You can download the PatternMaker plug-in for InDesign free from TeacupSoftware.com! The plug-in (both Mac OS and Windows) lets you create an infinite number of fully-customizable patterns based on three core pattern templates: Crosses, Lines, and Scallops.
Here’s how it works: After you download and install the plug-in, you can select any InDesign frame (even text converted to outlines), select Window > PatternMaker, choose a pattern, and click the Apply Pattern button. The palette lets you customize the pattern in all kinds of ways (each pattern has its own set of variables you can tweak).
Note that the PatternMaker plug-in can assign colors to the patterns.
You can give your InDesign documents to anyone and they can view and print them even without the plug-in. This works because it simply creates a very small EPS file and embeds it into the InDesign document. Embedding images such as this is no big deal because it only adds about 2 or 3 K to the file size and prints or exports to PDF with no trouble.
For example, here are three variations on a single pattern (Crosses) created with the plug-in. Note that as the pattern angle and size changes you get radically different effects.
Editor’s note: I wrote the Postscript code behind these patterns, so I have a financial bias here. For each free plug-in you download, I get exactly zero dollars! ;) On the other hand, I am hoping that you’ll like the patterns so much that you’ll want to upgrade to the $49 per year PatternPack, which gives you many more (even cooler) patterns.
Or perhaps you have a need for bar codes, which are just sort of another kind of customizable pattern, right? Teacup also BarcodeMaker ($99 per year), which can make more than 50 barcodes, including ISBN, EAN, PostNet, and UPC. These plug-ins are even scriptable, so you could create a custom barcode workflow for an automated system.
Updated Jan. 5, 2023
This article was last modified on January 5, 2023
This article was first published on July 24, 2006
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