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Photoshop Elements: Cool Fifties Pattern

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Adobe^® Photoshop^® Elements 6

April 7, 2008

Be a hep cat and learn how to make a cool fifties pattern, Daddy-O. Download and use free fifties brushes, color swatches and fonts for the pattern. Before you start your pattern, download the fifties brushes, color swatches and fonts to your computer. See the Resources section below for descriptions and links. Then, install the fonts before starting Photoshop Elements. After Photoshop Elements has started, load the brushes and the color swatches. How to Load Brushes How to Load Color Swatches

Resources

	Get free Fifties Brushes, inspired by shapes and designs in late 50's and early 60's magazines.
	Get free Fifties Color Swatches, inspired by memories of our livingroom and kitchen decorations in the 50's and magazine illustrations from that era.
	Get cool Fifties fonts from The Font Diner. Some fonts are free for non-commercial use. The font used in this lesson is Fontdinerdotcom Sparkly.

Create the Fifties Pattern

We will create the fifties pattern in two steps:

1. Create an initial 200x200 pixel pattern that contains open spaces.
2. Fill a 400x400 pixel file with the initial pattern and add text and shapes to create the final pattern.

Step 1: Create the initial fifties pattern

1. Create a 200x200 pixel file for the pattern:

   1. From the File menu, select New, then Blank File.

   2. In the New File window, enter the following custom settings and click OK:

      

      Note: Make sure that the background is transparent. Using a transparent background for your patterns makes them more versatile as you can later change the background color easily for different effects.

2. Using the fifties color swatches and brushes, add a few shapes to the pattern, leaving some open space:

   1. Click the foreground color swatch at the bottom of the toolbox and select a fifties color from the Swatches palette.
   2. Select the Brush tool, Then, on the options bar, click the down arrow to the right of the brush preview to display the Brush Preset palette. Select a shape.
   3. Repeat with different colors and patterns. In the following examples, a pink background has been added for Web viewing, but your background should be transparent. Example:
   

3. Apply the Offset filter:

   1. From the Filter menu, select Other, then Offset. The Offset window is displayed:

      
   2. In the Offset window, set the Horizontal and Vertical offsets to +180 and select Wrap Around.

   3. Click OK. The Offset filter helps to make the pattern seamless when it is tiled. The pattern should now look like this:

      

4. From the Edit menu, select Define Pattern. Enter a name for the pattern and click OK. The pattern will be appended to the current pattern set.

Step 2: Create the final fifties pattern

1. Create a 400x400 pixel file with a transparent background as described above.
2. Click the foreground color swatch at the bottom of the toolbox and select a fifties color from the Swatches palette.
3. Use the Paint Bucket tool to fill the background layer with the color of your choice.

4. Create a new layer above the background and fill it with the initial pattern:

   1. In the Layers palette, click the New Layer icon to create a new layer above the background layer.
   2. Select the Paint Bucket tool. In the options bar, check Pattern.
   3. In the options bar, click the down arrow next to the pattern thumbnail and select the initial pattern from the patterns palette.
   4. Click in the image to fill the new layer with the pattern.
5. Using the fifties color swatches and brushes, sparsely add a few shapes to the pattern in the open spaces as described previously.

6. Add scattered text to the pattern. Example:

   
7. Before saving the pattern, merge all visible layers. From the Layer menu, select Merge Visible.
8. From the Edit menu, select Define Pattern. Enter a name for the pattern and click OK. The pattern will be appended to the current pattern set.

Note: To save your pattern permanently, you should use the Preset Manager to save a new pattern set. Otherwise, when you load a different pattern set, your pattern will be lost.

Updated on May 24, 2008