How to fill an area with a pattern or texture

Filling an area with a pattern is done in Paint by Zaweba either with Edit > Fill (Shift+Backspace) set to Pattern, or with a pattern fill layer from Layer > New Fill Layer. Edit > Fill puts the pattern straight into the pixels of a selection, while the fill layer stays editable, so you can change the pattern, scale or angle at any time. To use your own texture, select it and choose Define Pattern.

Which one you pick depends on whether you'll want to change your mind. For a quick background on a one-off graphic, Fill is fine. For a design that a client may want in a different texture tomorrow, the fill layer saves you redoing the work.

Using Edit > Fill

Make a selection first, or leave nothing selected to fill the whole layer. Press Shift+Backspace to open Fill. The contents can be the foreground or background colour, a chosen colour, a pattern, black, 50 percent grey or white, and there are scripted patterns as well: brick, cross weave, random, spiral and symmetry. Those scripted ones build the pattern for you, which is handy for a quick brick wall or a woven texture.

The dialog also has a blend mode, opacity and preserve transparency. Preserve transparency is the one to know: with it on, the pattern only lands where the layer already has pixels, so you can fill a lettering layer or a cut-out object with texture without the pattern spreading into the empty space around it.

Making your own pattern

Open a photo or drawing of the texture you want, such as fabric, wood or paper, and select a square of it. Choose Define Pattern. Paint shows a 3 x 3 preview of the tile repeated, and a half-tile offset view, which shifts the tile so its edges meet in the middle. That is where any seam shows up: a hard line or a sudden change of brightness across the centre means the tile won't repeat cleanly.

If you see a seam, fix it on the source with the clone or healing tools while looking at the offset view, then define it again. A tile with even lighting works best, so it's worth flattening out any shadow across the original texture first. Your patterns go into the Patterns library, ready for Fill, fill layers and other tools.

There's a related command beside it, Define Brush from Selection, which turns the selection into a brush tip instead. Use that when you want to paint the texture in strokes rather than tile it.

Pattern fill layers

Layer > New Fill Layer and Pattern adds a layer that covers the artboard with your chosen pattern, with scale and angle. To limit it to one area, give the layer a mask, or make a selection before adding it. Double-click the layer thumbnail to switch the pattern or change the scale later.

Fill layers work with blend modes like any other layer. A paper texture set to Multiply over an illustration gives it a printed feel, and a canvas texture at low opacity in Overlay makes a digital painting look less flat.

Getting a natural result

Big textures repeated at small scale look obviously tiled, so scale the pattern up until the repeat isn't easy to spot. Rotating it a few degrees can hide a grid of repeats too. For organic surfaces, paint a little variation over the top on a separate layer, a few darker patches here and there, so the eye doesn't catch the repetition.

Paint by Zaweba is a free, offline editor, and your patterns stay on your own computer with no account involved.