Lessons

Lesson Info

Patterns

we're going to switch gears a little bit and, uh, talk about patterns. This is an interesting part of Oldershaw patterns. There's a couple different options. There are patterns that come built into photo shop, where someone has already done the leg work to make it work. And there is the ability to make your own patterns, which to me is much more interesting. But the challenge is this. The way you have to think of a pattern and photo shop is like You are deciding to retire your kitchen floor to go to your local home improvement store and you buy a big stack of 12 inch by 12 inch tiles and when you put them down, hopefully, if you do it right, the pattern on the tile matches so the left edge and the right edge. When you move the next one over, they match up nicely and you might see a little tiny scene. But when you look further away, it looks like a nice pattern going right across the whole way. So that's how we have to think of patterns and photo shop. It's is a square or rectangle that...

set up in such a way that when you use it and repeat it, you don't notice. Well, there's an obvious scene there. So the trick is, how do you do that on things that are really challenging. So I'm gonna show you first of all how not to make a pattern and why we have to be more careful. So, needless to say, I picked something really challenging here all this candy. So if I said I'm gonna make a pattern out of this. So the simplest thing, when you make a pattern as you make a selection using your marquee tool and use choose defined pattern, that's pretty easy. The challenge is this. If I now make a document that's bigger and I decide I want to use my pattern new layer and if I choose fill, one of the options is filled with the pattern, and then I can go look and finding the pattern. I just made, uh, that off. You can see it's very obvious. You can see that the squares repeating. So that's the problem with just saying I'll just make a pattern is it says Well, I'll do that, but I will repeat it so that the left edge and the right edge matching the top and the bottom come up against each other into something like this. They just wouldn't look very good. So we'll come back to this one later because this is definitely one of the most challenging ones. There possibly is. I don't want to start with this one. I want to show you the process, and then we'll come back to this one a little bit later on. So let's start with something that's a little simpler. I can actually use this one. I think a first cause you'll be able to see the challenge that we face. So first in camera raw, I'm just gonna explore my settings little bit. Make sure it looks the way I want. And then I hit open object. It's a little big. I want my pattern to be a little smaller, so I'm going to just make the size smaller like this. OK, so within here, I need to find an area that I want to try and make my repeating pattern on something like a brick wall. It's a little more challenging than just like, say, it was a stucco wall where it just sort of the same random pattern, you could probably make it repeat. So I'm gonna show you the process of how we conduce this. Now, there's one thing I noticed about this document because I'm gonna try to make a selection. I don't know how well you can see it on the screen, but looks to me like there's a bit of lens distortion because the brick mortar in the brick wall to me shouldn't be curved and there's a very slight curve in it. So I'm gonna fix that first just as an aside if you have done this before. But there is a filter called lens correction, and hopefully you're lucky enough that it says, Oh, this was taken with this camera and lens. So let me just adjust it appropriate for you. So I have to do anything. It just new in the metadata of this file that I used this camera and lens combination and in its databases of lenses and said, Oh, that lends tin tents, introduced this slight bit of curves, so I'll take that away on most photos. That would not be a necessary step in this case is going to make my life a little simpler. Don't take my marquee selection too. And I'm just gonna arbitrarily. And by the way, a pattern does not have to be a square. In fact, often it works better if it isn't. But it does have to be a rectangle or square, and it cannot have any feathering on it. So here's one thing that I didn't say out loud, but I did in my head, so I should say it out loud. Before I made this selection, I looked up in the options bar and make sure it said feather zero because if I had previously made a feathered selection of, like, two or three, I would make my selection go to define a pattern and nothing would happen. It would be great out because you cannot have a feathered edge. So this is another place where quick mass is gonna help me. Because I want to do is try and make this lineup as best I can to begin with so that the edges kind of we're gonna match pretty well in my pattern. So if I tap que for a quick mask now do free transform. And Aiken, move this around. What? I'm looking at is the top of these bricks and right about there, and then these ones. If we go down to say here, want to get just a little bit of that mortar in there, let's look at this side. I used to try and end, at least on if I see a couple of bricks here and there. But the reality is a certain point you're going to notice in the next step. That there is the