Transcript:
Hello, I’m Cristina. From Elan Creative Co. And today we are going to talk about saving seamless patterns. I’m going to show you how to save them for microstock websites for Spoonflower for online marketplaces, such as Creative Market and Etsy, and we are going to take a look at saving pattern swatches in Illustrator and Photoshop First. I want to show you how to save your seamless patterns as pattern tiles. I have here in the Swatches panel, a few seamless patterns. I made these using the Pattern tool. If you double-click on one of the patterns, you can see here in the pattern options, the width and height of your pattern. Now go to the Artboard tool. The shortcut is Shift + O and make sure the width and height of your artboard is the same as your pattern tile. Now go back to the Swatches panel. Click on your pattern and drag it to the artboard. You can also center it if you want, but it’s not important at this point. When you drag your pattern onto the artboard, you’ll notice that some of the objects will be outside the artboard or outside your background. This also happens if you create patterns using the older manual method. So what we have to do to create a seamless pattern tile is to remove everything that’s outside your background. Now you are probably going to be tempted to use a Clipping Mask to hide everything that’s outside the artboard, but I want to show you why that’s not such a good option. So let’s Ungroup the pattern and I’m going to select the background. Press Ctrl + C on my keyboard or Command + C. If you are on a Mac, then I am going to select the layer that’s on top, and then I am going to press Ctrl + F to paste in front. You can also go to Edit and copy and paste in front. Now I’m going to select everything right-click on the pattern select. Make Clipping Mask Now. This seems like a seamless pattern tile, but if you select it and then go to View > Outline, you can see that the items were not trimmed. They are still there, so let’s press Ctrl + Y and go back to preview mode. So if you save the pattern tile as it is, this is what’s going to happen. So I have here a Jpeg and you can see that this is all an image, and it also saved the items that were outside my artboard. Even though you can’t see them, you can see this white background. So this is why you shouldn’t use a Clipping Mask. Let’s right-click on the pattern again and select Release Clipping Mask. Now I want to tell you that the best tool for trimming everything that’s outside. The artboard is not a Clipping Mask, but the Crop tool. So go to Window and open the Pathfinder menu. And here you have the Crop tool. But before we can use the Crop tool, we have to make sure that there are no strokes in the pattern. So as you can see here, my pattern has a fill and a stroke, so we have to remove the stroke. You will also have to remove any effects you have and for that, you can go to. Object and click on Expand, then select all the options and click OK Now. If you look at the colors, we only have a fill color and we don’t have a stroke. You might have to go to Object > Expand again. If you click on it and nothing happens, it means that we can use the Crop tool. So let’s select the background. Copy it and then paste it in front. Now select all the layers and click on Crop. So let’s select the Align to Artboard and center our pattern tile. So this is your seamless pattern tile that you can now save and send to your clients or sell it on different websites. To save your seamless pattern as a vector. Just go to File. Give your pattern. A new name, choose the Illustrator version You want, I’m going to leave it as Illustrator CC, But if you sell your patterns or send them to clients, you might want to use an older version. Make sure you also create a PDF compatible file and then press, OK? If you want to export them, you can go to Export > Export as and choose the file type. I usually save as JPEG or sometimes as a smaller PNG file and then click on Export. Select the color mode, the quality you want the resolution and also make sure the anti-aliasing is set to art optimized. Sometimes if it’s set to none or even if you put it on type optimized by mistake, you might have very small white lines in your pattern. Then just press OK to save it. This pattern tile is perfect for uploading on sites such as Adobe Stock or Shutterstock. If you want to sell vectors on microstock websites, you have to make sure that you don’t have open paths. You don’t have any effects. It’s a good idea to remove all the strokes, and if you want to sell seamless patterns, then test your patterns and make sure that they tile seamlessly and there won’t be white areas in the pattern. You can go to Outline mode, just press Ctrl + Y and make sure the pattern is aligned to the artboard. As you can see, mine is perfectly aligned, so let’s go back to preview mode. Also, if you have swatches in the Swatche’s panel and you don’t want to include them in the vector files. Remove them before you save this file. Go to the Layer’s panel and make sure there are no locked layers in your file. Also, if you have scanned images in your