Saving a Picture as a Pattern in Illustrator
- 1). Start your copy of Adobe Illustrator and click "File," then "Open" to select the picture that you want to save as a pattern.
- 2). Click on the picture so a blue rectangle appears around it. This indicates that the object is selected. Hold down the "Shift" key and drag the corners of the picture to resize without changing the aspect ratio. The size of the image for the pattern depends on what you want to do with it, so resize it until it suits your needs.
- 3). Click the rectangle tool (Shortcut-key "M") and click on the upper-left corner of the picture before dragging the cursor to the lower-right corner. This covers the picture with the rectangle for a so-called "bounding box."
- 4). Click "Object" from the menu bar and click "Arrange," "Send to back" (shortcut-key "Ctrl"+"Shift"+"[".)
- 5). Click the selection tool (shortcut-key "V") and drag it over your picture to select it. Click "Edit" from the menu bar and "Define Pattern."
- 6). Type in the name for your new pattern in the text entry box next to "Swatch Name" before clicking "Ok." Click "Window" and then "Swatches" and you will see that your picture has been saved as a pattern, which you can access from the swatches selection.
- 7). Click the "Swatches Library Menu" button at the bottom of the "Swatches" tab and click "Save Swatches" to save your pattern to an external file. You can then give this file to others so that they can use your pattern in their copy of Illustrator.
