rosa amarela, voz de todo grito
A very Happy Birthday to the mighty crackers4jenn! Hope you have a wonderful day, dear. :)
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Because I'm feeling ignored by my flist [mea culpa though, Logan had no pants. Still.]: GO LOOK AT MY BSG ICONS! Humpf.
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I've got a question for the artists around.
We talk a lot about brushes and gradients and text effects and borders, but what I'd like to know is what you do before you get to that. This is probably much more pertinent to screencaps, as they usually need some preparing beforehand.
So. How do you prepare your screencaps before you start adding effects to it?
I pretty much go the same way with every cap, especially when I'm making icons:
After cropping/resizing:
- Sharpen the image. Fade sharpen to 85%.
- Duplicate this sharpened layer twice. Make both of them brighter --> 30-50% more bright.
- The first duplicate: make it really contrasted --> 50% more contrast. Set this layer to 'screen'.
- The second duplicate: either dessaturate it completely or fiddle with the saturation and make it 50%-70% less, so it gets almost black and white. Set it to 'soft light'.
- Between the screen and the soft light layer, create a new layer and fill it with some dark blue/green/gray-ish color [the one I use is #013460]. Set it to 'exclusion' [this layer takes out that annoying greenish tint most screencaps have]. Most of the times I have to fiddle with the opacity until the skin tones look human. And I erase the blue from the background if necessary.
- Then, above all layers: create a SELECTIVE COLOR adjustment layer [that's layer >> new adjustment layer >> selective color]. When you create it, a 'Selective Color Options' window shows up. Choose BLACKS and add some to it [I usually go with 15%-20%]. This makes for some wonderful contrast without making the icon too bright. You can leave the adjustment layer at 'normal' or you can change its blending mode to make the whole icon darker ['multiply'] or brigther ['soft light'].
Now I'm really curious about what you guys do to prep your images. Indulge me? :)
...
Because I'm feeling ignored by my flist [mea culpa though, Logan had no pants. Still.]: GO LOOK AT MY BSG ICONS! Humpf.
...
I've got a question for the artists around.
We talk a lot about brushes and gradients and text effects and borders, but what I'd like to know is what you do before you get to that. This is probably much more pertinent to screencaps, as they usually need some preparing beforehand.
So. How do you prepare your screencaps before you start adding effects to it?
I pretty much go the same way with every cap, especially when I'm making icons:
After cropping/resizing:
- Sharpen the image. Fade sharpen to 85%.
- Duplicate this sharpened layer twice. Make both of them brighter --> 30-50% more bright.
- The first duplicate: make it really contrasted --> 50% more contrast. Set this layer to 'screen'.
- The second duplicate: either dessaturate it completely or fiddle with the saturation and make it 50%-70% less, so it gets almost black and white. Set it to 'soft light'.
- Between the screen and the soft light layer, create a new layer and fill it with some dark blue/green/gray-ish color [the one I use is #013460]. Set it to 'exclusion' [this layer takes out that annoying greenish tint most screencaps have]. Most of the times I have to fiddle with the opacity until the skin tones look human. And I erase the blue from the background if necessary.
- Then, above all layers: create a SELECTIVE COLOR adjustment layer [that's layer >> new adjustment layer >> selective color]. When you create it, a 'Selective Color Options' window shows up. Choose BLACKS and add some to it [I usually go with 15%-20%]. This makes for some wonderful contrast without making the icon too bright. You can leave the adjustment layer at 'normal' or you can change its blending mode to make the whole icon darker ['multiply'] or brigther ['soft light'].
Now I'm really curious about what you guys do to prep your images. Indulge me? :)