Pattern 105

Sunday, July 12, 2015
I think I am going to be done with plaids and checks for awhile.  They are very fun to make, and as you can see, the possibilities are limitless.  They are really just a matter of combining two stripe patterns perpendicular to each other and lowering the opacity to 50% on the top layer.

I am now going to move on to some other ideas.  I want to make some new patterns that are 'watercolor'  like.  I can do this by opening photos and blurring them till they are unrecognizable as the original photos and all you are left with is the colors.  Flower photos work well for creating these types of patterns.  Here are the steps I took to create my first 'watercolor' style pattern.

Step 1 - Create a new blank square file.  Mine is two inches by two inches at 300 ppi.

Step 2 - Copy an image of a flower photo and paste it into your new blank file.  See my image one below.  I had previously altered my flower photo with various effects to get it to look as you see it.  Also, my flower photo is much larger than my two inch square so you are only seeing a zoomed in part of it.

Step 3 - Next apply the Gaussian Blur filter until it is no longer recognizable but you can still see separate colors.  Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur. 

Step 4 - Now, to make sure that the pattern will repeat without seeing 'seam' lines, the pattern has to be edited along the edges so that it will flow from one block to the next.  The first step to doing this is to apply the Offset filter.  Filter -> Other -> Offset.  There will be a dialog box that you must fill in.  Have the Wrap Around box checked.  Then you must fill in numbers for the Horizontal and Vertical offsets.  Since my file is 2 inches by 2 inches and my resolution is 300 ppi, I need to set my number to 300 for both the Horizontal and Vertical offset.  This will split the file exactly in half in each direction.  (My total pixels in each direction is 600 since I have 300 pixels per inch times 2 inches.) See my second image below.

Step 5 - Now select the Smudge Tool with a soft brush and blur out the crisp lines that cross the center.  Be careful to not mess with the outside edges because they perfectly arranged to flow from one block of the pattern to the next.  This is my repeatable pattern.  See my third image below.

Step 6 - Now you are ready to Select -> All, and Edit -> Define Pattern from Selection.  My last image shows the pattern as it will repeat.  This particular one has lots of colors that you can see that it repeats, but you cannot tell where one 'block' of pattern flows into the next.