Shift down. On a Mac, that's Command, Option and Shift, and you going to press the letter T. What's going to happen is you're going to repeat this transformation and you're going to keep doing this, lots of times until you close up the shape in the middle. I'm literally just furiously tapping the T quay here. I just want to get down to where I can practically not see the shape in the middle and then I'm going to stop. I've got perilously here, 123 layers. But that's fine because now what I'm going to do is select the top-most layer. I'm going to scroll down and make sure that I pick up Layer 2 at this stage. I just want you to pick up Layer 2, forget layer 1, right-click and choose Merge Layers because this gives us a couple of options with this pattern. Now, at this stage, turn off Layer 1 so you can't seen it. You're just going to see the first rotation and every subsequent rotation. Choose, Select All, Edit, Define Pattern. We're going to call this rotation 1 and click "OK". Now we're going to create a brand new document to put our pattern in, but don't close this one because we're going to come back to this a few times. So File New. This time I'm going to make one that size of a scrapbook paper, but you can make it any size. This doesn't matter at this stage, but you'll want it to be pretty big. I'm making line 3600 by 3600 of a scrapbook paper, I want to be 300 pixels per inch. Again, transparent background and RGB color and again, sRGB color space. This time I haven't saved this one before, but I am going to save this. Again, we're working in Photoshop CC 2017. I'm going to call this Scrapbook paper because I use this a lot, and we're going to click "Save Preset" But of course, it doesn't matter whatever version of Photoshop you are working in, you can set up these settings. But if you're working in CC 2017, you may want to set this up as a preset, click "Create." Now to apply our pattern, we're just going to choose Layer, New Fill Layer, Pattern. Click "OK." Photoshop defaults to the very last pattern that you created. That's what we're seeing here. I'm just going to click "OK." Now, we're going to see this pattern a whole lot better in a second if we add a layer behind it. With this layer selected, I'm just going to hold Control or Command on a Mac, and click once on this icon and that adds a layer behind the original. Since over here, white is my background color. I'll press Control and Backspace, that's Command, Delete on the Mac, to fill the background with this white. There's our first pattern that's got this lovely rotation effect in it. It looks like it would be really hard to make, but we know it's really pretty easy to make with just that simple rotation. We're going to come back in the next video, and we're going back to our original pattern design, and we're going to add sum bits to it and do a few things with it to build on this pattern.
3. Pt 2 - Rework the Design: Let's go back to our original pattern design. Now when we maid this pattern, we turned off the outside layer which had a stroke around it. Let's turn on that outside layer now and let's select everything with Select All. Let's go and make this into a pattern piece, Edit, Define Pattern. I'm going to make this Rotation 2. We'll go back to our scrapbook papered page or the document that you were using for these patterns. Double-click on this thumbnail here to open the pattern fill dialog. Click the drop-down menu here and the very last pattern is going to be the one that you just made. In this case, this is the one that's got the darker border around it. This is the first one we made. This is the second one. It has a very different look to it. Now, one of the things that is contributing to this look is the intersection between these two pattern pieces. Let's just go in and have a look. You can seen that the lines here are fairly thin, but this line is really thick. The reason for that is that there's a three pixel border around each of these tiles. When that's added together, we've got a six pixel line, whereas this one is just slightly under three pixels because of the rotation and the decrease in size as we rotated. This is just not quite three pixels but it's near enough, but this is six pixels. We can ask ourselves, what would this pattern look like if this line here were the exact same width as this one. Let's go back and make another pattern piece using the same process. But let's do it in such a way that we can make this line the same thickness and see how that's going to affect our pattern. I'm going back to create a brand new file. Again, File, New. It's going to be my 400 by 400, so that's a 400 by 400 pixel document, RGB color, sRGB color mode. I'll click Create. This time we need to plan ahead a little bit. First of all, I'm going to select everything with Select All. I'm going to choose Edit and I'm going to choose Stroke. I want a line that's just one and half pixels here so that when it's butted up against a pattern piece next door, the combination is the three pixels. Well, I can get that by choosing three pixels and putting it in the center. That'll give me a one-and-a-half pixel line around the inside. I'm going to click Okay. But this is not a good enough start to my pattern because my pattern actually needs a three pixel line. I'm going to hide that. I'm going to add a brand new layer. I'm going to do the exact same thing on this layer only make my three pixel line. I'll go back to Edit, Stroke, three pixels, but this time it's going to be on the inside, and