Patterns

A friend recently gifted me with a copy of PhotoShop 7 and I am still learning how to use it.
I've figured out some of the basics of drawing and such but I'm still unsure of how to create a new pattern to apply to the fashion templates. This would apply to those I've created and some swatched I've found on the internet I'd like to use. Any help would b greatly appreciated and thanks to those who helped me out with my problems with alpha channels. : )

Hi Nakia!

To make a pattern in Photoshop, use the Marquee Tool to draw a marquee around the area you want to have in your pattern, go to Edit > Define Pattern, and name it in the dialog that opens.

To use it, there are a number of things you can do.

You can go to Edit > Fill and choose Pattern, and the pattern you want from the drop down menus in the Fill dialog.

You can go to Layer > New Fill Layer : Pattern. This allows you to name your pattern and choose a few other things, like blending mode. You'll choose the pattern in the next step, when the Pattern Fill dialog for the Adjustment layer shows up.

Or you can click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. (It looks like a circle, half black, and half white.)

I would recommend that you use one of the latter two methods (which both have the same outcome) because a Pattern Layer allows you to scale the pattern, move the origin point, and change to a different pattern on the fly.

To use the pattern on less than the entire image, simply fill the Layer Mask to the right of the Pattern thumbnail in the Layers palette with white where you want to see the pattern, and black where you don't.

Making a Seamless Pattern, on the other hand, is a bit more complex. Is that what you want to do?

Nakia, if you're photosourcing stuff from the internet, instead of creating clothes from scratch, you can just use the marquee tool to cut a rough shape out from the image, and paste it into the template. It will automatically create a new layer for you to work on.

Since photos of clothing tend to be assymetrical, I normally only cut half from the photo source and later mirror it to form the other half. The common steps are as follows:

1. marquee select half of the clothing in the photo
2. hit ctrl-c to copy, then switch to the template file
3. hit ctrl-v to paste it in, it creates a new layer
4. rotate, scale and also use the deform tool to stretch it over the template outline
5. box select the edge thats going to be mirrored and delete the crud off
6. make a copy of this layer by pressing ctrl-J
7. go to edit > transform > flip horizontal
8. adjust the mirrored part to match the original half
9. you can merge the two layers if you want to
10. save the file and do a test upload to SL to inspect it

If you're lucky, your photo source also shows the back of the clothing. If not, you can still use the photo of the front and modify and trim it here and there to make it look like the back. If its a blouse with buttons, for example, you can try and get rid of the buttons.

The tricky part is matching the front and back, and the shoulder straps, if it has any.

You can do an preview in SL by selecting it to be displayed on an avatar, instead of just as a flat texture, right at the upload menu. Inspect your texture closely and cancel the upload to work on it further if its not satisfactory. The zoom and pan functions is the same as the inworld zoom and pan controls, so you should be familiar with it.