616 Seamless patterns with the Clouds filter

- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland, welcome to Deke's Techniques. This week, super old school, I'm going to show you how to create a seamlessly repeating tile pattern in any version of Photoshop out there using the Clouds filter and you can combine it with Difference Clouds if you like as well and it's all dependent upon the size of the document you create. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. All right, I'm going to start things off by creating a new document which I'll do by going to the File menu and choosing the New command.

And then, I'll just go with these dimensions right here, 8 1/2 by 11 inches. The document's wider than it is tall, doesn't really matter. It'll just look better on screen, and I've taken the resolution value down to 72 pixels per inch. At which point, I'll click the Create button. Next, you want to go up to the Filter menu, choose Render, and then choose Clouds, and because the foreground color is black and the background color is white as by default, I get this random pattern of black and white clouds which is known as fractal noise.

And by the way, it's worth bearing in mind that the Clouds filter always works from the active foreground and background colors. All right now, to test how this is going to fair as a repeating pattern, I'll return to the Filter menu, choose Other, and then choose Offset. If you're working along with me, you can set these values to anything you like. I'll just go ahead and take 'em both up to 300 pixels, let's say. At which point, by virtue of the fact that undefined areas is set to wrap around, we're wrapping the image around itself, and we're ending up with these obvious seams.

All right, and I'm going to go ahead and accept this result just by clicking OK. Now, my problem is I didn't really pay attention to the image dimensions when I created my new file. For clouds to repeat seamlessly, you have to create a new document that measures some multiple of 128 pixels in each direction. And so, I'll go ahead and return to the File menu and once again, choose the New command, and you want to make sure that you're working in pixels, by the way. Neither inches nor millimeters is going to work.

And so, go ahead and switch to pixels, and then go ahead and get your calculator and multiply 128 by some whole number. So, for example, if I were to multiply 128 times four, I would get 512. If I multiplied it times five, I would get 640. So, both of these measurements are going to work out just fine. The only change I'm going to make is to the orientation so the image is wider than it is tall. The resolution value doesn't matter. You want to be working in the RGB mode, and setting the background contents to white is just fine.

At which point, I'll click the Create button in order to create this new file. All right, I want to keep things as flexible as possible. So, this time around, I'm going to work with editable smart filters by first double clicking on the background here inside the layers panel in order to bring up the new layer dialog box, and I'll just go ahead and call this later clouds and click OK. And then, I'll right click in the image window with my rectangular Marquee tool and choose Convert to Smart Object. Now, I'll return to the Filter menu, choose Render once again and then choose Clouds which is going to give me that black and white fractal noise pattern.

If you don't like what you see for whatever reason, just go ahead and double click on the clouds smart filter here inside the Layers panel and that will rerun this entirely random effect. All right, I'm going to keep double-clicking until I like what I see. And then, just to test how this is going to repeat, I'll go back to the Filter menu, choose Other, and choose Offset. And you can see this time around, we have no seams whatsoever. Now, I want both the horizontal and vertical values to be exactly half the width and the height of this image.

So, I'll set the horizontal value to 320 pixels and the vertical value to 256. Again, you want to make sure undefined areas are set to wrap around, and then you can just go ahead and click OK. You really don't have to perform that step, that's just a test, nothing more, but it is going to help out a little later. All right now, let's turn this guy into a pattern. By going up to the Edit menu and choosing the Define Pattern command, and I'll go ahead and call this guy Clouds 1, let's say, and then I'll click OK.

All right now, if you want to test that pattern out, then just create another new file by going to the File menu and choosing the New command, and this time, just because I know it works well in video, I'll change the width value to 1950 pixels and the height to 1300. Again, the resolution doesn't matter, and actually these specific measurements don't matter either. You can create a file of any size you like. It doesn't have to measure a multiple of 128. So, choose any size that works on your screen and then click Create and zoom on in, and then, I'll drop down to this black and white icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, click on it and choose Pattern, and that will create a new pattern layer which will most likely be set to that newest pattern you created.

