Tutorial: Converting Patterns for Easier to follow Lines: If you are already a photoshop Guru, then you can skip the steps below and just do this: 1. Open the pattern. 2. Use the magic want to select the black areas. 3. Use the fill tool to fill that selection with something light 4. Keeping the previous selection, change foreground color to black and on a new layer use stroke with desired width to create the saw lines. For those not comfortable in Photoshop, use the following. 1. Open Photoshop

2. We want to make sure Photoshop has the right stuff showing, select “windows” dropdown from the menu, and then make sure you have the same selections.

3. If you have all the correct tools showing your setup should look something like the following, I have the important elements circled in red and labeled:

4. Open Image you want to edit (click file open), the navigate to the file to open

5. To make sure the image settings are correct, we need to make sure the “mode” is set right. From the menu, select Image, then mode, then RGB (CMYK is ok too).

6. Select the color you want for your background. Double click the foreground color as indicated in the screenshot below. You should then be able to select the color of your choice.

7. Then Select Color (I should have selected more to the left for a lighter shade)

8. Select Magic Wand Tool (as a shortcut, you can hit the “w” key and the wand will be selected)

9. Click on Black space in windows with pattern. If you have done this right, the black will have moving lines around it, indicating that it is selected.

10. Now select fill tool (as a shortcut, you can hit the “g” key and the fill tool will be selected)

11. Make sure “Contiguous” is NOT selected, then click in the black area on the image

12. If you have done everything correctly so far, it should look like:

13. Next select New Layer in the layers pane. If the layers pane isn’t showing press F7

14. If that is done correctly, you layers pane should now have a new layer in it and it should already be selected:

15. Almost there. From the menu at the top, select edit, then stroke

16. The following menu should pop up for stroke. You might want to experiment with width as that will control the width of your line. You can see the color is currently pink like the background, we want that black, so click on that box and it will let you select black.

17. The color selection will pop up, click in the black area as shown, then click ok

18. Click Ok on the Stroke menu

19. Press Ctrl-D or from the menu chose select, and chose “Deselect”

20. At this point you should have a finished pattern.

21. Go to “File-> Save As” to save this as a PSD which should be the default. This format will retain all your layers so that you will be able to come back in and tweak stuff.

You also have the option to save as pdf so that you can upload your patterns back to the forum or send to a friend. When they print from this, it should retain the correct scale so that it prints for them exactly the same size as for you.

You can also use the “save for web” option to save as jpg.