Soft and glowing effect using gradients
Program(s)+version: Photoshop CS4 (for Mac)
Involves: Blending modes, gradients, curves, brightness/contrast, selective colouring, vibrance
Translatable: Partly.
Steps: 12
Difficulty: Medium, because I'm going to assume you already know your way around most of your programme.
Both ohgollygeedamn and likealight asked me about this colouring at the Ask the Maker Meme 2.0, so here it is!
With Photoshop CS4, we'll be doing this:
-->
&
1. I started with this cap, which I duplicated once and set to screen at 62% to lighten up the image quickly. I duplicated the base again and dragged it to the top. I set this layer to soft light at 41% to add some contrast. After this, I duplicated the screen layer and played around with the opacity until I liked the balance. In this case, the second screen layer ended up at 34%.
Step 1 is what I still consider 'preparing my base.' I think that most of my icon making process has to do with reaching a right balance between light and dark and softness and sharpness. During my entire process, I keep going back to my base, which in my case means that my layer palette usually includes lots of layers that are copy+merged from the ones below it. I keep creating new bases, as it were.
2. So these layers were copied and merged into my new base. On top of that, I created a new gradient fill layer in black and white (Layer > New Fill Layer > Gradient), set to soft light. Gradient layers quickly add any colour combination you want to your icon. If you then play with the blending modes, you get a multitude of effects to choose from.
My favourite is the soft light effect, because it adds the colours in a way that gives contrast to the icon - particularly when it comes to quickly adding light in a way that might work perfectly.
This gradient is absolutely nothing special: it's just the standard black and white preset and even the angle is straight-forward: 90 degrees. When I use gradients, I sometimes play around for ages until I have the exact angle. Sometimes, however, it looks good straight away. This was one of those times.
I did, however, end up slightly masking out a part over the right side of Amy's head near the top, because the gradients were lighting up her skin and hair too much there. (If you don't know about masking, I recommend this great tutorial.) I imagine I did this after I did step 3, because that's what happens when you duplicate your layers: proportions can get distorted and you either have to lower the opacity of the layer in its entirety, or you have to mask out parts (slightly) that are bothering you.
3. So step 3 was duplicating those gradient layers. I like duplicating my layers to see if the effect intensifies and becomes prettier or starts ruining the icon. The first duplicated layer was set to 47% opacity and the second duplicated layer didn't make it past 4%. This is what I mean by going back and forth between layers: it probably started out at a higher opacity, but got tuned down once I started focusing on colour and vibrancy.
4. Because I wanted to pack a bit more punch in terms of contrast, I used a curves layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves>) to light up the entire image just a little in the RGB section. See a screencap of how minimal the change is here. In itself it seems hardly noticeable, but in the process of making this icon, I must have, at some point, felt it necessary.
5. If this next step seems contradictory to the previous one, that's because it is. Kind of. I never said I was logical! ;)
On top of this curves layer, I created a new Brightness/Contrast layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast) where I dropped the Brightness to -12 while upping the contrast to 19.
If you wanted to know how I icon, this is one way. I use several methods to work on the contrast and light in my icons. I tend to try out all the options I know until I'm satisfied with the result.
6. But now, finally, for the colouring part. This was done with selective colouring, mostly. The first selective colour layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Selective Colour), which is set to an opacity of 78%, has nothing altered except for some tweaks in the Neutrals to give Amy's light skin a softer, yellowy glowy feel:
Yellows: +21
I hesitated between going for the combination yellow+red or yellow+magenta for a long time, so earlier versions of the icon have Amy with red lips rather than the pink/magenta hue they have in the icon I ended up posting.
