A QUICK TECHNIQUE TO MAKE STRIPE DESIGNS WITH PHOTOSHOP (and with other apps as well)

Some years ago I was teaching Photoshop to textile design students. During this time I came up with an incredibly simple way to use a photo as a basis for a stripe design. It would be interesting to know, how many of you have already figured this out besides yours truly…

The benefit with this technique is that you can easily apply the colours of a photo in to a graphic design.

This only takes a few steps. Start with opening the image you want to convert in to a stripe motif. Then use the marquee tool to select an area of the image that is 1 pixel wide and as many pixels high as the image itself. (Use the rectangular marquee tool settings in the toolbar). Then select free transform, and stretch the selection to the width of the image. Voila, you have stripes.

This stripe design has millions of colours, so it is usable as it is in a digital environment or as a digital print on fabric. If you want to reduce the amount of colours, then use for instance Posterize or Indexed colour mode to simplify the image. Keep in mind that despite these two options make visually similar effects, technically they are two different types of functions.

Left: Full colour version

Right: Colour reduced version

Most image editors have corresponding functions to Photoshop, so you can apply this technique with other apps as well.

Have fun designing!