How To Make Redbubble Water Bottle Design Seamless

It's simple logic - artwork looks better when it doesn't have a big nasty seam running up the middle of it. Unfortunately, the Redbubble uploader guidelines can cause this on several products, including water bottles. Today, I'll give you a tutorial on how to make your designs on Redbubble water bottles look totally seamless, using a template I've made for you. Let's do it!

This page includes affiliate links to products and services I love. I'll get some cash if you click through and buy something. No pressure, only buy if you love it too!

Note: While this method will make your artworks look seamless on your Redbubble store, I cannot guarantee that it will look 100% seamless when purchased. I don't know how well Redbubble translate artworks from digital file to print for this product. The only way to be sure would be to order one of their water bottles that looks seamless and evaluate it in person, which I have yet to do. 

1. Pick Your Artwork

I'm going to fix up a design I've done called 'Memphis Cats'. This design looks pretty good on several products, but on Redbubble's water bottles, it's got an ugly seam running up the back.

Front of Memphis Cats water bottle

Back of Memphis Cats water bottle

So, let's fix this artwork to make it beautifully seamless.

2. Get My Template

Extensive back-and-forth between Redbubble's uploader and Photoshop have resulted in me creating a good seamless template for water bottles. Download it as PNG by saving the image, or as PSD by clicking the file below.

redbubble-waterbottle-template-by-jessica-amber.psd
File Size:	7505 kb
File Type:	psd

Download File

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This file is 2x larger than Redbubble's recommended image size for water bottles.
Recommended: 3160 x 2180px
Template: 6320 x 4360px

I did this for two reasons.
1. Hopefully further reduce seam issues
2. Able to put larger artworks on the template
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​As long as the file you use is in the same image ratio, it'll scale to fit the item just fine.

Here's how the template looks in Redbubble's uploader:

Uploader Template

In Redbubble's uploader, they usually have guidelines overlaid on your image. They can show things like bleed area, or where different items take their texture from. 
For water bottles, we just see arrows in the corners. That SHOULD mean that the whole image should appear on the bottle. But as we'll soon see, that's not true.

Uploader Preview

Here's the proof. Barely any of the area I marked as red is showing on this preview. That's why it's important to use my template as a guide, not Redbubble's guidelines.

Product Images in the Redbubble Store

The published version of the water bottle has no red bleed showing! If you place your design only on the yellow area, that is what will show on your store.

On the back of the water bottle, there is a very faint red line. I will show you how to make that seam completely disappear in the following steps - trust me!

3. Editing Your Artwork

Open up a copy of my template, as well as your artwork, in your photo editing software (I'm gonna use Photoshop CC 2019). My artwork is already a seamless square tile, 8500 x 8500px, but you don't have to exactly match those dimensions.

Since the shape of the template is more like a rectangle, I'm going to make my artwork a rectangle too.
A. Making the canvas wider. Go to menu bar Image > Canvas Size, and set width to 200%, and the anchor to centre left
B. Select your artwork and go to menu bar Layer > New > Layer Via Copy
C. Move the duplicate to the right half of the canvas. Then select all and go to menu bar Image > Flatten.

Now that we have a seamless rectangle, let's copy it and put it in our template.

My image is much bigger than the yellow rectangle, so I'm going to menu Edit > Free Transform, and scale it down so the left and right edges are perfectly aligned with the sides of the yellow rectangle.
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Two other things you can do to make this step easier:
1. Turn on Snapping to layer edges. Do that by going to menu View > Snap To > Layers.
2. Lock the aspect ratio, so you art won't look stretched. There's a little chain symbol that'll appear unter the menu bar when you're transforming your artwork. Make sure that is selected.

Warning! When Transforming, you can choose the Interpolation, which is the method used to generate new pixels when scaling art bigger or smaller. You can see this at the end of the Transform bar. Selecting the right interpolation method is very important!
​
If you're making art smaller, use Bicubic or Bicubic Sharper.
If making art bigger, use Bicubic Smoother.
​If scaling pixel art, use Nearest Neighbour to preserve hard edges.

Now we'll make the artwork cover those exposed parts of the yellow rectangle.
​A. Duplicate the artwork 2 times, and move one copy to line up on the top edge, and the other to line up on the bottom edge. (Oh, and you can disable that guidelines folder).
B. Next, select all 3 artwork layers, and go to menu bar Layer > Merge Layers

Now we'll make sure there's no seam on the artwork.
A. Unlink your artwork from the yellow rectangle by Alt + Click on the gap between the two layers in the Layers menu.
B. Use the Single Column Marquee tool in the toolbar (right-click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool if you can't see it), and select the single column of pixels on the left side of your artwork.

Go to menu Layer > New > Layer Via Copy. That one column of pixels will be copied on a new layer. Now go to menu Edit > Free Transform. Stretch the layer to meet with the left edge of the canvas, using Nearest Neighbour interpolation.
If the stretched layer looks transparent, just duplicate the layer until it looks opaque.

Do the same to the right side of the artwork.

And that's it! Save the image as a PNG or JPG, and upload it to Redbubble.

Results.

Here's how my Memphis Cats design looked when uploading (keep in mind that clearly the scale of my pattern has changed compared to how it started).

Uploader Template

Uploader Preview

Store Images

Front of redesigned Memphis Cats water bottle

Back of redesigned Memphis Cats water bottle - completely seamless!

I'm very happy with how this artwork turned out. The design on the water bottle looks perfectly seamless, which I believe makes the whole product look more professional, better quality, and hopefully, more appealing to potential buyers. (If you're one of those people, please check out Memphis Cats (Affiliate Link).

If you use this tutorial and want to give feedback, leave a comment below. Also let me know if there's any other Redbubble tutorials you'd like to see. I'm always eager to help this community make the best quality products possible, as it makes the platform look more legit and attracts more customers, which is good for all of us!

✌ Peace, ❤ Love and ☀ Sunshine,
Jessica