challenge that awaits us is it's not a natural repeating pattern, so we have to make it so it will naturally repeat a little better. So I hit enter to finalize that transformation of my quick mask que to go back to regular selection mode. To me, the simplest way to do this is to take this information out of here, put into a new document, continue from there, So I'm gonna do copy. New photo shop is very helpful because whenever you do that, it deliberately makes a document the size of what you just copied to the clipboard. So that's exactly the right size. Now, normally, in dated a photo shop, I just go copy new okay and skip it in this case, I'm looking at the numbers to see what they say, because that will become kind of important in a second. So I'm saying it's around 900 by Ford is not to be totally actor, but so let's say 900 by 400 is roughly the size. So then I hit paste and again this In this case you will see me merged because there's no reason to have. This is a separate layer. So now I could just choose defined pattern. But if we look at it more closely, we're going to see the problem is that, for example, here this right side ends on this brick and half of this breaking. If you look at the left side, it doesn't match up, so we have to make it so the left and the right side or going to match up with each other and the top in the bottom. So the way we do that as an interesting little filter that we don't have that much of a used for for anything. I mean, there's probably other reasons to use it, but this is the only reason I've ever used it. It's called under the you know, it's not the most commonly used filter when it's under the other set of filters called other and then offset right at the very bottom, the last filter you could possibly pick in photos, apparently so when you choose offset, it says. How much would you like to offset it? So it was around nine hundreds. We do say 4 25 by 200. Can you see what's happened there? Let's all draw a guide. You can see now, it said. Instead of the left hand edge, the left and right hand edger here on the top in the bottom are looks like right there. So what it's done is it's transferred so set of the So now the right and the left edge do match up with each other, and the top of the bottom do match up with each other. But now where the seam is going appears in the middle, so we basically offset it. So instead of having to worry about, does the left and right match on top and bottom. Now we know those do, but now the middle won't. So if I hear now said defined pattern, I would still see Avery noticeable scene because it's still you can obviously see it. So this is the way that we get around, that you do that offset, and I usually try to do the math so it's roughly in the middle, doesn't have to be and then touch up where you're seeing the scene. So let's get a little bit closer here so you can see where my props he like, right there is a perfect example that just doesn't look very good because it's two different color of bricks. You can see the scene very obviously. So this is where the clone stamp tool will come to our rescue, and normally I clone stamp onto a separate layer just to give myself more options here. It's not really as necessary because I know exactly what I want to do. So, for example, the way that you're not family with the clone stamp tool option or Ault to send in a sample this area right here. Then I moved up here and I'm just gonna clones. So now it looks like I've just added a bit of grout in between those two pieces, and the trick is trying to pick enough different areas. So you're not creating an obvious repetition. So anywhere where there should be a gap between bricks that's picked another one over here, Maybe this and sometimes it's just a Z Z. For example, this brick to me looks fairly close. So we're just gonna pretend it's a really wide brick I was gonna cover up. That will seem right in there anywhere you see obvious things, you just want to kind of This is the approach you would take. I'm gonna take this part of this brick in China, cover up this edge. Quite look, doesn't look like a straight line. So that's the the idea. This is I'm doing it really quickly. Obviously, this would be the part again you would try to be. Take your time doing this. But this is what we have to do is look through right down that line anywhere we see obvious problems. Sometimes the solution might be to say What if we take this whole brick right here, pop it up on his own layer and take my move tool and drag it over and see if we can't just cover up something and kind of blended in. So again, I'm doing it really fast for the purpose of demonstration. So this is the procedure you have to do is go through. And I'm not gonna say it's gonna take you five minutes because depending what it is to do it properly. You want to make sure you're taking mawr time to do this. But eventually you would look at it. So if you kind of take a step back and look at you, don't see obvious seems one of the tricks that I've done over the years is too. To fool my eyes a little bit. I zoom out smaller cause something you do that, you gonna go? I now I can see they're still a bit of a line there. So change the view of it, One of my students And this was his opinion. He said, I find if I squint my eyes that changes. Look, item never found that work for me, but whatever. So let's pretend for a moment that I've