Patterns

Patterns

It takes a bit of effort to create seamless patterns (meaning patterns that will repeat without any obvious seams), but it definitely can be worth it. The idea here is to create a relatively small pattern that can be used to fill larger areas as the pattern repeats. Although there is a filter called Pattern Maker, its results can be less than ideal. I guess it depends on what you're looking forif you want a very random pattern that doesn't resemble the original photo, then Pattern Maker might do the trick. But if you're trying to create a repeating pattern that preserves the detail in the photo, you'll probably have to create the pattern manually.

Defining a pattern is the easy partjust go under the Edit menu and choose Define Pattern. The harder part is creating a pattern that will be seamless. Here are the basics of the technique to manually create a seamless pattern:

Step One.	Make a perfectly square selectionI used the Rectangular Marquee tool (M) with a Fixed Size of 4 inches by 4 inches in the Options Bar so it was easier to select an area. ( Note: Make sure the selection isn't feathered.) VALUEPIX
Step Two.	Make a copy of your selection (Edit>Copy), and then create a new document (Command-N [PC: Control-N]). Simply click OK in the New dialog (it will be the same size as the copy on the Clipboard), and paste your selection (Edit>Paste). Press Command-E (PC: Control-E) to Merge Down. (Okay, so that was several steps in onesorry.)
Step Three.	From the Filter menu, choose Other> Offset. Now, you'll need to enter values for Horizontal and Vertical offset. The measurement is in pixels, so you'll need to figure out what values will have your seams appear exactly halfway down and across. In my case, the pasted area (and therefore new document) was 4 inches by 4 inches at 72 ppi, which is equivalent to 288 pixels. So, I'd enter +144 pixels for both the Horizontal and Vertical fields in the Offset filter.
Step Four.	Click OK in the Offset dialog. You'll see that your image is cut into "offset" quarters , with seams across the center both vertically and horizontally creating a grid-like look.
Step Five.	Depending on your image, we'll now need to cover up the obvious seams using the Clone Stamp tool (S)just ensure that you don't touch (or change) the very edges of the document. This is the challenging part: It can take a bit of time and effort to blend the middle areas to make the seam disappear. Note: In some caseslike this onea great solution is to select and copy an area from the original image and use that to cover up the seam. Here I copied one brick and some of the surrounding mortar and used that to cover up what would have taken much longer to clone.
Step Six.	Press Command-A (PC: Control-A) to select your entire image. Then, from the Edit menu choose Define Pattern. In the resulting dialog, name the pattern and click OK.
Step Seven.	Here I created a much larger document and chose Edit>Fill. In the Use pop-up menu I selected Pattern, then under Custom Pattern, you'll be able to select your newly created pattern. Click OK to fill the document with the pattern. Here are a few more examples of the types of patterns that you can create using this method: VALUEPIX VALUEPIX VALUEPIX