All right so, I'll go ahead and make sure the Clouds pattern is active, and then, you can drag this thing around inside the image window and you'll see that it does indeed repeat absolutely seamlessly. At which point, I'll click OK to accept that new layer. All right now, let's say you want to infuse your cloud pattern with a little bit of color. Well, one way to work and I'll go ahead and switch back to the static document to demonstrate is to change your foreground and background colors and then reapply the Clouds filter.

You can't just update the Smart filter, you have to reapply it. So, let me show you what that looks like. I'll just go ahead and click on the foreground color swatch to bring up a Color Picker dialog box, and I'll click at some random location inside this color field in order to select a dark shade of red, and then I'll click OK. Now, to change the background, I'll go ahead and click on that background color swatch and change it to a lighter color and I could make it something other than red if I like. I'm going to make this color a little brighter as well so that we have a kind of pale yellow.

After which, I'll click OK. And now, I'll return to the Filter menu, choose Render, and then choose Clouds. At which point, you can see that I have some very colorful clouds indeed. The problem is that the kind of static modification and as you can see, if I return to the dynamic document, if I double click on the Clouds filter here inside the Layers panel. The first thing, I'm going to see this alert message just telling me that for a very brief moment, I'm not going to see the effects of the Offset filter. I'll just go ahead and click OK and you can see that even though I've changed my foreground background colors, the clouds filter is still giving me black and white.

So, if I want colorful clouds, I'd have to get rid of this guy, and then reapply the Clouds filter from the Filter menu. But let's say, I'm looking for a more dynamic solution. In that case, what you want to do is go up to the Layer menu, choose New Adjustment Layer, and then choose Gradient Map, which is going to allow you to infuse colors based on luminous levels inside your image, which means instead of just having a dark color and a bright color and that's it, you can have some other colors in between.

So, I'll go ahead and choose Gradient Map and I'll call this layer, lava, because ultimately that's the effect it's going to create, and then I'll click OK, and you can see that right away, Photoshop goes ahead and creates a gradient using the foreground and background colors. So, I'm getting roughly the same effect I would have if I reapplied clouds. However, as I say, with a Gradient Map layer, you have a lot more options available to you, and to see what that looks like, just go ahead and click this down-pointing arrow head and select one of your pre-defined gradients.

In my case, I'm going to select this guy right here, blue, red, yellow, which is going to create this effect, and of course, if you want to edit that gradient, you just need to click on the gradient strip right here in order to bring up the Gradient Editor dialog box, and then I could, for example, double click on this first color swatch, and I could take the brightness up to 100%, for example. If I wanted to achieve some brighter blues after which point, I'll click OK to accept that change. So, in case it's not obvious what's going on, Photoshop is mapping the gradient onto the luminous levels inside the image.

So, the darkest colors are becoming blue, the brightest ones are becoming yellow, and the stuff in between is red. All right so, I once again click OK, and then I'll hide my Properties panel. Now, the great thing about this approach is not only do you get more colors if you like, but it's also entirely dynamic. So, if I don't like the effect I'm seeing right now, all I have to do is double click on Clouds, click on that OK button, or obviously select, Don't show again, and then click OK. And if that still doesn't please you, just go ahead and double click again, and you can do that as many times as you like, and each and every time you'll get a different result.

All right now, to turn this into a pattern, I'll return to the Edit menu and choose the Define Pattern command, and then I'll just go ahead and call this guy Clouds 2, and click OK. And now, I'll switch to the document with the dynamic pattern layer and I'll go ahead and double click on that Layers thumbnail to bring up the Pattern Fill dialog box, click on the pattern, and then select my newest creation. After which point, I will once again click OK. And that friends is how you create an entirely seamless pattern using the Clouds filter in pretty much every version of Photoshop released in the last 20 years.

Now, if you're a member of lynda.com, I have a follow-up movie in which I show you how to take your clouds pattern so far whether it's in color or otherwise, and spend a couple of variations on it including this kind of lunar landscape right here and this hot lava. If, you're waiting for next week, I'm going to show you one possible use for the clouds pattern. So, the idea is we're going to take this busy background and instead of trying to mask the model away from the background, which would take forever, we're going to combine the healing brush along with the clouds pattern in order to heal that background away.

Deke's Techniques each and every week, keep watching.