Introduction to GIMP Pattern
Patterns can be understood as repeated from any specific design arranged in rows or columns or in a specific sequence. Pattern may be any design according to your idea or any image such as it may be designed by different custom shapes, or shape of any logo and many different things. Here in this article, we will learn how to create a pattern design by using custom shapes of gimp software and how to use our saved pattern later in other designing work of gimp. So let us understand this by an example.
How to create and save patterns in gimp?
Today we will learn this topic by create a pattern with the help of Ellipse select tool of tool panel of gimp. First of all, take a new document which will become a reference background for our pattern. So click on the New option of the File menu of the menu bar.
Now set the size of the document according to the size of your pattern. For example, I will take 100 x 100 pixels size as my document size.
This is my document size.
Now create a new layer by clicking on the ‘Create new layer’ button of the layers panel.
Create a transparent layer by clicking on the transparency option of this dialog box.
Now let us have guides for pointing out the center of this document. So go to the Image menu of the menu bar, go to the Guides option, and click on the New Guide (by Percent) option of scroll down list.
Now set the position value as 50% so that we get a guideline as the half of this document. This will be a horizontal guide because the horizontal option is selected in the Direction option of this dialog box.
Do the same for the Vertical guideline.
Now you will get this type of guidelines.
Now take Ellipse Select tool from the tool panel and draw a circle by holding the Shift + Ctrl buttons of the keyboard, then move it to the crossing point of both guides so that we have this circle at the center of this document.
Now take the Bucket Fill tool from the tool panel.
And choose your desired color in the foreground color box of the tool panel. For example, I will choose this cyan color.
Make a click with the bucket tool inside the circle for filling your selected color into it.
Now go to the Select menu of the menu bar and click on the Shrink option of scroll down list.
I will shrink this circle by 8 pixels, which means the shrink option will make a copy of this circle smaller by 8 pixels compared to this circle.
Now press the delete button for deleting this selected smaller circle.
Again shrink it by 5 pixels using the same method and fill color in it using the bucket tool. I will fill the yellow color in it.
Now go to the View menu of the menu bar and click on the Show Grid option for having gird on our document area.
We will have this type of gird in our document area.
This is a 1 x 1 pixel grid; you can see it by zoom in.
If you do not have this type of grid, you can go to the Image menu of the menu bar and click on the Configure Gird option.
And set 1 x 1 values for horizontal and vertical lines of gird from this dialog box, then hit on the Ok button.
Now go to the Select menu for disabling selection around this yellow circle and hit on the None option of the scroll-down list.
Again create a transparent layer by the same method as we created in previous.
Select this transparent layer and take the Pencil tool from the tool panel.
Enable the Snap to Grid option from the View menu of the menu bar so that when we draw anything on this document, it will automatically snap with the grid, and we get an accurate result in our work.
Now Zoom in and draw anything with the pencil tool. The pencil tool will fill one by one block of this grid if you take 1 x 1 brush size in of it in the parameters’ panel. So I will fill these four blocks with the pencil tool.
And I will change the foreground color of the color box then make this shape on the center of our pattern with the help of a pencil tool.
A pattern should be symmetrical, so I did the same on the opposite side of this circle and made this type of pattern design.
I want a transparent pattern so that I will delete the background layer. You can save it with a background of your desired color as per your choice. Now off the grids by disabling them from the View menu.
Now copy it by clicking on the Copy Visible option of the Edit menu.
Open Pattern panel from the Dockable dialogs option of the Window menu.
Create a new document of 1920 x 1080 size, and you will have your copied pattern in the pattern’s panel like this.
Take Bucket tool and enable Pattern fill option in parameters’ panel of it.
Now click on document area with bucket tool, and you will have your pattern like this.
You can see it by Zoom in.
If you want to save this pattern for future use, then go to the Export As an option of the File menu.
And save it as a ‘.pat’ extension at your desired location.
Now open the folder where you have saved it and copy it.
Then paste it in the Patterns folder of GIMP. You can find patterns folder as C drive > Users > you PC name (as my is jhon smith) > AppData > Roaming > GIMP > 2.10 > patterns.
Now refresh the Patterns’ panel.
And you will have your pattern here with your saved name.
And you can use it on any document like this.
Conclusion – GIMP Patterns
This was the simplest way for creating patterns in the gimp of your desired design by using different tools of the tool panel. Of course, you can also use any image in place of this design, but you just have to do some parametrical change in that, and you will get a nice pattern with that image also.
Recommended Articles
This is a guide GIMP patterns. Here we discuss How we can use our saved pattern later in other designing work of gimp. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –
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