How to Remove White Lines from Patterns in Illustrator

Learn how to remove white lines from patterns in Adobe Illustrator. Fix this pesky Illustrator glitch with the click of a button when saving!

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I've been teaching myself how to use Adobe Illustrator for the past few years and every now and then I run across an issue that isn't very easy to figure out.

White lines in patterns are my personal nemesis. Mainly because the information on the internet was NOT solving my problems. I sat through an 11 minute video only to hear that it's not an issue at all.

Except that it is if you sell digital patterns. Or anything that needs to be printed. My white lines were showing up when saved as jpeg images, so yes, I would say that's more than a visual glitch on Illustrator.

Luckily, I've figured out how to fix them and I'm sharing that knowledge today.

I sell digital patterns in my Etsy shop and a customer recently contacted me and told me that there were white lines in the patterns.

I thought I had fixed them all, but I guess I neglected that particular pattern. It gave me the chance to screenshot the fixes as I worked.

How to Remove White Lines from Patterns in Illustrator

Here's my image, which has tiny white lines between the patterns. If you were to print it or use it in Photoshop, those lines would be visible.

The lines show where the pattern repeats, but in a seamless pattern, they should be invisible.

The Basic Fix

Make sure to click "Size tile to art" when making the pattern. (Unfortunately, this didn't fix my lines, but it's a good practice when making patterns.

The Magic Fix for Removing White Lines from Patterns

Anti-aliasing. This is the key phrase to know.

Turning it off in the general Illustrator panel will make Illustrator run faster because it's not reading as much data. But it also helps with the lines showing up.

This will fix the visual glitch. But what about the saving glitch?

In the export to jpeg panel, under Anti-Aliased, choose "Art Optimized (Supersampling)."

This is the magic button you need.

Other Tips for Making Seamless Patterns

While I was fixing the white lines in this pattern set, I noticed to my horror that my patterns were not 100% seamless. It's one of the 1st pattern sets I created and I guess I didn't fully understand how to create them back then.

So here's how I fixed them to make them seamless.

(This isn't a full tutorial on how to make patterns. That series of tutorial is coming soon.)

Pattern Sizes

Make the pattern size divisible by the size of your finished product.

For digital paper, I make the patterns 12" x 12". Each side of my image needs to be divisible by 12, not random sizes.

To fix this, I selected the pattern and the background and then altered the size, sticking as close to the size ratio as possible.

Then I had to remake the pattern and refill the 12 x 12 shape with my pattern.

Offset Sizes

Make sure the pattern offsets are divisible by the finished dimensions as well.

I had one pattern set to 1/5 offset, which isn't divisible, so the pattern was not seamless.

Setting it to 1/2 offset changed the design, but made it a seamless pattern.

You Might Also Like:

• How to Make Calendars in Illustrator
• Convert Procreate Drawing to Illustrator Files
• How to Make Repeating Patterns in Procreate

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