I'll click Okay. This is going to be a slightly larger line. This is the one I'm going to rotate. I'm going to choose Layer, New Layer Via Copy. I'll use pretty much the same rotation settings as I used before, but you could vary them if you wanted to, Edit, Free Transform. I'm going to set the width and height to 95 percent and the rotation angle to minus three. I'll click the check mark here or press Enter or Return. Immediately, you'll press Control Alt Shift and the letter T repeatedly. On a Mac that's Command Option Shift T. You're going to do that until you close up the gap. Now that we've done that, we need to go back and make sure that we've got the right things here at the bottom. What we don't want is layer 2, because layer 2 is the one with this really heavy outside edge. We're going to turn it off. What we're going to do is use layer 1, which has got this much skinnier edge on it. I'm actually going to move layer 1 just up above layer 2. Then I'm going to select all the layers with content except the one with the thick outside edge. Right-click and choose Merge Layers. We're going to make a pattern piece from this, Edit, Define Pattern, Rotation 3. Go back to our scrapbook paper, double-click on this icon and go and pick up a new pattern. This is the one with a thinner line. Now the effect of the thinner line means that you get less of the impression that these are boxes and more of the impression that these pieces are actually linked together. This is the previous iteration and this is the new one. It's just a slightly different look to this pattern and it does give this meandering look to it. But you need to bee careful when you build it up because you do need that three pixel line to be able to make your rotation, but around the edge, you want to specially create a line that is much smaller so that it fits in with the rest of the pattern. As you can see here, it matches more the thickness of the other lines.
4. Pt 3 - Create the Flower Pattern: Now let's go back to the pattern piece that we've just made, the one that has a thinner line around the edge. Now, I'm just going to add a layer underneath everything, so I'm just going to hold the Control or Command K as I click on the new layer icon. White is my background color, I'll press Control Backspace that would be Command Delete on the Mac. Just want to be able to see pretty clearly what's going on here. Now one of the things that we can do with this pattern, which is really interesting and extremely beautiful, is to take this layer that we built and make a duplicate of it. I'm just going to drag it on to the new layer icon. Now lets put one version of this pattern right on top of the other. Let's go to this top version and let's flip it. I'll do that by choosing edit and then transform and flip horizontal. What happens is that we get this really nice overlay pattern. Because these two spirals are going in different directions, they're now interacting with each other and so we've got this flat appearance happening here, and you'll get that anytime you take one of these spirals and make a copy of it and flip it. So now let's make a pattern of this. I'm going to select these two topmost layers. I'm going to turn off the white layer because that will give me more options later on. I'll choose Edit, define pattern. I'm going to call this rotation 4. Click "Okay", let's go back to our main document, double-click and apply our new pattern. This pattern looks extremely intricate because there's all these lines going everywhere. It looks beautiful. It might look better if there were less lines. So we can go back knowing what we're going to get, and knowing what we're looking for, and ask ourselves if perhaps thinner lines and perhaps a fewer of them might give us an even better look to this pattern. But it's beautiful as it is, I just think it could look more attractive so let's go and give it a try. For this I'm going to start with a brand new document because I want all my lines and everything to be very different, 400 by 400 pattern, click "Okay". I'm going to select the entire shape here, I'm going to choose Edit and stroke. This time I'm going with a two-pixel stroke, and it's going on the inside. Layer, new layer via copy, edit, free transform. This time I'm going to come down in size a little faster, so I'm going to make it 92 percent. I'm going to increase the angle to minus four, and I'll click the checkmark and now I'm going to do my rotations. Everything is moving a little bit faster on this shape. Once I've completed my rotations, I'm going back to my top-most layer, going down to my second to bottom layer, right-click and choose merge layer. I just want the option to use this outside edge or not as I choose. I'm going to add a white fill layer beneath everything, It's a much finer designer's time. Let's go and take this layer and duplicate it, and then flip it. This time the design is a lot lighter. It looks lighter than it was before. Now I can take the outside edge or not. I'm going to make one with and one without, and make the first one without and the second one with. Let's go and test it. This is the one without the extra line. You can say we're still getting this rotation in this flower, but everything is looking a lot lighter here. This is the one with the edge around it. There's a way of using the single spiral pattern, reflecting it to get something that is so totally different. In the next video, we're going to look at a different way of utilizing our starting pattern.
