Adobe Photoshop Textile Designer Extension (Beta)
I am really enjoying experimenting with the Beat version of the Adobe Photoshop Textile Designer extension - probably best to watch some videos first so you can dive straight in with experimentations: https://www.adobe.com/uk/products/textiledesigner.html#x
I really prefer Illustrator to design my creations, but if I want to design a series of patterns quickly, still being able to keep my colours and layers separated and more...then I will use this Photoshop extension in the future.
A mentioned above I still prefer to use Illustrator for my best work - maybe Adobe could create exactly the same extension for Illustrator - I know there is the Pattern Maker already, but using exactly the same interface would then be so seamless when going from one title to another.