7. When it's specific colours I want to bring out, I tend to use a new selective colour layer for each colour. I'm not sure if that is an efficient process, but it works for me, so the second selective colour layer only has a tweak in the Reds and Magentas section:
Reds:
Yellow: -47
Magentas:
Magenta: +17
8. As you can see, the icon has lost some of it's yellow hues, which makes sense, because we've decreased the yellow in the Reds of this image, but needs to be remedied nonetheless. By far the easiest way of doing that is by using a Vibrance layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Vibrance). Some people call this cheating. Personally, I find I need to watch out with Vibrance because the increase of yellow often disturbs the colour balance I've created in my icon. (Vibrance is almost always my last step.)
The Vibrance layer has an upped vibrancy of 100 and is set to 100% as well, so it's pretty straight up. But it works quite well here.
This is also the part where I guess the masking work of steps 2 and 3 happened. I can imagine myself duplicating the gradient layers at this point to see what they would do to my colouring, then playing with the opacity. This is also why that last duplicate gradient ended up at a 4% opacity. My layer palette looked like this.
9. Now for the part where I had most fun: cropping! This icon was made for a close crop challenges, and since I am always trying to improve on my close crops, I resized and moves this image around forever in a new canvas, ending up with all of these close crops:
But because I was kind of bummed that all that lush green couldn't make it into a close crop icon, I decided to do a zoomed out crop as well.
10. I resized the image to 100 pixels width and put it in a new 100x100 canvas. Behind it I put a new Colour Fill layer (Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color) and I used the eyedropper tool to select a colour from the lightest parts of the icon to serve as a background. I tend to use the eyedropper and then go a few shades lighter to make the colour as neutral as possible. (This icon has #fcf3c6 as its base background colour.)
11. However, I thought the background looked a little too neutral, so I used textures to give it some depth. I've used this texture by lemonpunch set to 100% normal blending mode, but pulled down to the lower left corner, like this. I duplicated that texture and set it to color burn at 100%. Then I took this texture by lemonpunch, set it to Overlay at 52% and masked most of it except for the upper right corner. I wanted the texture added to the yellow background, not to the image of Amy herself.
12. The finishing touch was a Vibrance layer on top of the layer containing Amy with the Vibrance upped to 54 and the Saturation to 2:
My layer palette of this icon looks like this.
Questions? Concerns? Thoughts? I'd love to hear them!
Involves: Blending modes, gradients, curves, brightness/contrast, selective colouring, vibrance
Translatable: Partly.
Steps: 12
Difficulty: Medium, because I'm going to assume you already know your way around most of your programme.
Both ohgollygeedamn and likealight asked me about this colouring at the Ask the Maker Meme 2.0, so here it is!
With Photoshop CS4, we'll be doing this:
-->
&
1. I started with this cap, which I duplicated once and set to screen at 62% to lighten up the image quickly. I duplicated the base again and dragged it to the top. I set this layer to soft light at 41% to add some contrast. After this, I duplicated the screen layer and played around with the opacity until I liked the balance. In this case, the second screen layer ended up at 34%.
Step 1 is what I still consider 'preparing my base.' I think that most of my icon making process has to do with reaching a right balance between light and dark and softness and sharpness. During my entire process, I keep going back to my base, which in my case means that my layer palette usually includes lots of layers that are copy+merged from the ones below it. I keep creating new bases, as it were.
2. So these layers were copied and merged into my new base. On top of that, I created a new gradient fill layer in black and white (Layer > New Fill Layer > Gradient), set to soft light. Gradient layers quickly add any colour combination you want to your icon. If you then play with the blending modes, you get a multitude of effects to choose from.
My favourite is the soft light effect, because it adds the colours in a way that gives contrast to the icon - particularly when it comes to quickly adding light in a way that might work perfectly.
This gradient is absolutely nothing special: it's just the standard black and white preset and even the angle is straight-forward: 90 degrees. When I use gradients, I sometimes play around for ages until I have the exact angle. Sometimes, however, it looks good straight away. This was one of those times.
I did, however, end up slightly masking out a part over the right side of Amy's head near the top, because the gradients were lighting up her skin and hair too much there. (If you don't know about masking, I recommend this great tutorial.) I imagine I did this after I did step 3, because that's what happens when you duplicate your layers: proportions can get distorted and you either have to lower the opacity of the layer in its entirety, or you have to mask out parts (slightly) that are bothering you.
