Manual
Understanding the Interface
Document Modes
Seamless Studio has two primary document modes to pick from when creating a new document:
COLOURlovers Template
This mode constrains the pattern to 5 colors. This has a few advantages:
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Recoloring your pattern is super easy. In the "Colors" pane, five swatches will be listed. When you click on one, the color picker will pop up and allow you to change the color of the shapes with that swatch applied—all at once.
Upload your pattern to COLOURlovers.com. If you wish to share your pattern with COLOURlovers community, navigate to "File" → "Upload to COLOURlovers…" in the top menu bar.
Custom Colors
The Custom Colors mode allows your pattern to have an infinite number of colors—any shape can be any color. Note: When your pattern uses this mode, it cannot be uploaded to COLOURlovers.com.
Note: If you decide you want to change the document mode later on, navigate to "Edit" → "Canvas Settings…" in the top menu bar.
Layer Management
Under the layers section on the left side of the app are 8 icons for modifying the selected layer you're working with.
- Delete – Deletes the layer(s) selected from your canvas.
- Group – When you have multiple layers selected (hold the Shift key while clicking multiple layers with your mouse), this merges them into one layer.
- Clone – This creates a duplicate copy of any layer(s) you have selected.
- Flip Horizontally – This mirrors the layer horizontally... what was on the left will not be on the right.
- Flip Vertically – This mirrors the layer vertically... what was on the top will now be on the bottom.
- Move to Top – This will bring the selected layer(s) to the top of all layers and will show on top of all others.
- Move to Bottom – This will bring the selected layer(s) to the bottom of all layers and will be covered by layers above it.
- Save as Shape – This will save the selected layer(s) to the My Shapes area of the app for use later.
Custom Shapes
Importing
Seamless Studio allows you to import SVGs from other programs to use as shapes in your patterns. To import a shape, navigate to "File" → "Import Shape…" in the top menu bar. Once you select an SVG, it will appear in the "My Shapes" category under the Shapes tab.
When you exit Seamless, the shapes you have imported will not be removed—they will be there when you start the program again.
Note: Seamless Studio will override any colors existing in the SVG. All gradients and images will be removed and the entire contents of the SVG will be filled with a solid color.
Defining from Layers
Seamless Studio makes it easy to define custom shapes from layers in your project. First, select the layers you wish to make into a shape (by holding down the Option key on Macs, or the Ctrl key on Windows). Then, right-click on the layers in the Layers pane and find "Add to My Shapes".
Saving layers as shapes this way does not flatten them. When you go to use a shape defined this way, each individual layer will be inserted into the document (which you can then individually rotate, scale, recolor, etc as you would normally).
Deleting
The shapes listed in the "My Shapes" category in the Shapes pane can be removed. Simply right-click on the icon of shape you wish delete, and press the "Remove" button that appears.
