The Create & Repeat module enables you to design, edit and repeat your artwork in one continuous workflow. With a wide range of tools, brushes, filters and vector options you can build up your artwork in real time repeat. Multiple repeating features enable you to step small motives up, repeat painted artwork and add various different mirrors or drops.

To download a copy of this lesson plan click here

Creating a new design from scratch

Before we create a new design, let's have a look at the different ways you can set up your page in AVA.

• Create a new file by going to File > New > Document, give it any size you wish and select 8 bit Spot as mode. Make sure that the horizontal and vertical resolution are the same to avoid distortion.
• Use (command key) B to open your Repeat Window. In there you can set a 2x2 Repeat and also frame your first repeat.
  
•  Double click on your brushes to open the Brushes Library. Select any brush you would like and draw in your first repeat. You can see that your brush strokes automatically repeat even if you draw over the repeat join. Have a play with the different drops to see how they can give you different effects.
• To change the colour of your layer, hold down the ⌥ (option key) key and click on the colour chip in your layer palette. Tick Printer in your Multiview Picker to limit your colourspace to your printer. Colouring within this colourspace will give you much more accurate colour results when printing.
  
• Open in View > Repeat Window your Repeat window. This is a floating window in which you can add mirror options under Advanced Controls.
  
• Add another layer by clicking on the 8bit Layer Button in the Layer Palette and change its colour.
• On your new layer, you can now add more brush strokes and continue to build up your design. You can download a wide range of different brushes in your cog menu in your brushes window.
  

A mirror doesn't work for all printing processes, so if you have used one, we now want to crop our design that is currently in a 2x2 repeat to a single repeat.

With any of the layers selected, use (command key) A to select the whole document and select your crop tool in your tools palette.

Hold down the ^ (control key) and click inside the selection. This will open the contextual menu of your crop tool. Choose Set from Selection.

You will notice that the selection frame around your design has changed to a solid line. With the ^ (control key) held down click again inside your design. In the opening up window, choose Crop One Repeat to crop your design to a single repeat.

In addition to the brushes, you can also experiment with different patterns in Window > Patterns. These patterns can be used to fill areas or you can draw with them when using a brush or other editing tools.

• Further options for editing can be found in the Edit Menu, such as Flipping, Rotating and Inverting. If you only want to affect the selected layer, hold down the ⌥ (option key) key at the same time. You will notice the menu name changing, i.e. Flip layer horizontally.

Once you are happy with your design, you can now create multiple colourways:

1. Click on the little plus in your layer palette to create a new colourway. This will automatically duplicate the active colourway.
   

You can now change the layer colours by clicking with the ⌥ (option key) on the colour chips in the layer palette.

Creating personalised brushes

Motifs, textures and small sketches can be made into brushes by copying them from a design and pasting them into the Brushes Library.

1. Create a new design or scan a piece of artwork. Select a small motif or patterned area using one of the selection tools (try not to make the area too large as lots of large brushes in your Brushes Library will affect the speed of the software)
   
2. Go to the Edit Menu > Copy. The information (including any tonal content) will be copied from the design.
3. Choose Paste from the Brushes Library action menu. The new brush shape will appear in the Brushes Library.
   
4. Select the new brush and start painting with it in your design.
   

Joining scans

If you want to scan in a piece of artwork that is too big for your scanner, there are several tools in AVA that can help you piece it back together. When scanning in your design, make sure that you have a generous overlap between the different areas. This will help you in the joining and editing process.

1. Open up the individual scans and place the windows side by side.
2. Select your Pin Tool in the Tools Palette and try to find an easily identifiable spot in the overlapping area between the designs. Place a Pin in the same place on both designs.
   
3. Activate your image layers in both files (click on the little pencil next to your image icon in the Layers Palette).
4. To fit the two scans in one file, you need to extend your design document. You can choose either of the open designs. Use the Crop Tool to drag a square big enough to fit both scans in.

   With your Crop Tool still selected, double click inside the box. This will "crop" your design bigger.
   

5. Go back to the other design and select the entire design by going to Edit > Select All. Use Edit > Copy to copy the content.

6. Return to the extended design document and go to Edit > Paste. You have now both designs in one file, pin on pin.
   

7. Use the Lasso Tool and with its minus mode selected draw an irregular line over the straight edges of your selection. This will remove areas of the pasted design and help disguise the join.

