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

750 Adjusting a tile pattern to fit its photo

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

750 Adjusting a tile pattern to fit its photo

- [Instructor] In this movie I'll show you how to modify a tile pattern inside Illustrator so that it better fits the photographic image here inside Photoshop. So notice that we have these bands of blue and orange pentagons moving through the pattern and that this blue pentagon right here cuts into the models lip, and then the orange pentagon goes too high over here on the right side of the cheek. I wanna move things down so that we have a better fit specifically around the mouth as we're seeing here. All right, so I'll go ahead and switch over to the photograph at hand. Now what you don't wanna do is just move the layers. So notice if I grab the move tool, which I can get by pressing the v key and I drag the active layer that I'm making a mess of things as you can see, so I might get a better match where the lip is concerned, but I have this edge, can you see it running through the finger over here on the right side of the image? It gets even worse if I start moving this overlay layer around. Notice how we're seeing this corner up here, and that's because these layers are finite. They don't continue on and on outside the canvas. So what I need to do at this point is go up to the file menu and choose the revert command in order to restore the original version of this composition, and then I need to modify either of these layers inside Illustrator. And that's because both of these smart objects are linked to this same vector data, and so all I need to do is double click on either one of these thumbnails in order to open that vector-based smart object here inside Illustrator. So notice the AI up here in the top left corner of the screen. Now I'm not actually seeing the artwork, and that's because I'm scrolled to the wrong location. If that ever happens to you all you have to do is go to the view menu and choose fit artboard in window or just press control zero or command zero on a Mac and that will go ahead and center the artboard on screen. All right now what you wanna do is click on that artwork with the black arrow tool in order to select it. Now normally I would see the layers panel over here on the right side of the screen. I do wanna see the appearance panel, however. And I can get to it by going to the window menu and choosing the appearance command, at which point I will see that transform effect that's applied to this object. And so I'll just go ahead and click on transform. Now the object, by the way, is a big rectangle that is filled by this tile pattern, and so notice I have a rotate angle value of negative 30 degrees. If I were to change that guy to zero degrees and then click on the preview checkbox, you would see this configuration right here where a blue and orange bands are running horizontally. That's not really what I want. I don't find that to be that visually appealing. So I'll go ahead and change that angle value back to negative 30 degrees, like so. And now what you need to do is adjust your move values. So for example, if I click on a horizontal move value and press shift up arrow a bunch of times, then I'm moving the pattern over to the right. If I press shift down arrow then I'm moving it to the left, which is what I said, right? When we were inside Photoshop I was thinking I need to move the pattern over to the left as well as down a bit. So I'll go ahead and try this value here and then I'll try a vertical value, not a negative value, that's gonna move the pattern up, but rather a positive value like so. And why not try something like 100 points, and then I'll just go ahead and click okay. Now one way to update the patter inside Photoshop is to just close it and then click on the yes button in order to save your changes, that's gonna be the save button on the Mac. Another way to work, I'll just go ahead and cancel out, is to go to the file menu and choose the save command. That's not going to save the document to disk. Rather, that's going to save the document inside Photoshop. So in other words, it's actually serving as an update command. And so now if I switch over to Photoshop and wait a moment here, you can see that the pattern shifts, but it shifted way too far. And so this is before and this is after, and I'm seeing the before view by pressing control z or command z on a Mac and I'm seeing the after view by pressing that same keyboard shortcut. At least that's the way it works now. Now you can see I've overshot things. Now you don't want to leave it in the undo state. You wanna leave it in the redo state because you still have the document open inside Illustrator. So I'll just go ahead and switch over to Illustrator and I'll modify my transform settings by clicking on the word transform there, and through trial and error, it did take me a few minutes, I came up with the horizontal move value of plus 30, so positive 30 actually works better, and a vertical value of 60, like so, at which point I'll click okay. And I just happen to know that works. Now notice that my edges are looking very jagged. That's just a function of the screen redraw. If that happens to you you can go up to the view menu and choose preview on CPU, which will switch the redraw function from the GPU on your video card to the CPU. And that may make things look better. In my case it does. It doesn't matter, however, you don't have to do that. It's just a redraw function. And since I know this works I'm just gonna go ahead and close this illustration and click the yes button. That's gonna be the save button on the Mac, and then I'll go ahead and switch over to Photoshop and a moment later, because I'm looking at the redo state, we will see that change applied, at which point we have a much better transition between the blue and orange bands of pentagons. And that's how you adjust a tile pattern inside Illustrator to better suit a photographic image here inside Photoshop.

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