Hi to everyone. Just wanted to say up front that I am a casual user of Illustrator and I've been teaching myself as I go along. I am in awe of the things that you can to with this software so I hope my question is not to naive. I have gotten pobably 90 percent of my skills from watching you tube and just recently I discovered an instructional video by Odysseyroc that was phenomenal in making fish scales patterns. The instructions were easy to follow but I have a question about applying gradient color to the pattern. I tried applying several muted colors to the fish scale pattern but when I added the gradient to the pattern and tried to save it for future use I discovered that you could save the colored pattern but when I tried to use it in a different document the pattern came out all blockie. You can of course create a gradient in a shape and then add the actual pattern to the shape but it looks so much like a kid's coloring book I see no point in continuing. I hope someone who knows about patterns can help me figure out a way to make colors a part of the pattern so that you can use them in any shape that requires a fish scale pattern. Thanks in advance.
How did you add the pattern to another document (I'm assuming it was added to another Illustrator document, not some other program). If you copied and pasted it into another program, it may have gotten rasterized in the process. Or it may be a display issue.
You can import a pattern from one Illustrator file to another using the Swatches panel menu > Open Swatch Library > Other Library. Or in the Illustrator file that you created the pattern in, you could fill any shape with that pattern, copy the shape and paste it into another Illustrator file and the pattern will automatically be added to the Swatches panel.
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