I don’t know when they started this, but I’m loving the Symmetry Options for Painting! Remember when we used to do snowflakes and mandalas with “brute force?” There’s still something to be said for brute force, and there’s less to remember with that method. But this takes your PS fun to a whole new level.
For this tutorial, you can use any of the Painting Tools — Brushes or Pencil (which actually acts more like a marker now).
File > New. White Background. Choose your Brush Tool. (If you can’t find it right away, type b and it will be found for you!)
Now have a look at the Options Bar, rich with choices. Over to the far right, you’ll see a butterfly. Click that to see your Symmetry Options.
Several of these look like they’d be useful for something, but for now, choose Mandala. When it asks for your segment count, say 6.
Now choose your favorite color and paint your canvas! Go a little mad! Choose different colors.
You can even click Hide Symmetry at the bottom of this Options panel and it seems even more like magic.
For my images below, I used 5, 10, and 7 segment symmetry. Have fun!
