Copy Photoshop patterns to Affinity Photo Tutorial Beginner's Guide

By Andrew Buckle, Video Tutorial Creator / Designer

Updated : 2021

1. Display Photoshop patterns panel via edit / fill command

2. Hover over required pattern to find size

3. Create new document with that file size

4. Fill with pattern

5. Save pattern file as PNG or TIFF etc

How to copy / export a Photoshop pattern to another application tutorial such as to Affinity Photo and PSP. The key thing about exporting or copying a Photoshop pattern to another application is that the pattern format is supported in that application. The best format to use is probably TIFF or PNG or PSD for maximum support of the pattern. You can find the size of the pattern tile in Photoshop by hovering over the pattern in the Photoshop patterns panel. You can then create a document and then fill that with the pattern. The pattern can then be manipulated with Photoshop tools such as adjustments before any copy or export into another application. There are a number of commands to save files from Photoshop and I generally still use the save as command. Once you have generated the Photoshop pattern PNG etc file then you can copy the pattern file to the PSP (PaintShop Pro patterns folder) or use the Affinity Photo gradient tool / bitmap fill and use the Photoshop patterns as a new Affinity Photo pattern etc

PAT format and Photoshop patterns

They are in PAT format and PAT format cannot be read by that many apps. So to use them in other apps, simply copy or convert them to a format that can be read by Affinity Designer / PSP / Photo-paint etc.

1. Create any size document

2. go to the Photoshop toolbox

3. select the stamp tool

4. patterns preset's panel

5. hover over the item you want to convert (sadly this cannot be done by an action etc) and see the size of the tile - if a 1000 x 1000

6. create a document at that size

7. edit menu

8. fill

9. patten

Pre-work on Photoshop patterns

1. Select pattern layer

2. Go to layer menu

3. New adjustment layer

4. Hue / saturation

5. Go to properties and change hue etc

You can copy them or export them as is but you can also add adjustment layers such as hue and saturation or invert etc as they will not damage the seamless tile's seams. It does mean you can generate a near infinite selection of artworks from the same set and still have them as wonderful seamless tiles

Format for the Photoshop patterns copy

Well, the best formats are (personally) PNG or TIFF or PSD etc. PNG is generally available in most apps now and is a really easy format to save in 24bit etc but this does depend on the apps you want to use - Affinity Designer supports PNG so that is a great start

Commands to save the file

There are a number of options in Adobe ® Photoshop ® such as

1. Save as

2. Save for web

3. Generate

4. Copy into the CC libraries for use in Adobe Illustrator

PSP and using the Photoshop patterns

1. Select PNG file

2. Copy

3. Go to the PaintShop Pro folder 'patterns'

4. Paste PNG file

Copy the PNG file to the patterns folder of Corel PaintShop Pro / PSP and then they will be accessible via the material's panel in the X9 X8 etc versions. You can set the location of the PSP file locations/ folders for various resources via the preferences

Affinity Designer and patterns

1. Layer menu in Affinity Photo

2. New fill layer

3. Go to type and set to 'bitmap'

4. Select a file such as PNG file

You can access the Photoshop patterns PNG files via the gradient tool and bitmap option etc and within that, you can then rotate and re-size. The same for Affinity Photo. Would love to see additional features such as color settings etc but you can always combine the fill layers with additional effects such as adjustment layers to re-color the artwork as well as live filter layers in Affinity Photo to add all kinds of variations to the copied designs.