done all that. I don't want to have you to sit here and watch me clone for the next 15 minutes, but we're gonna pretend that I've done that. Now I would defying pattern and knows I don't have to select anything that's assuming the entire document click. OK, now if we go back to our document here, fill with pattern absolutely to see a little bit of a scene, because I didn't finish the whole thing. But you can see that's not as obvious as it was with our Candies because they're still gonna look, see a little bit of repetition because of the color of the bricks. But that's kind of the idea behind it. So what I would suggest is don't start with something like a brick wall, because that's, ah, lot more challenging or stones like that. So, for example, well, this kind of brick wall might look better. This looks like it was taking a creative life. Um, too big. So if it's a pattern like this, where the bricks are all pretty uniform, that might be a little easier to do. But let's pick a different one. That's sort of in the middle somewhere. This, I thought, would be It's an interesting pattern. I'd like to use it on top of a photograph, but again, it's it's gonna be a little challenging. I always, for the purpose of demonstration, making they everything a little smaller. So what I'm gonna do is kind of look at the pattern, See where I can see some of the repetition is happening, so it looks like it goes from there, so accept him when this is where I tend to go too quick. Massacre is easier to sort of look at it in a different way. So if you're going through your positioning, this trying to see where is that pattern repeating? So it goes from flower to flower and so on. So again, I'm not gonna go through the entire process every time. But this is sort of the approach you take his position to kind of see, where does it match up? So you're giving yourself a better chance of seeing that repetition and going through that process, so the process is always the same. You make it your initial selection. Copy paste, a new document. Do that offset filter so that the pattern lines up in the air? The teams, I should say, line up in the middle area and then use whatever kind of cloning, copying and pasting whatever to cover it up the Onley trick. You have to be careful of is when you're covering up that scene, make sure you don't touch either the top or bottom edge or the left and right, cause then you're changing the match. You want to go as close as you can to that edge, but not go over the edge, because then it will. You'll have that bit of a problem there. Okay, so So let's go back to this one, because again, this is definitely a challenge. So I'll show you my I will be able to the whole thing because it takes too long. But I'll show you the the approach that I would take in a case like this. So it still starts off the same way offset like this. I know now, at this point trying to cover up that seeming, that's looks good, that's gonna take forever. And it iss I'm not forever, but so here's what I would do. This is part of the reason why I copied and pasted is over here. I still have this entire document lots and lots of different Candies that you don't see so usually for something like this. I've done this with coins and rocks and things where every so often, people see one like this yellow one right here, where it's kind of stand alone. So you take one of your selection type tools, make a selection, and then just copy that over here and just position it right on that scene. So you're covering up. So this is the hard part again. That's why I'm not into the whole thing, because it would take a while. But with enough effort, you can. This is how you can make a seamless pattern from almost anything. Now they're The biggest problem I can tell you is not as much the objects it's lighting. So if you have something where it looks, Oh, look at this wall, I can use this. But on the right hand side, it's much darker than the light that will be really tough to deal with, because then the scene. You're not just cloning over shapes. You're dealing with exposure differences, so I tend to try and pick things. When I look at it, it's a fairly even exposure, or if it's not, I use light room or camera or something to try. And do you know, use a Grady in or something to make it so that the two sides are gonna match a little bit better. So that's kind of the procedure of making a repeating seamless pattern. There's another option that's available on again. It depends on the version of photo shop you have. This was, um gosh, photo shop CS six, I think was the 1st 1 introduced this. So this is just 1/2. As you can see, a photo off just a leaf, so I'm gonna do is make a selection of this leaf. I'm using the quick selection tool to get fairly close, but there are certain things that's not going to do. So I'm gonna switch at this point to my polygon, a lasso tool with the shift key held down to try and get the remaining little pieces that I haven't got. The shift key adds to the selection that I let go because I don't want it to be perfectly straight lines. Just do that and then put it on its own layer because I want to create a pattern out of this that has transparency. And I think I want to even make it probably smaller than this. So now I'm going to choose, define pattern and just make a pattern out of this one leaf. The reason for doing all these things is of course, now we