Swapping patterns

So imagine this scenario. You're at work and you've just spent a couple of hours working on an illustration and you are quite pleased with it. You've got your fabric worked, you've done all your rendering and shading, and you're just about to save the file and go home when your boss comes up to you and informs you that, that fabric is no longer being used for that particular garment, we're now making it in this fabric, and she hands you a new swatch, and oh by the way, we need this new rendering done in time for the 6 a.m.

meeting tomorrow morning. Or maybe to make, FedEx at 4 p.m. so we can get it off to China. Or maybe the scenario is, it's a costume design, and the director just doesn't like the fabric you chose and wants you to swap it out for something else. Well, if you set up your file, they way I've set up this file, you'll find that it's really easy to make these changes on the fly. And the file I'm using right now, is the one we generated in the dodge and burn chapter. So let me show you how we can do this and change out the fabric quickly and easily without any aggravation.

And you might not want to tell your boss how fast you can do this. So let's go into the layer that's got your pattern fill in it. And in the case of the pants here, here it is, here's my left leg. And you can see what's here is a smart object, because we turned this into a smart object before we warped it. Remember, in an earlier video I talked about how a smart object is like putting something in a safe little box. You can manipulate the box, but you can always save what's inside it or change what's inside it.

But we're going to change it. We're going to double-click on the smart object, which is going to take me inside the box to the smart object. And now I can double-click on the pattern fill, choose a new pattern fill. I can even change the scale here if I like. Click OK, and then close this file. Now it's going to ask me if I want to save the changes before closing, and the answer is yes, I want to save the changes. And it's going to pop that new pattern in to my existing file, complete with all of the warping I did and the shading I did.

And the reason for that is the warping was done as a smart object, and the shading was done as a separate layer. So, the shading wasn't affected at all. We're going to go to the other leg, double-click on the smart object. Double-click on the pattern fill. Select a new pattern fill. Let's change the scale, [NOISE] so it matches the other leg. Click OK. Close the file, save changes, yes, and the other one's changed out as well. The fabric is warped. I don't have to redo any of my shading or hard work.

I can save the file and go home. I can also change the coloring of the top just as easily. I've got a hue saturation layer in here. You can see I've already done it once. My original top was a mustard color. And I changed it out to red, but now that we're using this fabric, I think a turquoise might be more in order. So let's double click on hue saturation and play with the saturation slider until I get into the turquoise range, maybe about there, to make it a little less saturated. And it's that easy to change your colors and to change your patterns, keeping all of the work and rending you've done in the file, if you set it up properly.