This little tutorial will help you create your own seamless patterns from scratch. It’s easier than it looks, I promise. I’m including a floral shape palette that I made in Illustrator. You can use this .psd to follow the tuto and/or in your own creations or CC making or recolors or whatever your heart desires. A shout back is appreciated but not required.
Download the .psd here (SFS)
Enough talk and let’s start:
1. On the preferences menu, be sure to select Units and Rulers and set rulers to pixels. Then create a new document with 1000x1000px;
2. Go to View and make sure your workspace is set to show rulers (ticked) and snap to grid is also ticked;
Note: the shapes are inside folders in the layer panel, with labels for easy access. If you’re handy with PS and prefer to use them instead of loading the shape palette, skip to step 8.
3. Click and hold the rectangle tool to open the custom shape menu;
4. Open the fly-out menu and select Replace Shapes. Go to where you saved my custom shape palette and select it. Now you’ll have all my custom shapes loaded and you’re ready to start.
5. Open the shapes palette, click on the shape you want to create, hold shift and drag in your artboard. You will see that a new layer was created in your layers panel. If you want to create a new shape, de-select all layers or create a new one and repeat the step above. If you create a new shape while a layer is selected, if will place your new shape inside and while this may be good for some kind of work, for patterns, where you’ll be repeating, copy/pasting and resizing shapes, it’s better to create in a new layer.
6. Keep doing the above step until you have all the shapes you want to use in your pattern.
7. To change the color of a shape, double click the shape in the layers panel and select a new color in the Color Picker window;
8. Start placing the shapes in the artboard. Don’t place things to close to the edges and nothing should go over the edge; keep repeating and using various colors and sizes until you happy with the look.
9. Select all shapes (hold shift to select more than 1 layer) in the layer panel, open the menu and choose > New Group from Layers and name whatever you want;
10. Grab this group (the folder), hold the option/alt key and drag it above it to make a duplicate; hide the original group by clicking on the eye icon; open the duplicate you just created, select all layers (shift to select multiples layers) and hold control and click on top of these layers, select Convert to Smart Object. This means that you’ll have all these shapes saved inside a single layer that you can still edit if you click on it 2x. The original group also is be save inside the first folder you created.
11. Now drag a ruler from the top until you reach the middle of the canvas (500px). Do the same from the left ruler: drag it to the middle (500px);
12. Select the marquee tool and on the smart object layer you created above, drag the marquee on the top half of the image > press command + J keys. A new layer is created above with only the parts selected via marquee. Do the same for the bottom part: go to the smart object layer, drag the marquee on the lower half of the image > press command + J keys.
13. Hide the bottom layer and the smart object layer and move the top layer (shift+arrow key) to the bottom. Be sure that this layer won’t move left or right nor leave a gap or go over the bottom edge. Zoom in to have a better look. If “overlaps” or there’s a gap, your patterns will look like it misses a line. Use the shift key to make the layer move faster (more jumps), but when you’re close to the edge, use only the arrow key so you can see when it gets lined perfectly.
14. Do the same for the bottom layer, move it to the top. Careful with the edge again.
15. Once they are in opposite sides, select both and press command+E. Now we get the marquee tool and we will repeat the same thing we did for top and bottom, but we’ll do left and right;
16. Select the marquee tool and on the layer you created above, drag the marquee on the left half of the image > press command + J. Do the same for the right side: marquee the right side, command + J key.
17. Now you’ll move the left part to the right and the right to the left. Always mind the edges! Once they are in place in opposite sides, select both and press command+E. You may want to lock this layer clicking on the lock icon on the layer panel. That way it won’t move accidentally. You’ll end up with something like this.
18. Now fill the middle parts following the same flow you did before. The more filled your artboard was before you did the FLIP, the smaller will be the area you’ll need to fill now.
19. Once you’re done filling, your pattern is ready. You can save this as a working artboard, meaning you can still change the colors, size and placement of the smart objects you saved to create a variation of this pattern. You’ll have to re-do the flipping, of course, but if you don’t delete the smart obejct layer or merge them all you’ll always be able to work on it.
20. To add the pattern to your swatches: go to menu Edit > Define Pattern. Test it in a bigger canvas to see if you’re happy with the results.
Additional tips:
- Tight spaced patterns make repetitions less noticeable.
- Pay attention to scale: large or small. Don’t use huge size variations in the same pattern. It will make some shapes grab more attention than others and your eye will notice the repetition right away. Go for a good balance.
- Pay close attention to the space between the shapes. Try to make the spacing similar around all the shapes.
- Start from the center and build towards the edges. It may look weird when you start, but keep filling it in, using a slight size variation, rotating and changing colors and you’ll get there.