can use these patterns in different ways. So let's talk about how we can actually apply a pattern to something we're working on. I typically put patterns on separate layers just because it's easier because you can, especially as we'll see if we're over laying on top of a photograph, but for our purposes will just do it this way. So, first of all, let's just talk about the any of the other patterns that we have. So there's the simplest way to add a pattern, is just used the fill command and change it from whatever it normally says, like form, color to pattern. This will show you. Here's all the patterns that you have, and I have ah whole collection, some which I've made myself. Others are ones that are built in from menus like this one, so these are all built in patterns, so we just choose one of the existing ones that adobe gave us. In theory, these should be seamless so that when I click OK, it just fills up the whole thing and you don't see any obvious Seems I feel like in a lot of them, especially when you zoom out a little bit. It's almost best to look at these at 100% because you can still, to me, my eyes. I still see a bit of a repetition because to my mind, the patterns a little small, so that can happen. But so as you go through, you can see there's all kinds of one's. Let's look at one of the ones that we did before, so there's our brick wall that we didn't quite finish. Here's another. Why did? That was kind of, Ah grass thing, and it's repeating over and over again. It looks that's a That's a pretty decent pattern. It'd be hard, hard to see where the pattern actually exists. So that's one the simplest way. The Onley. If there's a catch to using the fill command, this is it. It's whatever size you make the pattern. So if you wanted to be smaller grass tough, What you have to do is fill it in a document and then scale the entire layer down because you can't just scale the pattern, so that's a bit of a drawback. But depending on what it is you're doing, that would still work. Okay, and we'll talk about that in a second. The second option for using a pattern. And I personally, I can't say I've uses a whole lot, but it has some interesting possibilities. Is everyone always talks about the clone stamp tool, but there's also a tool called the pattern stamp tool on my version of photo shop here. I'm surprises isn't like, rusted and fallen off my toolbox because I can't remember the last time actually used it for something. But that's just me what it does. It acts as a paintbrush, but it paints using your pattern instead of a color. So you choose whatever pattern you want and say, Let's use that grassy thing and then wherever you paint, you're gonna paint with your pattern. So I mean, I could, I suppose, in some search minutes I could see if you're just trying to blend something in, Maybe that might be a way to use it. It's still to me has the one problem with it is that it's still that size, so if I want to be a different size. I'm kind of out of luck. So most of the time, if I'm adding a pattern to something and I want to have more control over it, this is the way that I would do it on this layer. I need to fill this layer with something. So right now just filled it with white because we're gonna use a layer style on layer style. Onley appears on a solid layer, so there has to be some color on there. So if we go to our layer styles, we have all the things we usually use, like Evelyn Boss and Drop Shadow. One of them is called pattern overlay. And one of its advantages is that it has some interesting ways of how weaken apply this pattern. It always seems to default to the lovely bubbles pattern that Adobe provides for us, which is fantastic. But let's go back to this grassy pattern. So it's still it looks pretty much the same. But look at this part right here. This is extremely important and useful. Ah, scale command. So now in this dialog box, while I'm still in preview, I can say I'd like this pattern to be a little smaller, So then you can scale a pattern down on the fly. This is like any layer style nondestructive meaning when I click. OK, I'm not stuck with it that way. I didn't actually scale it down and just said, I'll make it appear that way. But if you later on look at and say I think actually want a little bigger than you can do that now just to show you some of the possibilities, Um, I made a pattern that was just a little bit of black and a bit of white, tiny, little tiny, tiny. So now if I want lines like this, it just allows me to have this scale any size that I want. So before this command was available in the fill command was the only way you'd see people make like five different sizes of the same pattern. Just so they have those options. Now it's scaling. This one scales really nicely because it's just a solid line that straight so it's not gonna picks allies because it gets bigger. It's just a bigger straight line with certain patterns, the bigger you make them. Of course, they don't look quite so good. So this is my preferred way to add a pattern because it gives me the ability on the fly to say, Do I want leaves this bigger dough? I want a bunch of much smaller leaves and frankly, this is a really boring pattern of leaves because it has just lined up like perfect swears. We'll see how to get around that in a second. But if you look at this pattern, remember when I define the pattern it was see through. So let's talk