Need some help with some complicated design elements for seamless pattern swatches

[stellas45198152]

Hi there:

I have a design question regarding Illustrator and creating seamless pattern swatches that I am having some troubles with ...

I have some design elements that are a little complex, because they have certain aspects to them such as gradient meshes, certain artistic brush strokes that were "designed inside" some objects, and also things like Gaussian Blurs. My problem is that when I have several design elements in my seamless pattern of which I want to make a pattern swatch, everything lags severely and this happens when I am using the seamless pattern swatch as well.

Is there a way around this (using some kind of technique to make them more readable for Illustrator when using them to create and use pattern swatches)? It currently takes forever to move these elements around on my artboard and create items using the swatch. However, I don't want to lose any artistic quality of the design elements.

I'd appreciate any advice to help me out with this.

Thanks so much!

[Mylenium]

I don't think so. The answer is pretty much there in your own post - using features like pixel-based filters and gradients essentially cause AI to produce raster data and it simply is not good at handling that. Any of your elements could gobble up tons of memory at a reasonable DPI setting and internally you could be producing pixel data that even PS might struggle with, meaning a super large pixel image. You could try to create a template with flattened versions of your artwork and then manually rebuild your pattern using the originals on top, but that is probably as good as it gets.

Mylenium

[stellas45198152]

I guess then the best thing to do in Illustrator for pattern swatch designs is to create simple design elements. I guess I have no real choice. At one point, I will learn how to design things in PS.

Thank you for your answer!

[Kurt Gold]

Which version of Illustrator are you using?

Also, it may help if you can share at least one or two sample Illustrator files (.ai), so one may have a look at them.

[stellas45198152 · Accepted solution]

Hi there:

Thanks for responding. 

I am using the latest Adobe Illustrator since I have a subscription with Creative Cloud. I am up to date with the latest version as well (via the updates).

I don't really feel comfortable in this instance in uploading any of the design elements, since I am going to be using them for my merchandise and I would prefer not to show them publicly. However, I did even more searching on Google yesterday and I found a technique that seems to be working quite well for me. I am using Path --> Simplify in Adobe Illustrator. It seems to be vastly reducing the processing speed for Illustrator. I had a flower that was a bit complex that I used this technique for each of its petals, then I regrouped them all and used the flowers for my seamless pattern swatches. The quality of both the original flower and the simplified version is quite comparable ... I can't really tell the two apart. 

So I am quite happy with this technique.

Again, thanks for your reply. 🙂

[harrietr45057098]

I have had the same problem as I am a designer that uses dense design and multiple brushes in my patterns. I had to upgrade to a MacBook Pro 16G (from an Imac with 8G) to help with this issue and found that with more memory it lessens the lag. One thing I can suggest is switching to outline mode when you are working. I know this is not ideal but it really helps with the lag and it also makes it easier to drag the design into the swatches panel to make the initial swatch. I was having a heck of a time getting the swatch into the panel from the artboard. One last thing, don't expand your brushes on the artboard. This really makes it slower. I know that it seems like you should do that - but don't. Hope that helps!

BTW: I looked everywhere for help on this issue and could never find anyone to troubleshoot with. Good Luck!