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Learn how to make a heart pattern in Photoshop. In this guide I will walk you step by step on how to create a heart in Photoshop and how to repeat it to make a seamless pattern.

How to Make a Heart in Photoshop

Open Photoshop and click to create a new document. For this tutorial I use the dimensions 400 x 400 px with resolution set to 300 dpi, RGB color mode and transparent background.

From the tools panel select the custom shape tool. The keyboard shortcut to access the shape tool is U and then to navigate between the various shape option click Shift + U.

You can also select shapes by pulling up the shapes panel. Go to Window > Shapes. By default Photoshop comes with some custom shapes. This shapes folder is called Legacy shapes and more. If for some reason you do not see this folder already loaded into Photoshop then click on the three line icon in the upper right hand corner of the shapes panel to access the shapes menu. From the drop down click on Legacy Shapes and More and this will load the default shapes into Photoshop.

Click into this folder and then scroll down until you see All Legacy Default Shapes. From here click into the shapes folder and you will find the heart shape.

You can click and drag out your heart or click on the canvas and it will bring up the dialogue box. For this example I used a width of 150 px. There is a check box for preserve proportions. In this case when you enter a width value the height value will size accordingly to the proportions of the shape. Click on Ok and your heart shape will appear on your canvas.

Center the heart in the middle of the canvas. Using the move tool you can drag it to the center or I like to use the align tools to move it precisely to the center. To use the align tool access the marquee tool (M – keyboard) and hit cmd/ctrl + A to select all. From here switch over the the move tool (V – keyboard) and in the top panel you will see the align options and align it to the center vertically and horizontally.

Note: I have created an action to easily center an object in my Photoshop Actions for Pattern Design.

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Make a Seamless Heart Pattern

To create a heart pattern make a duplicate by right clicking on your original heart layer and selecting duplicate layer (cmd/ctrl + J – keyboard). Right click on layer and select convert to smart object. To create the heart pattern we will be working with a filter and before using any filter you should convert your layer to a smart object.

Next click on Filter > Other > Offset.

In the dialogue box enter 200 px for both vertical and horizontal offset. You determine this number by using half the size of your original canvas size.

In the undefined areas make sure wrap around is selected because we want it to wrap around on the 4 corners to create seamless repeating heart pattern.

To save your pattern click Edit > Define pattern.

This will save your pattern in Photoshop. To see all your patterns you can open the patterns panel. Click on Window > Patterns.

To test out your pattern open a new document the size of digital scrapbook paper 3600 x 3600 px, 300 dpi with transparent background.

In the bottom of the layers panel click to add a pattern fill layer and select your newly created heart pattern.

To change the color of your pattern create a color fill layer above your pattern fill layer and right click to create a clipping mask. This will cause your pattern to take on the color. Create an additional color fill layer below the pattern layer to change your background color.

To export and save your digital paper click on File > Save a Copy. Give your file a name and change file type to JPG.

Looking for more Pattern Design Tutorials?