5. Pt 4 - Create the Fan Pattern: We're going to create a four up design next. We're going back to the very original, very first pattern that we made. Let's just say what we've got here. Well, we've got an outside line around the very edge and we've got the inside pattern piece. What I'm going to do is take both of these and put them in a group. I'm just selecting both layers and clicking on the group icon. Now, if that doesn't work for you, just make a new group and move the layers into it. Now I want to make a bigger canvas, so I'm going to choose ''Image, canvas size.'' Now, I want to make my canvas twice as high and twice as wide, so I'm going to turn relative off. I'm going to type 800 and 800 as the width and height and we want this pace to be in the bottom corner of my new canvas. I'm going to click here and that will make sure that it's positioned in the very bottom corner with the other three quadrants empty. This dialogue can be a bit confusing until you get to know how to use it but that's how you need it set up here, I'll click, "Ok." Now, I want to take this group and I want to make a duplicate of it, so I'm going to right-click and choose ''Duplicate Group'' and click, "Ok." Now, moving groups can be a little bit difficult so I'm going to show you a way that's going to work every time. You're going to open up the duplicate group and you're going to select both layers in it, so they're both selected. Then you'll press ''Control or Command A.'' If the align options don't appear on the Tool Options bar, that's fine, just choose ''Layer, align layers to selection'' and you're going to choose ''Right Edge'' and then you're going to go back up to just double-check it to the right position you're going to choose "Bottom Edges." That just moves this group, the entire group into position. What we want to do is to flip this in the opposite direction. I'm going to choose ''Edit, Transform, Flip horizontal.'' This is giving us this interesting fun shape in our pattern. Now, we want to duplicate this group and put it up here so this group here is this one here. You can always test it by just turning its visibility icon on and off, right-click it and choose "Duplicate Group." Then open it up and select both the layers in it. Now press ''Control or Command A'' and go to choose ''Layer, align layers to selection'' and this one is going to the top edge and ''Layer, align layers to selection'' is also going to the right edge and that just moves it so it's in the opposite diagonal. Now, we're going to do the same thing to this one, move it up to here. This one here is at the top most of the layers, so we're going to make a duplicate of it. Right-click, duplicate group, click, "Ok." Open up the group, select the two layers in it and then press ''Control or Command A.'' Here you'll see that the alignment icons have appeared for me, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. If they're there, it's easier to use them. We're going to choose ''Align Left Edges'' and we're going to choose ''Align Top'' and that's giving us this as our starting pattern piece. I'm going to select everything with Control or Command A and I'm going two make a pattern piece out of it. Let's go back to our working document and this is what our pattern piece looks like. Now again, because we had those thicker lines we are seeing a dividing line down here. If we did it with a pattern that had that starting line created differently, then we're going to get a different result. That's exactly what we're going to do in the final video.
