Once a woodgrain or texture has been scanned in, a very typical next step would be to put the artwork in repeat. There are a variety of repeating methods available to you, depending on the type of repeat you need. This article focuses on creating an end to end repeat, but please refer to the repeated articles if you wish to create a plank layout.
- Open the file you want to put into repeat and drag a crop box over a single repeat of the design. Try to be as accurate as possible.
Tip: If you know the actual repeat size, double click the Crop Tool and enter the measurements. Then simply drag the whole crop box to the best position.
- With the Crop Tool selected, and whilst holding down the control key, click in the design. This will open a contextual menu, from which you need to select Crop To New Document.
- The cropped area will open into a new untitled document. Put this new document into repeat using the Repeat Window (View Menu > Repeat). We recommend using a 2 x 2 repeat whilst editing repeat joins. Remember to apply a repeat drop if needed, and tick Frame First Repeat if you are finding it hard to identify the edges of the repeat. It can be turned off at any time if the frame interferes with your editing.
Tip: If you find the repeat frame distracting as you work, you can apply guides to either side of the repeat join, making it easy to identify the areas you need to edit. It is very easy to do this:
- Hold down ^ (control key) on the keyboard and click on the rulers
- Select New Guide from the contextual menu
- In the options which open, set 'Guide Type' to Both Directions, and 'Relativie' to Sides of repeat join
- Select the Carbon Copy Tool from the Tools Palette and change the Source popup menu in the settings window to Crop Box.
- Click back into the original design and whilst holding down the option key, click anywhere on the design to define the source of the carbon copy. It does not matter where you click as long as it is within the original design. The name of the original design will now appear in the settings window for the Carbon Copy Tool.
- Click back in the new untitled document and use the Carbon Copy Tool to fix any areas within the design that do not join correctly on the repeat edges.
Tip: To aid the fixing process, view your new and original files side by side on the screen so you can see the cursor position on both. The source location (shown with the cross cursor on the original document) will be mapped to your new document using the crop box area as its initial guide. This allows you to copy from the area outside the source crop box and enables you to fix the design more effectively.
- To help with the blending of the repeat edges, use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move the source cross by exactly one repeat in the direction of the arrow pressed. For example, when working on the top to bottom repeat join, press the up or down arrow keys once and the source cross will offset by the vertical repeat distance so that you can copy from the other edge of the original design. The left and right arrow keys can be used in the same way to fix the sides.
- Once you are happy with the whole repeat, discard the original file and save the new one with an appropriate name.
Note: We recommend saving your work regularly if you do not have Auto Save activated on the document.