From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

749 Combining a tile pattern with a photograph

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

749 Combining a tile pattern with a photograph

- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland, welcome to Deke's Techniques. Now this week we're gonna take that Type 15 pattern with which we've been having so much fun with and we're gonna combine it with a photograph. And this is a great example of Illustrator and Photoshop working together. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. All right, we're gonna start things off ever so briefly here inside Illustrator. At which point I've gone ahead and opened my Type 15 pentagon pattern, which I've converted to an automatically repeating rectangular tile pattern. And by the way, it's worth noting if I go ahead and click on the pattern in order to select it. And when I say pattern I've really selected a big rectangle that's filled with the pattern. I'll now go up to the Window menu and choose the Appearance command to bring up the Appearance panel. At which point I want you to see that I've applied a dynamic Transform effect. And so if I were to click on it you would see that the Rotate value is set to an Angle of 30 degrees and the Transformation Objects checkbox is turned off, so that I'm rotating the pattern and only the pattern. All right, so I'll just go ahead and Cancel that. Just wanna make sure you know that's happening. And then I'll go up to the Edit menu and choose the Copy command, or you can just press Control + C or Command + C on the Mac. All right, now I'll switch over to Photoshop where I have opened a photograph from the Dreamstime image library, about which you can learn more and get some great deals at dreamstime.com/deke.php. All right, I'll go ahead and press the Backspace key or the Delete key on a Mac to get rid of that URL layer. Then I'll go up to the Edit menu and choose the Paste command or you can press Control + V or Command + V on the Mac. Now you might figure if we're using patterns inside Photoshop that you would wanna convert the Illustrator pattern over to a repeating Photoshop pattern. That's not really necessary however if you paste your illustration as a Smart Object. And that's because when you work with Illustrator Smart Objects inside Photoshop then Photoshop suddenly has all of the power of Illustrator at its disposal. And so I'll go ahead and select Smart Object and click OK in order to paste that pattern tile, like so. And I might go ahead and zoom out just to make sure that my tiles are plenty big in order to fill the artwork. And you can see that the tiles are coming automatically scaled to 66.22%. That's not always gonna be the case, but that is how it's working out with this specific image. Also notice that the Anti-alias checkbox is turned on. That is very important if you want smooth results. All right, now I'll just go ahead and press the Enter key or the Return key on a Mac and you will see, especially if you're working along with me, that things smooth out nicely. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and rename this layer type 15, because after all that's what it is. And now I wanna integrate the tile pattern with the photographic image. And I'm gonna do that by changing the blend mode here in the top left corner of the Layers panel to Overlay. At which point we achieve this effect here. Now notice that our blues are turning kind of purplish and we're losing some of the oranges as well. I wanna maintain those colors, so I'm gonna jump a copy of this layer by pressing ctrl + j or cmd + j on the Mac, and then I'm gonna change its blend mode to Color. So if you wanna combine the effects of two blend modes in Photoshop then you have to have two layers. And so notice the difference. This is the image without that Color layer, this is the image with. This is the image without the Overlay layer, quite different. And this is the image with. All right, at this point it feels to me like we're looking some of the contrast, and so I'm gonna add a Levels adjustment layer by going up to the Layer menu, choosing New Adjustment Layer, and then choosing Levels. And that allows me to name the layer as I create it. At which point I'll just go ahead and call it contrast and then I'll click OK. And now I'll activate the first value in the Properties panel by pressing Shift + Enter. Notice that highlights the black point value, which I'll take up to 30, like so. And so that's just gonna sink the shadows. Then I'll Tab over to the gamma value and take it down by pressing Shift + down arrow twice in a row, so that the gamma value now reads 0.8. After which point I'll go ahead and hide that Properties panel. All right, now it seems to me that the tiles are showing up too sharply. And so I'll go ahead and select that first Type 15 layer right here, which is the Overlay layer. And I might as well go ahead and label it as such. And then with that layer selected I'll go up to the Filter menu, choose Blur, and choose Gaussian Blur. And I came up with the Radius value of 8 pixels, at which point I'll click OK. And notice, because I pasted my vector artwork as a Smart Object that Photoshop goes ahead and automatically applies the filter as an editable Smart Filer. Now I don't need this filter mask, this white thing right here, so I'll right-click on it and choose Delete Filter Mask just to tidy up my Layers panel. Now notice that we still have some pretty sharp edges that are coming to us from this Type 15 layer right there, which is actually the Color layer. And that to me is a good thing. So notice that if I turn that layer off everything is very soft, if I turn the layer back on we have some somewhat sharp transitions. If that's not exactly what you want, if you wanna soft things, then you could go ahead and grab that Gaussian Blur, press the alt key or the opt key on the Mac and drag it and drop it onto the color layer, like so. And that is gonna soften that layer something fierce. I'll go ahead and twirl that guy open, so we can see that we do have a Gaussian Blur Smart Filter. I do not want that filter mask, so I'll go ahead and choose Delete Filter Mask. I really wish Photoshop didn't create those things by default, because you can always right-click on Smart Filters and add one if you want. Anyway, I'm gonna go ahead and double-click on Gaussian Blur, because I don't want quite that much. I'll just go ahead and take this value let's say down to 1 pixel. Maybe that's a little bit too low. Let's try 2 pixels instead. At which point I'll click OK in order to accept that change. And that is at least one way to combine a repeating tile pattern that you create inside Illustrator with a photographic image here inside Photoshop. All right, now if you're a member of lynda.com slashed LinkedIn Learning I have a follow-up movie in which I show you how to adjust your tile pattern in Illustrator, so it better fits the photograph inside Photoshop. And I should say that a few of you have let us know that I should never be clean shaven again and my 16-year-old informed me that he's never seen me clean shaven in his entire life and that whereas I thought my problem was that I don't have a chin, he told me that I don't have any upper lip. So that's good to know. Deke's Techniques, each and every week, keep watching.

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