6. Pt 5 Finishing touches and project: Before we finish up, let's go and have a look and see how we would take this line out and replace it with a more suitable line to get this fun pattern looking a little bit different and a little bit less like tiles. I'm going back to the pattern that we used. You may recall that inside each of these groups, was a line around the outside of each of these pattern paces. What I'm going to do is open up each group and just disable or turn the visibility off on this outside edge. I'm just going to add a new layer to my document at the very back so that we can see what's going on. It will be a bit easier for working with a white filled layer. I'm going to Control or Command click on the New Layer icon. I'll press Control Backspace, Command Delete on the Mac to fill it with white. You can see that we're missing these lines now, that's as it should be. I'm going to add a new layer in here, and I want to start with the outside edge lines. I'm going to select the Rectangular Marquee tool, and then just drag over the document. Now, if you remember when we created this design, it had a three pixel line all the way around the edge. What I need to do now is to add a line that's going to be one-and-half pixels wide around the edge, so that when it's joined up with the tile next door, the total is a three pixel line. That's going to give us this sort transition. I'm going to do that with a stroke, Edit, Stroke. I'm going to add a three-pixel line, but I'm going to make it on the center. If I make it on the center, then there's one-and-half pixels either side of this marquee, so it's going to work out perfectly. I'll click "Okay". I'll press Control or Command D to deselect the selection. I want another new layer. I'm going to do this horizontal line now. There are heaps of ways of creating this horizontal line, but the easiest is actually to use the Rectangular Marquee tool. It's going to work in all versions of Photoshop. I'm going to click on the tool and instead of Normal as my style, I'm going to choose Fixed Size. I'm going to set it to 800 by 3 pixels. It's going to stretch all the way across the document, it's going to be three pixels high. Then come over here approximately where it needs to go, and I'm just going to click once because that's going to create this marquee. I'm on my new layer. I have black as my foreground color. I'll Backspace Option Delete to fill it with that color. I'll press Control or Command D to deselect the selection. While it looks pretty good, I want to make sure that it is in the exact correct place. I'm going to Control click on the layer and then press Control or Command A. I'm going back to my alignment options, Align Layers to Selection, I want to align vertical and horizontal. That means that this line is perfectly in the center of the document. I'll press Control or Command D to deselect my selection. I'm going to make a duplicate of this line layer because all I need to do now is to just rotate it. I'm going to select it, Edit, Free Transform. Up here in the angle, I'm going to set it to 90 degrees. I'll click the check mark or press Enter whatever you have for your version of Photoshop. Again, I'm going to select this Control or Command A. I'm going back to make sure that this is perfectly centered. I'm going to choose Align Layers to Selection, Vertical Centers and then Align Layers to Selection Horizontal Centers. Now we have our pattern pace. I need to do a couple of things before I go and make it. Firstly, press Control or Command D to deselect the selection. I need to turn off the white layer because I want the option of being able to put any color behind this pattern later on. If you have a look up here, your marquee is still set to fixed size. It doesn't matter for right now, but next time you go and use it, it's still going to be set to fixed size and you're going to be wondering why your marquee is 800 pixels by 3 pixels. Well, before you go, reset it to normal and then you won't have that problem. Now we're going to press Control or Command A, to select everything and we're going to make our pattern. Now that I've made this pattern, let's go back to our master document, let's double-click on the thumbnail and go and select our new pattern. Here we have our pattern with the replacement line, so we're not getting that same appearance of tiling happening across our design. This design now has a lot more of a flowing look to it rather than a tile look. Your project for this class will be to make one of these patterns or a few of them if you're really, really enjoying it, and post a picture of your pattern in use in the class project area. I hope that you've enjoyed this class and that you've learned something about making patterns in Photoshop and using rotated shapes like these to create some really intricate looking patterns that really are a whole lot easier to make than they look. Now, as you're watching these videos, you will have seen a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you enjoyed the class, do two things for me. Firstly, give it a thumbs up and secondly, write in just a few words why you're enjoying this class. These recommendations help other students to see that this is a class that they too might enjoy. If you'd like to leave me a comment or a question, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and questions. I look at and respond to all of your class projects. My name's Helen Bradley. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Graphic Design for Lunch, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming episode soon.
Helen Bradley, Graphic Design for Lunch™
