Seamless Repeat in iPad & Desktop Illustrator! From Repeat, to Pattern Mode, to Fill Swatch!

[@sissia67]

Thanks so much, you are the only one who explain How to transfer the repeat to pattern on AI computer 🙏🏼. And i will follow you! Very good tuto!

[@LauraCoyle]

Thanks for letting me know - so glad it was helpful!

[@melemel9062]

Thank you! This is exactly what I needed to know

[@LauraCoyle]

Glad it was helpful!

[@alldoneadultingtravel]

So happy to found this! Thank you so much. Learning AI right now and having AI on the iPad is just so much more intuitive.

[@LauraCoyle]

Glad it was helpful!

[@esmeraldaleal4911]

Love love love! Your ipad videos have helped me tremendously. Can you make a video on using the clipping mask? I honestly can not find any good KZbin videos .

[@LauraCoyle]

Great idea!! On my to do list! ;-)

[@esmeraldaleal4911]

@@LauraCoyle I was finally able to figure it out and honestly I had the hardest time figuring it out. But I was finally able to turn a repeat pattern into a clipping mask

[@username58482]

Thank you for your explanation!

[@LauraCoyle]

You are welcome!

[@ingridsauerbreylarbiou3243]

Thanks so much! I sell my notebook and bought an iPad but know I see that I need to re-learn Illustrator 😢 and we don’t have some tools in this device. Thank u for your time!

[@LauraCoyle]

Yes, the iPad has fewer features than the desktop version. There is also a web browser beta version of Illustrator you can try - it is similar to the iPad version. Look for it in your Creative Cloud apps. You are so welcome!

[@JuliettePepperell]

Thanks for the tutorial. I may have missed this, whats the reason to move from iPad to desktop? Are you able to add those additional leaf elements in the repeat pattern on the iPad instead?

[@LauraCoyle]

You could add them on the iPad, but the Repeats feature isn't as adjustable as the Pattern mode feature on the desktop. If I added a leaf in the Repeats feature, it would grow the size of the tile and not allow for overlap or closely spaced elements that I may need. It would be better to work manually on the iPad at that point, or move to the desktop.

[@gokulkumar9715]

It's been useful, thanks

[@LauraCoyle]

Glad to hear that!

[@christinegivens9048]

Amazing!! Thank you. 🌸🌱🌸

[@LauraCoyle]

You are so welcome! 🌻

[@Coastalferrets]

any advice on doing this with more complex patterns? Mine is almost like a double pattern with an abstract pattern background and then my illustration pattern on top of it. i’ve already made it seamless in procreate but when i bring it into illustrator and turn it into a vector pattern it looks off like where my shading and details are are no longer the same there are white gaps… maybe from when it was vectorized?

[@LauraCoyle]

Better to vectorize motifs before putting into repeat. If you vectorize something that’s perfectly repeating it will inevitably get distorted and you’ll have to fix the edges - vectorizing is not like making an exact copy - hope that helps. White gaps might be abutting paths that are too smoothed out, needs a higher paths setting.

[@pixiegeist]

This series has changed my life, haha! Thank you Laura. A quick question - would you add a background colour with this method or would you usually keep the pattern transparent and change bg for different patterns, and if I did add a bg would I use the same technique? Thanks :)

[@LauraCoyle]

That's great!! I mostly avoid using solid color backgrounds inside Pattern Edit Mode - because they create overlap problems with half-drops and anything complex. The repeats feature is great because you aren't creating a fill swatch, you are just viewing an area of repeat, so you can easily put a rectangle behind the whole repeat object. For pattern fill swatches, I add the background as a separate fill in the Appearance panel, or lay a rectangle behind the repeating fill.

[@3washoka]

This was so useful thank you

[@LauraCoyle]

You're welcome! Thanks for commenting!

[@LauraDunkinHubby]

Is there any way to make a repeating pattern into a swatch on the iPad? I don’t have the desktop version.

[@rosefarver]

I have the same question. Thanks!

[@LauraCoyle]

No, unfortunately, there is no feature that creates pattern swatches on the iPad.

[@LauraCoyle]

I wish, but there isn't a feature that creates a pattern fill swatch on the iPad.

[@rochellcardona6081]

How do you use the pattern swatches on the iPad? It's still not populating.

[@LauraCoyle]

Pattern fill swatches are not available on the iPad - hopefully, in the future.

[@sophiafernandez8472]

Can you do a clippink mask tutorial in Ipad please

[@LauraCoyle]

Thanks for the suggestion - that's a really good one!

[@anjusebastian8422]

Hey Laura, how do I export this pattern?

[@LauraCoyle]

Here's a video with a workflow I like to use for exporting patterns: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aH7To6aHaLiWj7s

[@howlingink]

Great tutorial. I just wondering what file you are saving in to open it in desktop illustrator. Can you let me know how this process look?

[@LauraCoyle]

Thank you! Any work you do in Illustrator on the iPad is saved to Creative Cloud documents as a .aic format (Adobe Illustrator Cloud). These will appear on the home screen on the desktop version of Illustrator under Your Files when you are logged in to Adobe. Just click on the file thumbnail to open.

[@jenniferparker752]

Hi Laura, I am so grateful for this tutorial as this is the workflow I would love to use most of the time. I am having some trouble though with the part where I want to add the placeholders for additional motifs. My motifs in my tile are all comprised of groups of colors, so I don't have a free-standing motif like you do in your example that is just a single color. When I double click a few times to get into a group to access just one color so I can use that for the rectangle placeholders, I then no longer have the tile selected so that when I draw the rectangles, they show up throughout the pattern. Any idea where I'm going wrong here? Thank you so much for any insights; I'm going a little nuts and have rewatched over and over but just can't figure it out! Update! I went back to my set of motifs and just added a single-color circle prior to using the grid tool. That allowed me to follow exactly the same steps you showed and it worked fine. Also, I tried again drilling into my grouped motif to get to a single color and that also seemed to work this time. Sorry for all the confusion!!

[@LauraCoyle]

That's alright! I'm glad you got it to work! Isolation mode takes some practice to figure the clicks and getting inside the groups. When you are using it with the Repeats feature to edit inside the repeat, while also using it to get inside a grouped motif inside a repeat, it adds some extra challenge.

[@valdez_mia]

Thank you very much, Laura! very useful, as always !. ⭐️😊👍🏻. Question: Can the Ai file on iPad be set to 150 or 300 dpi?

[@LauraCoyle]

When you create from a Print document preset it automatically creates a 300ppi CMYK document, for screen it creates 72ppi in RGB. The resolution is referring to raster effects display only - vector art does not have a resolution. So create your artboard/document with the pixel dimensions you want it to be in the end (don't worry about resolution, just go with 72) and then you export. When you divide those dimensions by 150 or 300, you'll know the number of inches that exported art will be.

[@BettyMullins]

Will this make your pattern seamless? I noticed white space at top and left side….

[@LauraCoyle]

Yes, but which part are you talking about?

[@BettyMullins]

@@LauraCoyle at 40 second mark after you have hit grid you have white at the top and the left side. Is this only because you have a white background?

[@LauraCoyle]

That is the edge of the rectangle (the repeat object in Illustrator terms) that the pattern is filling. So, that's not the edge of the repeat unit. The pattern inside the rectangle is a seamless repeat, but in the video I am showing how to move it to the desktop where it will be more editable and versatile to work with. The Repeats feature is fun to use and helpful for ideas, but not so great for control over the editing process.

[@BettyMullins]

Sucks that you can not do patterns on just the ipad.....without having to go to desktop....