8. Zoom into the design and have a look if you are happy with the placement. Scanning processes can distort a design so even if you placed the pins perfectly, you might still need to adjust the position. To move an active selection you can use any selection tool in its standard mode. Alternatively, you can use the arrow keys of your keyboard to make fine adjustments.

Cleaning the background of scans

Before editing your original artwork and creating a repeating pattern you might need to clean the background of your scan.

There are several tips and tricks to clean the background of your artwork in AVA. We will be showing you one of the most popular here:

1. Open your design and activate the image layer
2. Go to your Layer Menu and open up the Filter Browser
3. The first time you open your Filter Browser, you will see an empty window. Click on the plus at the top to add a new filter set.
   
4. In the drop down menu, select the Black and White Filter. Adjust the percentage using the slider bar to add more or less coverage to the black mask layer sitting on top of your design.
   
5. Once you are happy, click on New layer. This will create a new mask layer in your layer palette.
6. You will notice that you will have some odd pixels here and there that will need cleaning. To do that, activate your mask layer and go back to the filter browser. Use the Despeckle Filter to further clean your mask.
   

    7. Fill or edit any missing areas of your mask with the Free Fill Tool or the Brush. Now we have a clean mask that we can use to delete the background. 

    8. Activate your mask layer and use (command key) A to select all. Go to Edit > Select > Snap to create a precise selection of your mask.

    9. As last steps, we need to go to Edit > Select > Inverse which will give us the selection of the background. Put the pencil on the image layer and hit the backspace key on your keyboard to delete the background of your original scan.

Working between Adobe™ and AVA

AVA and Adobe Photoshop™ are compatible with each other which means you can work easily between the two applications. We've gathered a few tips and tricks to ensure a smooth workflow.

Opening PSD files in AVA

You can open Adobe Photoshop™ files in AVA like any other file. Just go to File > Open and select your .psd file that you would like to work with.

A small pop up window will open to check which layers you would like to open. Certain layer types such as Adobe Photoshop™ groups and filters can't be read by AVA. If you would like to keep all layers in case you want to work on the same file again in Adobe Photoshop™, open all layers and don't tick "Ignore non AVA compatible layers".

AVA compatible layers have a small star, location and arrow symbol on the icon. This identifies them as Partial Image (for more info, have a look at partial image section in the handout). The "no entry" symbol indicates that AVA can't read the layer.

Building a design using a Adobe Photoshop™ file

• All AVA compatible Adobe Photoshop™ layers will open into AVA as Partial Images.
• Partial Images are an image layering feature which allows you to create designs by building them up gradually, layer by layer.
• Using the Origin Tool, you can now start working with the layers in repeat. If you get a notification that the layer is locked, hold down the ^ (control key) and click on the motif. A small window will open up. Choose Unlock Origin... to move your motives freely.
  

• You can rotate, resize and flip individual or several Partial Images simultaneously.
• Activate the layer to be edited in the Layers Palette. Hold down ⌥ (option key) and go to the Edit Menu. You will see that the Resize command changes to Resize Layer, indicating that only the active layer will be resized rather than the whole document.
• In the same way, you can also rotate, and flip layers horizontally and vertically. The menu commands change to Rotate Layer, Flip Layer Horizontal and Flip Layer Vertical respectively when ⌥ (option key) is held down.

Converting PSD™ layers into AVA Layers

In order to colour your design easily, you have to make sure that it consists of spot layers. There are two different ways to turn your .psd layers into AVA layers depending on whether your design was already separated in Adobe Photoshop™ or consists of .psd layers containing multiple colours each. Before you convert your layers you should be happy with your design as it is harder to move the individual elements after the conversion.

Converting non-separated PSD™ layers:

Add a new RGB image layer by clicking on the RGB layer icon in your Layer Palette and drag it to the top of your Layer Palette. Activate all the layers including the new RGB layer and go to Layer > Fuse.

You have now successfully merged all your layers together and you can start separating your design.

Converting separated PSD layers:

• Add a new 8 bit layer by clicking on the spot layer icon in your layer palette 
• Make only the layer that you would like to convert visible and put the pencil on your new 8 bit layer.
• Then go to Separate > Continous Tone. This will give you a black and white layer of the layer you had visible.
  
