How to Use Image Mixing to Create Unique Seamless Patterns

Welcome to Patterned AI! If you’re eager to explore exciting new ways to enhance your designs, you’ve come to the perfect place.

In this tutorial, we’ll dive into the Image Mixing feature – a powerful tool that allows you to take the artistic style from one image and apply it seamlessly to another. Whether you want to refine a design you’ve already created or experiment with transforming patterns for a truly custom look, Image Mixing makes it simple and fun. It’s the ultimate way to unlock endless creative possibilities and take your patterns to the next level!

The Image Mixing tool is a fantastic way to breathe new life into your existing patterns by applying the artistic style, colours, and feel of another image. This feature combines creative precision with room for playful experimentation, making it easy to fine-tune your designs while exploring exciting new possibilities. In this tutorial, we’ll guide you through the steps to use this tool and create a beautiful, seamless, and royalty-free pattern effortlessly.

First, let’s familiarize ourselves with the interface. Navigate to your Dashboard, then click the From Image tab. This will bring you to the Image Mixing tool, where you’ll see options to upload two images: one for the Outline reference and another for the Style reference.

• Outline reference: This image will determine the layout of the final pattern, including its elements, composition, and spatial arrangement. Use the Strength toggle to control how closely the final design adheres to the original outline.
• Style reference: This image will shape the overall mood, colours, and illustrative style of the final design. It gives your pattern its artistic identity.

For our example, we’ll use the botanical pattern we've created in our Introduction to Patterned AI tutorial as the Outline reference. For the Style reference, we’ll select an inspiring image with a hand-painted aesthetic and a rich, earthy colour palette.

With these two inputs, we’ll show you how to unlock the full potential of the Image Mixing tool and create a truly unique and visually stunning design. Let’s dive in!

For our first example, we’ll set the Outline Strength to 20% and the Style Strength to 100%. This configuration ensures the pattern retains the general placement of elements from the Outline reference but fully adopts the artistic style, colours, and textures of our reference image. The result is a simplified, less detailed version of the original design, beautifully transformed by the chosen style. Here’s what we created:

Now, let’s see how the result shifts when we reverse the settings – setting the Outline Strength to 100% and reducing the Style Strength to 20%. This adjustment keeps the original composition and layout intact while only lightly applying the style of the reference image. Here’s what we got:

Finally, let’s set both the Outline Strength and Style Strength to 50% for a balanced mix of both sources. This adjustment creates a harmonious blend of the original composition and the reference style. Here’s the result:

The Strength toggles give you the ability to fine-tune your pattern, tailoring it perfectly to your product and target audience. For even more customisation, you can use the text prompt feature to refine details like colour palettes or styles. However, keep in mind that for the text prompt to have a stronger influence, you’ll need to lower the strength of the references. For instance, if you want to adjust the colour palette, it’s best to set the Style Strength to below 50%, as the style reference primarily determines the final design’s colours.

Here’s an example where we set the Outline Strength to 100%, the Style Strength to 20%, and added the text prompt “pastel blue and light pink colour palette” Take a look at the result:

If you’ve read our tutorial on Image Variation, you might be wondering how these two tools differ and when to use each one. The Image Variation tool allows you to take a source image and experiment with a variety of preset styles. This makes it an excellent option when you want to explore different aesthetic possibilities and have more control over the final colour palette, especially when paired with text prompts.

On the other hand, the Image Mixing tool allows for precise customization by directly applying the exact style of your reference image to your chosen outline. This method is perfect for creating highly personalized patterns that blend the composition of one source with the artistic essence of another. It’s also an excellent way to explore fresh design possibilities by incorporating distinctive style references.

To highlight the difference, let’s recreate our last result using the Image Variation tool. We’ll use the same source image, set the Outline toggle to 100% and the Style toggle to 20%, and add the text Prompt “pastel blue and light pink colour palette”. For the style, we’ll select the Watercolour option. Here’s what we’ve created:

The generated pattern closely follows the source image but has a more diverse colour palette compared to the design produced by Image Mixing. By understanding the nuances between these tools, you can create a wider range of patterns with precision and flexibility, tailoring your designs to perfectly match your creative vision.

Another exciting feature of the Image Mixing tool is its ability to work with non-pattern images as references. The image you upload doesn’t have to be a seamless pattern – it can be any image you love. With this tool, you can either transform that image into a seamless pattern or use its unique aesthetic to influence the style and colour palette of your design. This opens up endless possibilities for creating custom patterns that are deeply personal or have a creative story to tell.

For our example, let’s take a sci-fi-inspired image we generated using MidJourney. In this first experiment, we’ll use it as the style reference for our familiar botanical pattern, setting the strength of both the Outline and Style references to 50%. Here’s what we created:

The resulting pattern beautifully captures the dreamy sunset hues and pastel tones from our sci-fi reference, blending them seamlessly with the botanical layout. Now, let’s try flipping the roles – using our botanical design as the style reference and the MidJourney image as the outline reference. This approach creates a strikingly surreal pattern, merging the otherworldly composition of the sci-fi image with the natural, delicate aesthetic of the botanical design. Here’s the result:

As you can see, this feature unlocks endless possibilities for crafting truly one-of-a-kind patterns. By combining the aesthetics of one image with the composition of another, you can create designs that are both unique and highly personalised, perfect for making a bold creative statement!

Congratulations on reaching the end of this tutorial! Today, we explored the powerful Image Mixing tool and learned how to combine the style and composition of different images to create seamless, custom patterns.

Image Mixing gives you the freedom to craft patterns that are truly one-of-a-kind and tailor-made for your projects. Whether you’re designing for home decor, packaging, or personal gifts, this tool is a fantastic way to bring your creative vision to life.

Now it’s your turn to dive in! Head to your dashboard, experiment with your favourite images, and see how far your imagination can take you. Happy creating!