A four leaf clover design in Photoshop
Quatrefoil shapes are everywhere: in art, architecture, heraldry, and even background designs of famous brands. They usually consist of 4 overlapping circles, but they also can be formed with a combination of many different geometric shapes like ovals, rectangles and squares. Today, you will learn how to make a simple quatrefoil pattern in Photoshop and how to use it to create a seamless background.
Open Photoshop and go to File > New to create a new document of 400 x 400 px.
Select the Ellipse Tool (U) and in the top bar, set the tool mode to ‘Shape’, the Fill to ‘none’ the Stroke to Black, the stroke width to 10pt and be sure to have the stroke type set to a continuos line.
Click once over the canvas and set the width and height of the ellipse to 230 px.
Place the recently created ellipse at the Top Center of the canvas.
Press Control+J on your keyboard to duplicate the ellipse layer, and place the new ellipse at the Bottom Center of the canvas.
Hold the Control key on your keyboard and select both ellipse layers. Press Control+E on your keyboard to merge the 2 layers.
Rename the layer to ‘Merged’ and again press Control+J on your keyboard to duplicate the current layer.
With the ‘Merged Copy’ layer active, press Control+T on your keyboard, and in the top bar set the rotation angle to 90º. Press Enter on your keyboard to commit the changes.
Click on the Eye icon next to the Background layer name to hide the background.
Press Control+A on your keyboard in order to select all and then go to Edit > Define Pattern. Name the new pattern as ‘Quatrefoil’ and click OK.
Close the document and go to File > New to create a new 3000 x 2000 px document.
Go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color. Set the name of this layer to ‘Background Color’ and click OK. In the Color Picker window, set the color to #b8bab5 and click OK.
Go to Layer > New > Layer. Name this layer as ‘Fibers 1’ and click OK.
Go to Edit > Fill. Under Contents select ‘Black’ and click OK.
Go to Filter > Render > Fibers. Set the Variance and Strength to 40 and click OK.
In the layers panel, set the mode to Darken and the Opacity to 15%.
Press Control+J to duplicate the Fibers 1 layer, and rename the layer to ‘Fibers 2’.
Go to Filter > Render > Fibers. Set the Variance to 20 and the Strength to 25 and click OK.
In the layers panel, set the mode of the ‘Fibers 2’ layer to Multiply and bring down the Opacity to 10%.
Go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Pattern. Set the layer name to ‘Quatrefoil Pattern’ and click OK. In the Pattern Fill window, select the recently created Quatrefoil pattern, set the Scale to 25% and click OK.
Go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color. Set the name of this new layer to ‘Pattern Color’ and click OK. In the Color Picker window, set the color to #d5d7d2 and click OK.
With the ‘Pattern Color’ layer active, go to Layer > Create Clipping Mask.
Select the ‘Fibers 2’ layer, press Control+J on your keyboard to duplicate it and the go to Layer > Arrange > Bring to Front.
With the ‘Fibers 2 copy’ layer active, go to Layer > Create Clipping Mask.
Now that we have our background created, you can easily change the colors using the ‘Background Color’ and ‘Pattern Color’ layers to make any combination you like. Simply double-click on the layer thumbnail and pick any color you like.
If you want to add some texture to our pattern instead of having a solid color on it, simply place the texture in front of the ‘Pattern Color’ layer inside the Clipping Mask we did.
Comments