• Change your layer colour by pipetting the most intense colour of your .psd layer and dragging and dropping it on your new layer chip.
  
• You will notice that the colour is not as saturated as the original. To adjust this, open up your info window by going to Window > Info.
• Use the pipette and click on the most saturated tone of your new layer, you will see the tonal value displayed in your info window.
• In this example, we can see that the most intense area only shows 25% of tone. The most intense tone of your layer should be 100%. 
  
• Open your Gamma window through Edit > Gamma.
• Click on your Gamma curve to add a point and type into the left textbox the value you have pipetted (in this case 25) and in the right textbox 100.
  
• Click on Do Gamma to apply the change. Your layer will now have the same info as the original .psd layer which can be deleted. 
• Repeat these steps for all layers.

Repeating painted artwork

There are several different ways of repeating artwork in AVA. In this section of the lesson plan, we will cover Wrap around Repeat for repeating freestanding motives, Carbon Copy from Crop Box for repeating complex tonal artwork and Partial images for building up and balancing repeats.

Wrap around Repeat

• Open any painted artwork that has a clean background around it.
• Go to Window > Wrap Around Repeat and tick Wrap around Repeat on.
• Specify the number of repeats that you would like to see across and down. You can also set a drop if you would like.
• Drag the arrow on the blue rulers to adjust the distance between your motifs
  
• Once you are happy, click on Trim Design. This will give you your smallest possible repeat tile.

• You can now step up your repeat using the Repeat Popover (command key) b) to your desired size.
• If you would like to use this stepped up file as your single repeat, use (command key) A to select the entire design and select the Crop tool in your tools palette. Holding down the ^ (control key) click in your design and choose Set from Selection in the opening window. ^ (control key) click again on the design and choose Crop One Repeat.
  

Carbon copy from Crop Box

To nicely repeat your design, have a look if you can already see a rough repeat and drop in the design.

In this case we can see that the trio of white flowers is repeating at the top and bottom of the design which will define our repeat height. We can also tell that the two pink flowers are repeating, defining the repeat width and also showing us that the design was created with a half drop in mind. Once we know this, we are ready to repeat the design:

• Select your crop tool and drag a Crop Box on the design. This box should frame the one repeat that you have identified.
• ^ (control key) click within the crop box and select "Crop to new document".
  
• You can now place the original file and the newly cropped document next to each other so you can see both.
• Set the newly cropped file in a 2x2 repeat and add a half drop if the original design was created with one in mind.
• Select your Carbon Copy Tool and choose Crop Box as source.
  
• In your original design file, hold down the ⌥ (option key) and click anywhere inside the crop box. You will see that a red source cross has been added to the design.
  
• Activate the image layer in both files. 
• You can now start drawing along the repeat join in your new design to softly blend the edges. The red source cross will automatically mirror your movement and copy the information from the old design. For best results make sure to select a nice soft brush with transparency in your Brushes Library as the same parameters will be used for the Carbon Copy Tool.

• Using the arrow keys on your keyboard you can change the position of your source cross in relation to your crop box.
• In this example you can see that the source cross is coming to the top edge of the original and is copying the blank paper. In this case you would use the right arrow key on your keyboard to start copying information from the right repeat edge of the original design.
  

Partial images

Once you are happy with your repeat edges you might want to balance your new design by adding a couple more motives. Partial images are a perfect way to do this or to even create new designs from scratch.

• Use the lasso to draw around a motif that you would like to copy.
• Go to Layer > Pick up. This will add a new layer with your motif on it.
  
• With the Origin Tool you can move your motif and resize it.
• If you would like to flip your motif, go to the Edit Menu and hold down the ⌥ (option key) to see the task Flip Layer Horizontally/Vertically.
  
• To further edit your motif, click on the little arrow left of your partial image. This will open up the RGB channels of your image and its mask layer. The mask layer is automatically created when you create the Partial image and makes it possible that you can see the image underneath your Partial image.
• Make sure to only activate the mask layer. Select your eraser tool and remove any unwanted information from your motif.
  
• If you have removed too much information, you can select your brush to paint the information back in.
• Once you are happy, activate both the Partial image and the image and go to Layer > Fuse. You have now a standard image.