![]() You can actually also use the ‘Image Trace’ tool on found objects and painted motifs, which is pretty awesome, but most people use Photoshop for painted designs.īonnie Christie has a great class on Skillshare called “ Watercolor for Surface Pattern Design: Working with Adobe Illustrator” which I’ve watched but haven’t tried yet (you can try Skillshare and get 1 free month if you use this link*), but I’m planning to give this a try for my next collection, so I’ll let you know how I go. Illustrator is vector based and works with anchor points and lines, rather than pixels, which means you can scale vector artwork infinitely without losing quality.Īs with Photoshop, you can draw directly into Illustrator using the drawing tools available, with or without a drawing tablet, but you can also upload drawings into Illustrator and trace them using the ‘Image Trace” tool. I’ve been using it consistently for about a year and a half and I’ll be honest, I’ve barely touched on the features I could be using to design my art, but I’m still managing to create some pretty nice patterns. I love Illustrator and it’s the only application that I use to create my pattern designs and artwork, so I’m definitely biased. Something to remember is that you’ll want to make your drawing or painting as large as you need the final version so that once it’s digitised you won’t lose the quality trying to scale the image larger. If you prefer to work manually creating your artwork by hand rather than digitally, or you have a more painterly style of art such as watercolour paintings, then Photoshop may be right for you. Print on Demand sites usually want a large. You can draw and paint artwork and create patterns in Photoshop, using the program’s pencils and brushes, or you create your artwork the old fashioned way, with pencils and paints, and then scan the image or pattern elements into Photoshop to clean it up or arrange into patterns and create your digital file.Ĭommon file types used in Photoshop are. If you start with a small image and try to increase the size, your image will look blurry. This means that you get more photo realistic images, but you can’t necessarily scale your images without loss of quality. Photoshop is a raster based image editing program, which works in pixels. Other designers that I know swear by it and say it’s awesome, but to be honest, it kinda gives me the shits, probably coz I don’t know how to use it properly! Learning Photoshop is definitely on my to do list. Let’s dive into a comparison.įull disclaimer, I rarely use Photoshop, only for creating mockups and occasionally for basic photo editing. So, which one should you use? Well, that’ll depend on how you like to create your artwork, and what you're using it for. But once you’ve made your first pattern and started to understand some of the amazing things that you can do in Photoshop or Illustrator, I’m sure you’ll love working with them, despite the keyboard punching, stapler throwing amount of frustration that using either one of these applications can sometimes elicit. It may seem overwhelming to think about learning a new software, and I’ll be honest, there is a big learning curve on using either of these programs. These two programs are the industry standard. ![]() ![]() Now, when it comes to creating digital artwork, there are a ton of different options out there, including free art apps and apps that let you design artwork on your ipad or tablet.īut to ensure that you’re able to create files that are accepted by Microstock sites, such as Shutterstock (these are websites where you upload your art and designs to licence to people or businesses to use for personal or commercial purposes), Print on Demand sites such as Spoonflower (where you upload your designs for people to buy on products, manufactured and printed by the Print on Demand site) and brands, printers and manufacturers, you’ll need to learn how to use either Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. But what’s the difference, and which one should you choose? In this post I’ll give you a brief overview of the two programs and help you decide which one is right for you. The industry standards for Surface Design are generally Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. In order to be a professional Surface Designer, you’ll need to have an understanding of the software that’s used to create repeat patterns and illustrations, and be proficient with at least one of them.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |