Drawing Patterns in Photoshop

[Muddlepud]

I know some of you draw your own embroidery patterns and offer them for free or sell them, and I'm hoping that you (or anyone else who is Photoshop savvy) can help me out. I'd like to start drawing up some of my patterns, and since I'd like to maybe sell some of them, I want them to be professional looking. I have access to Photoshop, but I have yet to fully learn all of the things I can do with it when it comes to drawing. I have heard it's good to use vector drawings (and pen tool, right?) for this sort of thing, but that's as far as I've gotten. I don't know how to use it or if it's really the best method (and don't want to waste time trying to figure it out if there's a better method). Any advice? Tips for learning the right tools? Thanks!

[kittykill]

I wish I had some advice. I want to learn too.

[Sillybowtie]

If you scan your drawing on your computer and put it in photoshop and then make a transparent layer on top of the drawing and you can trace it on photoshop. When you are done with the tracing part you can hide/delete the hand drawing.

[Muddlepud]

Thanks. Someone advised me to learn vector graphics (that would be the pen tool in Photoshop, or using Illustrator or something like InkScape, which is free). I've already started experimenting with that and think it will work well. Thanks again!

[lisalady161]

Me three!  I wanna learn how to do this as well.

Paint.net is also a free software that you can layer with.  I'm just learning to work with it to alter (hack is such an ugly word) images and even other transfer patterns to suit my fancy.

[millik]

Illustrator and Inkscape are really great for this sort of thing, for sure. The difference is that when you draw something in a vector program, you can resize it as big or small as you want without loss of quality. You can't really do this in Photoshop easily.

A really easy way to do this is to draw your design, scan it in, then open it in Illustrator and use the "trace" function. I'm not sure the equivalent in Inkscape, but I should probably find out! I have Illustrator at work, so I will check that tomorrow so I can give you some exact instructions for that program.

[millik]

I wrote up some quick and dirty instructions for Illustrator (no screenshots yet)...let me know if you try it out, or maybe just wait for the Inkscape instructions if you don't have Illustrator

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=325978.msg3764147

[Muddlepud]

Thanks. I figured out how to trace in Inkscape. Now I'm learning how to refine it a little. Slow but steady....

[millik]

Awesome! You will be a pro in no time

[LuthienBlack]

If you want to give it a go using photoshop, this tutorial might be a good starting point: http://www.elftown.com/_How%20to%20ink%20in%20photoshop

I haven't used Inkscape, but I think like millik said, it's probably better for this type of work as it's a dedicated vector program. Good luck!