How to scale Patterns in Illustrator
Ok, here we are. My first tutorial on Patterrific. I hope you understand everything and furthermore, that you can use it in your own designs! I want to start with a rather simple but extremely useful task: How to scale your patterns in Illustrator. Playing with this option can be very amazing and patterns you used to know can look completely different. Let’s start!
1. Draw a rectangle and fill it with a pattern of your choice. If you don’t have one.. well, just download your favorite on Patterrific.
2. Select the rectangle and go to Edit > Transform > Scale.
3. By default the “Objects” check box is selected. Deselect it and select “Patterns” instead. By choosing this the scaling you define in the above boxes will not apply to the size of the object, but will stretch the pattern fill. Here I applied a scaling of 300%. See the result of the pattern size?
4. Now I applied a scaling of 30% which makes the pattern size smaller than the original.
5. The final result. Wasn’t that difficult, was it? But believe me, you’re going to have a lot of fun with this option and in the end, you can apply the perfect pattern size to your designs.
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28 Responses to “How to scale Patterns in Illustrator”
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Welcome :-)
Mmm great tip, thank you!
Thanks, hoang, and a Happy New Year to you, too!
Thanks, Jairo! :-)
How simple it is! Thanks a lot!
Happy new year!
Great tutorial. You nailed it, without philosophical explanations.
Thumbs up from Brazil =)
Glad I could help, Shasta!
You just saved me hours! Thank you.
You’re welcome!
this is EXACTLY what i needed to know! wow great tip! :D
You’re welcome, Simon!
thanks a lot for your help, i really need know how do that!
Thanks again for the nice comment, Patanisca!
Wow, Sabine, this is terrific!! Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge with us!!
You’re welcome, San :)
Thanks you so much… :)
Thanks, Nick! Definately there will be more!
Very nice. Thanks for posting this! Hope to see more tutorials like this from you in the future!
This submit is great. Do you create for some other website
Nicole,
I don’t know how complicated your illustration is but did you select the correct item, the one with the pattern? If it still doesn’t work send me the file and I check it, ok?
All the best,
Sabine
When I am in the scale menu, it will not let me check the patterns box. Any ideas?
you can also do this on the fly…
hit the “s” key to start activate the scale tool and to scale on the fly
then hold the “~” key while dragging
hold “shift” too to constrain proportions
the “~” key makes it so you are only scaling the pattern.
Hi, is it vector or pixel pattern you are working with? Would be helpful if you sent me an email with a draft so I can imagine. Sabine
I would like to scale a pattern progressively as it follows a line. A particular challenge I’m after is to have a series of leaves branch off of a spiral, reducing by a predetermined amount as they go, the smallest being at the center.
Are you aware of any plugins that may allow for something like that?
Cool looking blog, could I ask you what template you are using and how much it costs? I have been using free ones but can’t locate one that I really like.
Thank you!
Please take part of this post, Timur. A backlink would be greatly appreciated.
Best wishes,
Sabine
Good work! Thank you very much!
I always wanted to write in my site something like that. Can I take part of your post to my site?
Of course, I will add backlink?
Regards, Timur Alhimenkov
Great tut, now I just want to start to create mine ;) Very useful! Thank you Sabine…