Icon Tutorial #3 (finally in English *yay*)

[_hoshi]

Someone requested a tutorial for an icon of mine some time ago, so...

...we'll be going from this:
to this:

(now in English, too! OMFGZ! :P )

Made with Photoshop 7, basic knowledge required, although I went a little more into detail every now and then. :P



At first, I cropped down the picture to...:



I sharpened it once, picked the blur tool (fuzzy round brush, opacity around 40%) and smoothed out Evi's skin. If you go for a special look, you can sharpen especially the eyes and lips carefully (!) with a very small, hard round brush, opacity around 20% (these are at least the settings I prefer, but never stop experimenting! ;) ).
Now we've got what I will call our actual "base" in this tutorial:



Duplicate the base once, set it to "Screen", 50% opacity, 100% fill. Now press Ctrl + Shift + U to desaturate this layer:



Duplicate the base once again, move it to the top of your layers palette, set it to "Soft Light", 60% opacity, 100% fill.



Now the most (in-)famous layer of them all ;) add a layer filled with a very dark blue - in my example #01010A - set it to "Exclusion", 100% opacity, 100% fill.


->

Add this gradient (by crumblingwalls), set it to "Lighten", 44% opacity, 100% fill.


->

A new gradient (again by crumblingwalls), set to "Soft Light", 49% opacity, 100% fill:


->

I erased the down right corner (and noticed only later on that this doesn't make a difference and has almost no effect on my picture, but feel free to do it anyway if part of the gradient disturbs you! ;) ):



Now take this light texture by sheld0n:



Flip it horizontally, press Ctrl+C (to copy the image) OR Ctrl+X (to cut it), go to the the image with Evi and paste it with Ctrl+V as a new layer. Now set this layer to "Screen", 100% opacity, 100% fill:



I moved the whole layer with the texture a little to the right and erased especially the parts covering evi's face (doing that, I always played around with different brush sizes, forms and opacities). To get a real seamless transition from texture to picture, you can smooth the texture's edges with the blur tool:


->

Now comes the real fun part! ;)
Pick the Elliptical Marquee Tool (for those of you who don't know:
), and then, while pressing Shift (the result will be a perfectly round circle!), select the part of the texture that covers evi's neck:



Press Ctrl+X (remember, cutting the image?), then Ctrl+V (pasting it). The selected circle has now been pasted onto a new layer. Set this layer again to "Screen", 100% opacity, 100% fill and move it a little to the right:



Then I duplicated the base, moved on top of all the other layers, set it to "Soft Light", 60% opacity, 100% fill and erased a part of it covering evi's face so it didn't look too dark:



All that is left to do now is adding two lines of tiny text (I used the font "Decker" in #3D1B2F) and a capital L (font: "Garglenutz", color: #3D1B2F, size: 18 pt), et voilà, we're done:



I hope this tutorial worked for you (I'd love to see your results and - if you changed anything - what you did with this tut! :) ).
As always: if anything's not explained properly, just go ahead and ask. I'm also thankful for any correction!

Have fun!

P.S.: I know I know I know and admit that I have a crush on those two above mentioned gradients by crumblingwalls, but I simply love the effect they give to an image and the coloring they can do... plus, whilst playing around with them, you can get very different effects... so please excuse me and my frenetic use of these gradients! ;) ♥