So, last time I've taught you how to make your own seamless pattern swatches, and then, you realize as you open a new file, that Adobe Illustrator doesn't automatically save your pattern swatches! Oh no!
Or, you've downloaded one of my free pattern but now you don't know how to load them to your Illustrator!
Worry not! In this post, I'll be teaching you how to save your swatches, export them, and load them to Illustrator!
Saving Your Pattern Swatch
So, you've made your pattern, you're super proud of yourself, it looks amazing and you can't wait to use it on all your designs! The only problem is, what do you save it as? How do you save it?
The answer to that, is you save it as usual!
Remember that it's important to save your master files, saving the file with uncut edges are important if you ever want to edit your pattern on a later date!
Save a version of your pattern like this! whether as an AI file, or EPS file, whatever works best for you! If you want to, you can also save a version with clean edges, by cropping everything outside of your artboard :
Start with duplicating your box to the top of your elements
Now, you select the elements and the top box, and you go to Window > Path Finder > Crop
Now you have the clean version of your pattern! I'd recommend saving both the clean and uncut file!
Now that you've saved your pattern, it's time to:
Export Your Pattern Swatch
When you're finished with your pattern and it's in your swatch panel, your Swatch panel should look something like this
I would recommend removing every other swatches, so that it only displays your patterns (with the exception of none and registration, because you can't remove those), now that your Swatch panel looks like this, it's time to save them!
Click the three bar ≡ at the top right corner, and then select Save Swatch Library as AI, this will save everything that is currently on your Swatch panel, which is why I recommended deleting everything else, because the default swatches will still be there when you open a new file!
When you click Save Swatch Library as AI, a save as option box will appear
The folder you're automatically directed to is the default folder where AI will take swatches from, you can save your swatch here, or wherever you like, just make sure to remember where you save them!
Now that you have your swatch saved as AI Swatch file, it's time to:
Load Your Pattern Swatch
When you open a new file, you'll notice that the pattern swatch you've worked hard on is not in you swatch panel, how do you make them appear?
In your Swatch panel, click the Swatch Libraries Menu on the bottom left, it's the menu that looks like a stack of books
A dropdown menu will appear, and here you can see all the default swatch libraries that AI have. To load your swatch, simply click on Other Library...
Now, you just need to locate your swatch file, and click Open
Ta-dah! You can now use your pattern! When you click on your pattern, it will automatically adds itself on your main Swatch panel, so you can close the little swatch panel if you want to
And there you go! You can now save, export and load your patterns!
In the next tutorial, I'll be teaching you how to use the pattern you've made in Photoshop!
I hope you find this tutorial useful! For any question or difficulties you have, don't be afraid to ask them in the comments below! :)