about this for a second. Let's take this layer and fill it with something. Let's use that, Okay? So you can see the background layer is now filled with color. But because I had to fill this layer with white in order to add the layer style, the white is showing because the pattern is see through. But it's on top of white. So somehow we have to tell Photoshopped. Keep the pattern, but get rid of the white and the way we do. This is something that's always in your face showing you, but a lot of people who've never used it don't really know what's the difference between these two commands opacity and fill. In this case, Phil is going to come to our rescue a guy named Phil, but the command cold fill. So here's the difference. If I choose opacity and I lower it down, it's gonna say, Make the layer and any layer style see through to see how both the white and the leaves are becoming see through to the background. So that's what opacity does. In contrast, what the fill command does, it says, take the color of the fill layer, but leave any layer stop. So I put all the way to zero. Now I've got what I was wanting to do, which was just the leaves and no background. So some people who experiment with Phil say I don't see any difference. You know, passing and fill in There isn't unless you have a layer style if there's no layer style on layer than opacity, and Phil would do exactly the same thing. But this is how we can do things like have em boss text where you're only seeing through to the photo. There's no color in the text or anything like that is you add the layer style and then lower the fill opacity zero. But still that was kind of having leaves all nicely. Marching against each other really isn't quite what I had in mind here. So let's look at another interesting thing. And this is again fairly recent versions of Photoshopped that has this. So I go back to the fill command, Let's get our leaf. But we have these things called scripted patterns and some very clever person Photoshopped or Adobe figured this out. So I remember the first time when I just said Phil just said tile tile tiles. If it was a square by, choose brick, fill it. Does this kind of at least offset a little bit so that that's OK. The nice thing is you can go in and change all these settings and the first version of this It just said Brick, Phil and I was like click OK, and they got a result. Now you have these things we can change all these things, but let me show you some of the more interesting ones is the one that I like the most. Is this one called random Phil and click OK. It has all these options and even changes the size and the color. So instead of looking like one leaf, repeating it's actually changing color so you could do, like, fall colors pretty easily, just like this. Click OK, and each time you do, it's gonna be slightly different. So this is an interesting addition to the ability. Work with patterns. And that's why it's good to know both sides of it, making that repeating tiling pattern where you want to fill up the whole thing or putting some object or shape on a layer by itself and using this scripted patterns to randomly create something. And I've seen people who take something like this and add, you know, to a photograph. So it looks like the leaves are following whatever it is that that part is against to show you there's lots of possibilities. So when you're defining a pattern, think of it at first as that repeating tile. But remember, if you just take a shape with a transparent background, whatever it might be, then you can use thes more random pattern scripted fills to change the way the pattern applies. And of course, we could create another layer on top and do it again to try and get something even more random. Let's do that. Show you quickly. So it remembers what I did before so I can go in and change and say, Let's have just a few here, click OK, and because it's, Ah, layer all standard layer things are possible so I can move it around. I could add a layer mask. I don't really like that one right there. So all of these things let me say it the other way. None of these things are, in my opinion, a standalone technique. It's once you've done this part of patterns, then you could say, But what else can I do with that? Okay, so let's just do one quick example here. I have a photo, add a new layer, and first I'm just gonna fill it with whatever so I could go back to my pattern overlay. I love the fact that keeps defaulting. That really wants me to fill with bubbles pattern clearly because it's just like Okay, fine bubbles pattern and so lovely. So there's my little line pattern, so this has a transparent bottom. So that's why we're seeing that color there. So now I could I want little tiny lines want the fill opacity to be zero now to continue. When? Yesterday it touched a little bit on smart objects. Here's another example where I need to start thinking what I want to do next. I want to keep this pattern with these lines, but I want to do something with it, maybe change it in some way. Nor to do that. Probably the best bet for me. What, to convert this to a smart object, because now it's almost like I'm resetting everything. So now it's almost like this is treating this like a new layer. So I could try doing some some things to it, whatever that might be. For example, I might just go in and say, I just want this to be because it's a car. Have some motion