How To: Turn a Plaid Shirt into a Seamless Plaid Pattern

Easter is coming up and I've been working on some clothing for the sim kids, and with Easter comes a lot of colorful plaid tops for boys. While making some of these tops, I came up with an easy solution on how to take a photo of a plaid shirt and turn it into a seamless pattern. I used Photoshop CS5 for this tutorial, but as long as your program has a 'Marquee' Selection Tool, you can use this technique. So let's begin:

Step 1: Find a photo of plaid shirt you want to make into a pattern. Best choice of photo will have the pattern repeated at least twice horizontally and vertically so you can choose where the repetition starts and ends. If you don't have an image, you can use this one. Locate an area where the pattern repeats and use your marquee selection tool to select that area. Copy and Paste your selection into a new document.


Step 2: Using the 'Single Column Marquee Tool' select one column of your pattern by clicking on the image and placing the tool in the center of a column. Use CTRL + T combo on your keyboard to go into transform selection mode. Drag the left side of the tool left and the full width of that column, then do the same for the right side. Click the check mark when done to confirm changes. Do this for every column of your pattern.


Step 3: Switch to the 'Single Row Marquee Tool' (found in the same menu as the column tool) and repeat the sames steps from step 2 to fix your rows. Once you've done that, your pattern should now be finished. I hope you found this tutorial useful and easy to follow.