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Inspiring
July 6, 2011
Released

P: Rotatable pattern fills

  • July 6, 2011
  • 75 replies
  • 1791 views

Hello.I'm a 3D Artist in the games industry. I like to use patterns alot for texture overlays and such. I love the ability to pan the pattern, or just swap out the pattern for a new one and keep the same mask when somethings not working (I love masks too).One qwirk however, theres no ability to rotate them without collapsing the pattern fill to a layer and doing it manually. Breaking my non-destructive workflow and ruining what i love about patterns. I am sure it wouldn't be too hard a feature to add, seeing as the gradient fill layer already has an rotation/angle implemented. This would save time and also keep my PSD's nice and tidy.I made a handy little gif that switches between pattern fill currently, and what would be desireable.Thanks.Chevy McGoram

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75 replies

Semaphoric
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 12, 2019
If Adobe were ever to revamp Pattern Fill Layers (if ever!), another change I'd like to see is in the Scaling feature. As it is, it goes from 1% to 1000%, and allows only integer percentages. So, there's  999 possible enlargements, but only 99 possible reductions. Since enlarging a Pattern generally looks bad, I make most of my patterns large, and then scale them down as needed. I do this with Smart Objects, since the native Pattern Fill scale give horrible looking results. With Smart Objects, I can also use fractional percentages, and set the vertical and horizontal amounts independently, as well as choosing the interpolation type.

I'd also like to be able to easily put my patterns into a Library. As it is now, I have to save a tile as a graphic, and open and export it using Adobe Capture on my phone. We can drag Brushes to a Library, why not Patterns?
Inspiring
October 12, 2019
I really, REALLY, want to see this happen. Considering that it feels like my workflow gets messed up by an update about every quarter or so, I would really welcome a significant positive change.

Every other solution I could find to this requires about 10 steps and far more time than I would prefer spending on something that feels like it should have already been a feature, in some cases I've even had to recreate the pattern as a whole. I'm just glad that scaling is an option to change already.

If this becomes an added feature, I would hope that the following capabilities get added to not only Pattern Fills, but also Pattern Overlays:
  • Rotation
  • Transformations
  • Scale (if that isn't an option for Pattern fills... I know it's available for overlays, which I use almost exclusively when it comes to patterns)
  • Modes (E.G. Normal, Clear [for pattern overlays; it would be beneficial to not have to convert the shape into a mask to remove a pattern from a specific layer], Darken, Lighten, Overlay, Difference, Hue, Etc.)
Inspiring
July 24, 2019
Hello,

Please do it. Allow a simple rotation option. We can already resize... It would be soooo great to be able to rotate in the same time !

Thank you for you job
Semaphoric
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 17, 2019
One way to do it is to convert a Pattern Fill Layer to a Smart Object, which you can then Transform at will:



This also lets you scale the pattern without having it get so ugly.

A gotcha is that you need to Edit Contents for the SO  and increase the canvas size, to ensure it covers the full original. So my suggestion would be to have "Smart" Pattern Fill Layers, rather than the half-baked thing we have now.
Participant
May 4, 2018
Hi guys,
rotating a Pattern Fill layer is just a small part of the things we would like to do with them, when we think about it. On my side, on Photoshop CC 2018, I cannot make the Styles work on them (is this only happening to me?)? It is not possible to apply filters on them without converting them. Any modification on the pattern requires to regenerate the pattern resource itself...

Let's thing about something else that would be a true non-desctructive easy-to-use easy-to-iterate approach. What if...

Anyone has used Smart Objects?

What if the pattern was a Smart Object? I mean, if on a Smart Object layer you had the ability to make it tile? You would then be able to rotate, scale, even skew it. You would be able to edit the pattern at will since it is an embedded document. Styles, Smart Filters...

It could look like this:



It would even be possible to make it repeat around the document:



Can you please tell me if that would be a good answer to your needs and what you think about this suggestion?

Thank you very much
Inspiring
February 17, 2018
I also have a frequent use for this feature; instead of creating patterns in multiple different angles (tiling those can be frustrating), this would save a ton of time. I have this engraving technique that I use to make images look like those in bills of money, and to avoid moiré patterns, rotation is key.
Inspiring
May 26, 2017
Like many architectural graphic designers out there, just wondering if this request is still being considered and if we might see it sometime soon?

Cheers
Inspiring
August 3, 2016
Hello, I would REALLY love the rotatable pattern overly feature to be implemented. I work with photoshop to create illustrations for picture books (and some editorial illustration too) and I have a wide selection of  watercolour paint textures. painted streaks etc that I have scanned in and use to add more of a tactile feel to the digital work I create.

Currently if if I want to have a streaky paint stroke texture rotated to an arbitrary angle I need to open the original texture file and drop it in as a masked layer on top of my original image layer. For textures that are horizontal I can use the pattern overlay tool which is far preferable as it's all 'inside' photoshop and can be found with one or two clicks.

Another issue for me is that I currently have to make multiple patterns for either horizontal or vertical strokes whereas it would be simpler (for me!) to have one pattern that I could rotate, just as I think someone els has pointed out, you can rotate the gradient overlay tool.

So basically, yeah, I'd love this functionality!

Thanks for listening!
Earth Oliver
Legend
January 6, 2016
At this point, i think it's safe to say that we should all give up on hoping for a native texture/pattern creator in Ps. People have been writing plug-ins and 3rd party apps for decades now to compensate for what's missing in Ps.

On the bright side, at least we can render trees now!
Inspiring
January 6, 2016
I am an architect/graphic designer. For anyone who works with patterns and plans/rendering/visualizations of urban environments/building/landscape ...The ability to rotate pattern overlays just seems forgotten. It would be an enormous improvement of my workflow. PLEASE add this option Adobe, I'm am losing my admiration for you guys if I see how long it takes to add this?!