to it or something. Once that's finished. Take a second to figure out that math. Then you change the blend mode. Maybe something like overlay or something I don't know. And Adam asked. I mean, I'm just I didn't have any real purpose of doing that except to say that's the thought process to say I still want to have access to this so for example, here I look at and say That's looking kind of interesting, but I want to go back now and adjust the pattern. Well, I can't adjust it here, so I have to use that same thought process of container and contents. Double click on here to come back to this one. Double click on here to get back to the settings so I can make even a bigger or smaller pattern, whatever it might be. Click OK and then say that so that will recalculate that part. Come back here and now it's changed. Maybe I don't like the color of it. So here's an interesting challenge. How can I change the pattern? When I created the pattern, it was black with transparent. So how can I change it now? Because I can't just paint it because technically, the layer is that weird brown color, so that's not gonna help me. So what I could do, though, is you'll always have multiple layer styles, is go to something like colored overlay and say, let's put it to white and lighten, maybe overlay. There we go. Uh, okay, so that's not gonna work. So we need to go. Probably color. Maybe. What if we did that? Okay, we're getting slightly different effects than I was thinking of, but again, just to show you lots of different possibilities than it's gonna eventually update here. And I probably have to change the blend mode. Do we were getting really crazy. Okay, so you get the idea that not even though we're creating something that has a particular look to it, we can always go down some other path and experiment in this case a No, thank you. That didn't work at all. Okay, so the here when I did, the transformation is to make a point. Even free transform is smart because normally your tree transformed, something had entered that's finished. But because I made a smart object first, I did free transform and warp. Soon as I go back to free transform orbit remembers. Well, this is where you left it off. So now you can adjust in ways that really couldn't wasn't possible before, and once you could enter again. This still, even though it's a smart object, still treated like a regular layer so we could lower opacity and add master changed blend modes or whatever we want so keeping patterns are not something that I would say is high up there in terms. I use them every day. But for some situations is just a lot easier to say. Well, if I made a pattern than I have all those options to scale it and for this pattern here, for example, it was a simple as just saying, I'm just gonna make a small little thing that's hardly any size at all, and then just decide that I want to zoom in here. Just say this much needs to be layer this color. Hide that, and then you define that as a pattern. Even though it's really teeny tiny, the pattern will repeat. You'll get what looks like stripes, so that's how you can create those sort of patterns. Yesterday we talked about presets and brushes and managing them. The same thing applies with patterns, so these patterns will be built into Photoshopped. But unless you plan accordingly, you want to make sure that you don't suddenly go. Hey, where did my patterns go? Especially if you took one of those ones took a long time, like with those Candies that I have to do a manual effort so the same rules would apply. Here I go to the preset manager to patterns. Let me find all the patterns that I've created that are in here and adjust accordingly. Or I should say, Select accordingly and say These are my patterns here and these ones here and then choose safe sets and you're creating that backup idea because as hard as it is sometimes to create a brush preset, as you can imagine, with certain patterns, it takes a long time to make it look perfect. You definitely don't want to do that again. So that's where it's definitely a good idea to to create that backup file so you can do things later on. I want to try. I haven't done this in a while, so you have to bear with me. This is on the fly. I saw a pattern. I created 10 yeah, that. So let me see if I can remember how to do this. I love it. It's great when instructor says that, right? Let me see if I remember how to do this on the fly. Just make it up, Okay, so let's take our pen tool and just make this curves like this. Uh, so I'm doing here is I'm making a path. It's a curve. I want to select it and then put a new layer Fill with pattern. I made a pattern here. That's what made me think of it. Looks like a little barefoot shape and place a long path. Come for that at work. Smart, that is. I made one barefoot that I didn't make that that was a shape that comes in photo shop. And the place along path assumes that you probably want an all training pattern on the other side. So it did the left in the right foot for me, so I didn't have to do anything. So that's another. So the bottom line is exploring the scripted pattern, especially if you have creative cloud. Because in photo shop CS six, it was just a set of preset ones that kind of gave you in effect, but you couldn't alter it. Now they have all of these options built in where you can play around and try something and see what happens. That's kind of cool, too