Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to show you how to make
a polka dot pattern in Adobe Photoshop. And I'm going to show you a couple different ways to do
it. All right, let's get started. The first way, we'll show how to make polka dots in a grid format
like this. And the second way we'll show how to make them offset a little, like brick by brick,
if you're familiar with how patterns work in Adobe Illustrator. Alright, let's go to
Photoshop and Create New. And I want this to be pretty small, we'll put it at 100 by 100 pixels.
And then I'm going to put the resolution at 300, just in case we decide to print this.
And we also want CMYK color mode. And for the background, we want it to be transparent. So
I'll hit Create. Now I'm going to zoom in a little bit with CMD plus, now I'm going to draw our polka
dot. So I'll come over here to the shape tools. And I'm just going to choose the Ellipse tool.
I'll make sure it says 'shape' up here at the top. I'm also going to change my fill.
We'll look at the color picker. And I think I like maybe a lighter purple, so right about
here. We'll say OK. When we do that, it'll add it to the swatches and also make our fill the purple.
So I'm going to hold SHIFT, and just click and drag to make a polka dot. And you'll see it comes
over here in your Paths. And then I'll hit Enter or Return. Now I'm going to hit V on my keyboard,
which will bring me to the Move tool. I'm going to select all with CMD A or CTRL A,
and then we'll come up here to the Align tools at the top. And I'm just going to center it
vertically and horizontally. So now the dot is exactly in the middle of the artboard.
The whole canvas is selected. And that's what we want. So don't do select or anything like that.
Then we'll go to Edit and Define Pattern. We can name this, whatever we want,
I usually don't even name them. So we'll say OK. And you'll see over here in patterns,
that it's added our new pattern right here. So let's make a new document with CMD N or CTRL N.
I'll come up here to print and then letter. And all of this is okay. And this time I
want a white background, and then we'll Create. Since this dot is a swatch, we can use it just
like any other swatch. I'm going to get on my Ellipse tool, and I'm going to change the fill,
click on the pattern over here, and then choose the dot we just made. And now when I click and
drag, I'm holding SHIFT to make a perfect circle, the pattern's applied to the shape. I'll just hit
Enter or Return. And now I'm going to hide this layer. We can also fill the whole artboard with
the pattern. Let's go ahead and add a new layer. Now with this layer selected, we can fill the
whole layer with the pattern. So to do that, all we have to do is just click on the pattern.
And when we do that, we'll get a different kind of layer. Now this one is really nice,
because we can double click on this and change the angle of our pattern. So if we wanted to do,
let's say, a brick by brick type pattern, we can change our angle to 45 degrees.
And now each one is offset a little bit. And I think this looks a lot nicer than just a grid. You
could also scale your pattern here. So let's say we want it to be 200%. And now it's twice as big.
I don't think I like that as much though. So I'm going to put it back at 100%. Because our polka
dot has a transparent background, we can actually add a new layer, put it below the polka dot and
fill this layer with any color we want. So let's come down here and double click our fill color.
And I'm just going to...let's make it a little bit darker. We'll say OK. And
now I can hit OPTION and delete or ALT and delete on a PC. And these two are separate
so you can change your background to anything you want. Okay, let's hide the pattern. We can
also use our pattern stamp tool to draw with the pattern like a brush. So if we click here,
you'll probably see the Clone Stamp, but you'll need the Pattern Stamp right under here. It'll
automatically have the most recent pattern that you made. Now we'll need to create a new layer for
this, so I'm just going to click New Layer right down here. And now we can draw with our pattern.
Now the thing about this is it's not editable like this one down here is. If you use the pattern
stamp tool like this, you really can't rotate it like we saw a minute ago to get the brick
by brick look. So another way to do this is to fill the whole layer with polka dots like before,
so we'll add a new layer, fill it with polka dots like this, like we just did. And then we can
double click and change our angle to 45. Let's put this one at 75% and we'll say OK. Then we'll click
on this mask over here. If you're not seeing black down here, you can just hit D on your keyboard.
Then switch the two to get black in front, and then OPTION Delete, or ALT Delete on a PC.
And that's going to hide all of the dots. Now we'll get on our Pattern Stamp.
We'll make sure we have white in the front, and now we can draw with the polka dots like before.
This time, we have more control over what happens with the polka dots. So now we can go ahead and
change it back to zero and have a grid for our polka dots or something like that. Okay, I'm
going to close this. Now I'll show you another way of making a polka dot that starts off as an offset
brick by brick layout. The way to do this is to get a quarter of this polka dot in each corner.
So to do this, we'll just use the polka dot we've already made and make a duplicate of this.
We'll come up here to Filter and come to Other and then Offset. And I'm just going to Convert
to Smart Object. Now because our document was 100 by 100, we want to go half the distance.
So that's 50. And then we also want to go down half the distance, which is also 50. So we'll put
50 and 50. And make sure to choose Wrap Around here. And this is going to give us the exact
effect we want with one quarter of the polka dots showing in all four corners. So we'll say OK. Now
we'll select both of these and then come back up here to Edit > Define Pattern. We'll say OK,
and now this new pattern has been added to our swatches. And we can go ahead and do all the
things we did with the original one, which is fill shapes, fill the whole layer, or draw with our
Pattern Stamp tool. Now one thing we can do with this style that we couldn't do with the other one
is change the color of this circle. So we can double click on it and maybe make it dark. Now
we'll select both, define pattern and save that. And here it is. Now if we open a new document,
we can create a new layer and then click on that swatch. And then we have two different
colors in our pattern swatch. Alright, if you liked this video, please click the Like
button and I'll see you in a couple days with another graphic design tutorial. Thank you!!!