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Known Participant
July 29, 2024
Question

Pattern fills do not appear to match the pattern thumbnails

  • July 29, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 673 views

Our patterns, using both the fill and stamp tools, do not appear to match the thumbnail selected.  We suspect the thumbnail pattern is being created in very, very small tiles that do not visually emulate the pattern.  We see no way of enlarging the pattern tiles to fill our layer similar to the thumbnail.  Interestingly, the ROCK patterns fill the backdrop layer fine.  We're not sure if this is due to an abnormality or poor settings on our part.  We are using Photoshop Elements 2023 on a Windows 11 computer.  Thank you for any help.  Please see our illustration below for an example:

 

 

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3 replies

Jeff Arola
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 30, 2024

You could also try a Pattern Fill Layer (Layer>New Fill Layer>Pattern) where one can adjust the Scale of the pattern.

 

Known Participant
August 5, 2024

Thank you, Jeff, this looks very promising in some instances.  However, we did note that even at 1000%, we could not get the single pattern tile to fill an 8.5 x 11-inch canvas area.  Also noted some lack of sharpness, perhaps due to the low-resolution or small pattern tile.  Do you know of any utility for converting a tile to a higher resolution image that could be expanded to fill a larger canvas?

Greg_S.
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 30, 2024

Yes, it is possible.  If you hover over the pattern with the Stamp Pattern tool, you will see the dimensions of each pattern tile.  Most are very small e.g. 64x64 or 128x128. pixels.

 

 

So, if you want to fill a page with a single tile, you would have to create a document with the same dimension.  Obviously that would be a very small and low resolution image.

 

 

If you want to have a larger image, you can use the Free Transform tool (Ctrl+T) to expand the layer.   But you will have to zoom out very wide to fill the canvas area.   In the following example, I have expanded the tiled layer on a 6x4 image @300 ppi.  It will need to be expanded further to get a single tile image.

 

And here are some keyboard shortcuts that you may find useful:

Ctrl+1=100% Zoom

Ctrl+0=Fit on Screen.  (This will zoom out the canvas to display the entire layer, as shown in the above screenshot on the left.)

Known Participant
August 5, 2024

Greg, thank you so much for the instructions including illustrations!  I was able to get a single tile on a 64 x 64 (300 dpi) canvas, expanded the canvas to 8.5 x 11 inches, then resized the single tile to fill most the canvas.  The only problem seems to be the blurred final image, perhaps a product of enlarging a small tile of low resolution.  Nevertheless, I was able to use the SHARPNESS ADJUST tool to eliminate most of the blurriness for a reasonable facsimile.  Still wishing there were a tool for resizing the pattern to a large high-resolution image with the same seeming clarity of the small tile.  Thank you for your help.

Glenn 8675309
Legend
July 29, 2024

you are viewing at 33.33%  Zoom into 100% to see the pattern corrrectly. 

Known Participant
July 30, 2024

Thank you Glenn.  That is true, I had zoomed to fit the page to the screen.  As you said, the pattern is recognizable once we set the zoom to 100%.  Nevertheless, our expectation was not a tiled fill, but a single tile expanded to fit the fill area.  Is that even possible?  Thanks again.