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Color in patterns
🧠 What you'll learn
- See how tilings and patterns change how colors behave.
- How to color: in the source image and while pattern-making.
- Recolor patterns in Repper with a range of color effects.
As we saw in the last chapter, a color is never seen by itself. It’s always in a context which affects it. Like in a color harmony, all colors interact with one another when we perceive them. In a pattern, the context gets repeated all over, between seamed and seamless edges alike, so we want it to work well from all angles—literally!
Let me start with good news: the way Repper works is very convenient when it comes to color. Since the colors in a source image usually already go well together, patterns made from that source tend to inherit that same quality. This works even across patterns, which helps make collections (more on that in the next module!). Though it's not a given. The tiling changes how much of each color you see and in what shapes, so you'll want to keep an eye on what happens to your colors during the tiling process. That's what the first half of this chapter is about, while in the second half we put that knowledge into practice.
Tiling changes how colors interaction
What do colors do to each other when they sit side by side? Watch this example, where one color swap changes the look of a whole Repper pattern.
An typical image or illustration tends to have many one-off color interactions across it, while a pattern typically has fewer interactions but repeated many times. It means it's even more important to get right which colors come through and in what proportion.
New color interactions
With seamless tilings, the mirroring means that colors will only touch colors they already touch in the source material (convenient!). Seamed tilings are a different story: they can put opposite edges of your selection next to each other, so colors that weren't neighbors before suddenly are. Sometimes that works great, other times it's unwanted. One more reason to check your seams, as we did in the harmony chapter.
In this example, you can see. how the blue and orange become neighbors in the seamed tiling on the right. These are complementary colors, so they create contrast and tension. That’s totally fine, if that’s the effect you’re after :)
Changes in color prominence
You can also see how tilings change the color presence of elements. In general, don’t worry too much about how things look in the source image or your current selection. Focus on the current tiling and what you see there, decide what you want to adjust, and then make changes to your selection.
Below is an example where the small blue element is a decorative dashed line in the left one, but becomes more prominent by being repeated twice in the other.
✏️ Exercise: The effect of colors on a pattern
Pick a source image with strong contrast (dark darks, light lights) and make a pattern from it. In the Effects tab, switch on Duotone and pick two colors you like. Now change just one of the two. Watch what happens to the other one: does it look warmer, cooler, duller, brighter than before? You didn't touch it, and yet it changed.
The weight profile of a palette
Patterns with many colors that all sit at roughly the same brightness and saturation can look lively up close, but turns into a brown blur from a distance if nothing leads. Becka Rahn put it well when we asked for her number one tip:
One tactic to avoid muddy colors and patterns, is to have distinct areas of color and contrast. This is especially true for patterns made from photographs (as opposed to illustrations), which are more likely to have a lot of detail.
Below you can see two patterns, both of which work fine close-up. But zoom out and one turns into a brown soup, while the other keeps distinct shapes and colors. When you desaturate the close-up pattern using the Color Adjustments effect, you can already spot the issue in close-up!
This isn’t the say the top patterns is bad. Close up, it looks interesting and intricate. But it’s important to keep in mind what will happen to a pattern and its colors at different scales.
👁️ Looking ahead: The effect of scale on printed patterns
In Repper you can view the pattern at any size you want, but once printed, its size will depend on how big it’s printed and how close or far people tend to view it. A keychain hanger is small but usually seen from close up, while a wallpaper is big but may be seen for many meters away.
We’ll take a closer look (heh!) at this in a later module about applying patterns.
The 60/30/10 rule
The harmony chapter had a recurring line: often one or more colors lead and others follow. There is a rule of thumb you can try, explained in the video below:
👁️ Looking back: Focal point and variety
The 10% can very well be the most prominent thing in the pattern, while the 60% may well be the least. Think of it in terms of the harmony chapter: the focal point can be a small element while the large background may be more subtle with some variety.
As Michel explains in the video, this is a useful concept, not a strict rule (even though it’s called a rule :-). Like color harmonies, there may well be other colors or many shades in the pattern. In that case, squint your eyes and see: does it feel like 60/30/10? And more importantly: does it feel balanced and do I like what I’m seeing?
✏️ Exercise: Proportion by selection
Take a colorful source image and make two patterns with the same tiling. In the first, place the selection so that one color clearly takes the lead. In the second, move it so another color does. Put them side by side. How is the focal color expressed in both? Try to put words to it. Which one do you prefer, and why?
Start at the source
Obviously, the source image you pick dictates what colors will end up in your pattern. Let's look here at picking source images, not in terms of shape or subject, but in terms of colors.
Before you look at the shapes in an image, ask what mood the palette brings. A photo of moss and bark will give you calm, earthy patterns no matter what tiling you use. When I'm hunting for source material, color is usually my first filter.