3. So step 3 was duplicating those gradient layers. I like duplicating my layers to see if the effect intensifies and becomes prettier or starts ruining the icon. The first duplicated layer was set to 47% opacity and the second duplicated layer didn't make it past 4%. This is what I mean by going back and forth between layers: it probably started out at a higher opacity, but got tuned down once I started focusing on colour and vibrancy.
4. Because I wanted to pack a bit more punch in terms of contrast, I used a curves layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves>) to light up the entire image just a little in the RGB section. See a screencap of how minimal the change is here. In itself it seems hardly noticeable, but in the process of making this icon, I must have, at some point, felt it necessary.
5. If this next step seems contradictory to the previous one, that's because it is. Kind of. I never said I was logical! ;)
On top of this curves layer, I created a new Brightness/Contrast layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast) where I dropped the Brightness to -12 while upping the contrast to 19.
If you wanted to know how I icon, this is one way. I use several methods to work on the contrast and light in my icons. I tend to try out all the options I know until I'm satisfied with the result.
6. But now, finally, for the colouring part. This was done with selective colouring, mostly. The first selective colour layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Selective Colour), which is set to an opacity of 78%, has nothing altered except for some tweaks in the Neutrals to give Amy's light skin a softer, yellowy glowy feel:
Yellows: +21
I hesitated between going for the combination yellow+red or yellow+magenta for a long time, so earlier versions of the icon have Amy with red lips rather than the pink/magenta hue they have in the icon I ended up posting.
7. When it's specific colours I want to bring out, I tend to use a new selective colour layer for each colour. I'm not sure if that is an efficient process, but it works for me, so the second selective colour layer only has a tweak in the Reds and Magentas section:
Reds:
Yellow: -47
Magentas:
Magenta: +17
8. As you can see, the icon has lost some of it's yellow hues, which makes sense, because we've decreased the yellow in the Reds of this image, but needs to be remedied nonetheless. By far the easiest way of doing that is by using a Vibrance layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Vibrance). Some people call this cheating. Personally, I find I need to watch out with Vibrance because the increase of yellow often disturbs the colour balance I've created in my icon. (Vibrance is almost always my last step.)
The Vibrance layer has an upped vibrancy of 100 and is set to 100% as well, so it's pretty straight up. But it works quite well here.
This is also the part where I guess the masking work of steps 2 and 3 happened. I can imagine myself duplicating the gradient layers at this point to see what they would do to my colouring, then playing with the opacity. This is also why that last duplicate gradient ended up at a 4% opacity. My layer palette looked like this.
9. Now for the part where I had most fun: cropping! This icon was made for a close crop challenges, and since I am always trying to improve on my close crops, I resized and moves this image around forever in a new canvas, ending up with all of these close crops:
But because I was kind of bummed that all that lush green couldn't make it into a close crop icon, I decided to do a zoomed out crop as well.
10. I resized the image to 100 pixels width and put it in a new 100x100 canvas. Behind it I put a new Colour Fill layer (Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color) and I used the eyedropper tool to select a colour from the lightest parts of the icon to serve as a background. I tend to use the eyedropper and then go a few shades lighter to make the colour as neutral as possible. (This icon has #fcf3c6 as its base background colour.)
11. However, I thought the background looked a little too neutral, so I used textures to give it some depth. I've used this texture by lemonpunch set to 100% normal blending mode, but pulled down to the lower left corner, like this. I duplicated that texture and set it to color burn at 100%. Then I took this texture by lemonpunch, set it to Overlay at 52% and masked most of it except for the upper right corner. I wanted the texture added to the yellow background, not to the image of Amy herself.
12. The finishing touch was a Vibrance layer on top of the layer containing Amy with the Vibrance upped to 54 and the Saturation to 2:
My layer palette of this icon looks like this.
Questions? Concerns? Thoughts? I'd love to hear them!