In this 13 minute class, you will learn how to create a set of time-saving Adobe Photoshop actions for converting single pattern tiles into precise 4-up pattern repeats previews.

Whether you need to create tiling previews for cataloging your surface patterns, for analysing your work-in-progress, for sharing your patterns on social media or including them in pitches, using actions instead of defining pattern swatches and creating pattern fills takes less time and effort, and results in having neat pattern previews. You can use these actions with any pattern tiles created in Adobe Photoshop, or exported from Adobe Illustrator, Procreate or any other app where you can create repeatable pattern tiles.

Of course, you can preview your patterns by applying them as pattern fills, and it totally works when you want to see how they work as surface designs covering a specific area. But sometimes you just want to see 4 tiles next to each other to assess or display how the repeats work. And that's when using actions to automate the preview generation process comes in handy and saves you a ton of time! I started creating 4-up pattern repeats previews to be able to easily print out my pattern experiments, analyse them and select pattern swatches I want to use, and then to catalogue and showcase my final patterns, and these actions have been a real game-changer and helped me to massively speed up my workflow and stay organised!

In this class, I will walk you through the process of creating a set of actions for previewing your patterns and share tips, tricks and best practices for setting up smart actions which don’t throw any errors when you start running them. So even if you are not a surface pattern designer, but want to learn to automate your workflow with actions which deal with aligning to canvas, you’ll pick up a few useful tips!