designs, make sure all of them are turned into vectors. Don’t save embedded images in your vector files because your images won’t be approved on most microstock websites, Lets. Save the vector file. Go to File >. Save as again! Now, if you upload your files on Adobe Stock, you can use an Illustrator file. But most stock photo websites recommend using EPS files. So save your pattern as an EPS. Let’s give it a new name. Then click on Save. It’s very important to use an older version. I usually save them as Illustrator 10 EPS, but you might need to save them as Illustrator 8 for some websites. Then click, OK. If you have a really large file, it might take some time to save the pattern. You might also need to resize it, so always go to the stock photo website. You want to upload your image to and check the size requirements? Also, you will have to upload a raster image so go to Export >. Export as set the type as Jpeg and click on export. Sometimes if you upload CMYK images or if you just upload vector files, the colors will look a bit weird, so always upload Rgbs. You can also upload a smaller resolution If you want and then press OK to save it. Let’s save this file for Spoonflower. If you want to print on fabrics, you should check with your printer before saving your file. For Spoonflower before you create files, you should set the Color Settings to North America General Purpose 2 and the RGB setting to sRGB because Spoonflower uses sRGB colors. Press OK to change it. Now go to File > Export > Export, as Spoonflower recommends saving your file as a JPEG or a PNG file, so I’m going to export as Jpeg, Then set the color mode to RGB. If you upload CMYK files on Spoonflower, your colors might not look the same on screen and when printed. Now the resolution you should set it to 150 PPI. This is the value that Spoonflower recommends make sure It’s set to art optimized And then press OK to save it. So let’s save our seamless patterns as Illustrator Swatch files. Go here next to the Swatches tab and click on Save Swatch Library as Ai. It will open the default Illustrator Swatch Library. And if you save it here, you will have easy access to it from the Swatche’s Library Menu. But you can also choose another folder on your computer to save them. If I want to sell patterns or send them to my clients, I usually create small preview images. So I’m going to use the Rectangle tool to create four small rectangles. And then I’m going to fill each rectangle with a pattern. Now this looks much better if you want to sell patterns. Then go to File >. Save as make sure the file type is set to Adobe Illustrator and give it a new name. You can save it as an Illustrator CC file or use an older version. Then press, OK? If you want to save your seamless pattern as a Photoshop pattern file, just select it. Press Ctrl + C or Command + C. If you’re on a Mac to copy it, Then open Photoshop, create an artboard. That’s the same size as your pattern and press Ctrl + V or Command + V to paste it. Make sure you check paste as smart object. And if you want, you can add the pattern to your current library. Then press, OK, Then. Press Enter Now after that, it doesn’t matter if you have a pattern imported from Illustrator, or if you have one that you create in Photoshop, you can go to Edit >. Define pattern. Give your pattern a new name and then press, OK? Now, if you want to save the pattern file, I am going to use the. Fill tool for this. Make sure it’s set to Pattern, then open the pattern menu. And if you want to delete some of the patterns that you have in the pattern library, you can right-click on them and select. Delete Pattern, Then go to this little wheel over here and choose. Save Patterns. This will open the default preset library for Photoshop. But you can also choose another file on your computer. Then give it a new name and press Save. Now you will be able to use your patterns as layer styles or use them with the Fill tool in Photoshop. Before I go, I want to talk with you about selling vectors on online marketplaces like Etsy or Creativr Market. It’s very important to save your files in different formats Because not everybody uses the same software that you do. So always include EPS files, Illustrator files, Illustrator Swatch files and Photoshop Swatches Also include raster images. So you should include individual JPEG and PNG images Also save to older versions of Photoshop and Illustrator to make sure that they are compatible with the software that your clients use. If you use fonts or if you have many strokes in your designs or if use effects is very important to expand your patterns and create outlines before you save them. If you use scanned images, you shouldn’t include embedded images because your files might be too big or they might not work very well on your customer’s computers. So you should vectorize them or if you can’t do that. Maybe choose a different image file for them. Hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial. If you want to see more Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials, please visit my blog or subscribe to my channel. Thanks for watching.