An image that's almost there but not quite, you can correct in whatever graphics tool you already know, before you load it into Repper. Shift a hue, mute a color, or push the contrast. In the resources chapter Tools for designing I already suggested some good free tools: Photopea for the edits, Adobe Color or Coolors if you want to build a palette to apply.
Pro tip: How to correct a source image later on
Here's a nifty trick that even many seasoned Repper user don't know... Let's say you've made a pattern in Repper that you really like, but you want to create a variation. Maybe because the original source image wasn't quite right or because you want to make a collection of the same pattern in different colors (colorways!). If you need more than the recoloring options in Repper, here's how to do that:
- Recolor the original source image in another graphics tool (make sure you don't change resolution or aspect ratio).
- With Repper open and showing the pattern you made with the original source image, upload the new image.
- You'll see that the newly uploaded image took on all the settings of your previous pattern, so you’ve effectively create the same pattern with the new source image!
This videos shows how easy it is to make such variations. At the end, you see that once you’ve uploaded both images, you can easily create the same pattern in variations from multiple source image in a few clicks!
✏️ Exercise: Same pattern, new source
- Take a pattern in Repper that you're happy with and of which you still have the source image on your device. (or upload a source image and create a new pattern)
- Open the source image’s file in any image editor you like. (or use the free Photopea if you don’t know which one to use)
- Change make color changes, like a hue shift, a single color swapped, whatever you fancy
- Upload it to Repper create a new colorway. Experiment by making more patterns with both color variations.
Recoloring inside Repper
You can also make small adjustments or stylistic color changes in Repper. The Effects tab has a bunch of options:
- Color adjustments: nudge the colors you have.
- Duotone: Create punchy graphics with this classic effect.
- Photo filters: Like Instagram filters, subtle but with big impact on mood.
- Black-and-white: To go monochrome.
- Gradient: Lots of funky options, try it out.
The duotone is especially useful if you want to reduce colors and give your pattern a clean stylistic look. It's not for every occasion, but surprisingly versatile. Here's how it works:
This is where the harmonies from the last chapter become an instant solution with the 3 options:
- Monotone: The monochromatic harmony, mixed in with black and/or white.
- Duotone: Two complementary colors gives you maximum contrast (or pick two closer for a calmer look)
- Tritone: With a triad gives you a vivid, balanced look.
And if you want a re-colored pattern to stay in the family of the source image, use the color picker to take your duotone colors straight from the source image. Here’s how to do that. And of course, you can always tweak the colors once picked.
💡 Tip: If your duotone is looking flat
Tone effects (whether mono, duo or tri) map the darks and lights of your pattern to the chosen colors. If the source is low on contrast, one of your two or three colors barely appears. The fix: switch on Color Adjustments and push contrast (and brightness, if needed) until all your colors come through. Saturation does nothing here, since the tone effect ignores it. The full trick is in Pro Tips for Repper Duotone.
For inspiration, here's a bit of a video on hand-drawing source images (more on that later) which turns into vivid patterns using inverted tritones:
👁️ Looking ahead: Colorways
Pattern designers rarely release one pattern in one palette. The same design in three or four color versions is called a set of colorways, and it's standard practice in textiles and wallpaper. Both moves in this chapter, the source swap and the tone effects, make colorways cheap to produce. We'll use them when we build collections in module [X].
Now go look
Time to bring the two chapters on color together in one exercise. An exercise that, in fact, is a fundamental part of the design process in Repper and something you'll be doing all the time to find new hidden gems in your source images:
✏️ Exercise: Designing with full focus on colors
As explained in the video, it’s a great practice to be very conscious of the colors. In fact, a good exercise is sometimes looking only at the colors and ignoring whether you like the design itself. Don’t worry about the end result, that’s not what this is about. It’s just about training your eye to reflect on and make decisions around color.
Practice is easiest with a source image with some clear block colors, rather than something all to detailed or low on color (variation). There are some great demo images in Repper that you can use, if needed:
And if the harmonies you find aren't the ones you want? Now you know two ways out: change the source or change the colors in Repper.
Wrapping up
That concludes these core principles of pattern design: tilings, rhythm, harmony and color. In the next module we look at the process: how to go from an idea to a pattern and onto whole collections, and what to do with them once you are.
🔑 Key Takeaway
The tiling decides how much of each color you see and in what shapes, so a palette that works in the source still needs checking in the pattern. The selection sets which color leads. And when the palette itself needs to change, do it at the source first, in Repper second.
🤔 Reflection exercise
Look at the last three patterns you made. Was the palette a choice, or did it simply come with the source? Would any of them gain from fewer colors, or from a different color taking the lead?