Trying to make my own patterns

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OK... getting braver. I decided I'd try the program I down loaded last week at the suggestion of a member. Worked Ok but thought since I already have the latest PhotoShop Suite, there has to be a filter in there to use. Imported a photo of my son's cat and tried filters. Two of them seemed to work the best: "cutout" and "photocopy". Cutout will do some nice work but has a tendency to bring in more than one shade so you have to be creative when making your lands and dropout pieces. Photocopy seemed to do the best. By using the 'layers' option in PhotoShop, you can add a layer to the original picture and as you darken out your cutouts and lands, close the original picture and see how your pattern is doing. Then re-open it to continue with out any problems. When your done you can close the original picture and just print the layer with your pattern on. It will be saved as a .psd file so to share it with anyone here you will have to flatten the image (make all the different layers into one picture) then you can save it as a .jpg, .bmp ot what ever. As soon as I finish the cat pattern I'll post it here for all to see. I'm really starting to like this scrolling thing...

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I forgot to add... when I got the Photo Shop suite, I also bought a drawing pad with a working area of 9x12 inches off eBay. Boy does it make it easy to trace patterns and do stuff in PhotoShop and Illustrator. It's worth the investment ($100 +/-) if you're serious about doing your own patterns.

[Gill]

... I also bought a drawing pad with a working area of 9x12 inches off eBay. Boy does it make it easy to trace patterns and do stuff in PhotoShop and Illustrator. It's worth the investment ($100 +/-) if you're serious about doing your own patterns.

I quite agree. You don't need to spend a lot of money on a good graphics pad either - those Wacoms look gorgeous but my Aiptek is quite sufficient for my needs.

Gill