coloring - thirteen from house
Program(s): Photoshop.
Involves: Mostly adjustment layers.
Translatable: It could be translatable I suppose.
Steps: around 5-10 steps, I guess.
Difficulty: Easy to Medium.
From THIS to
001. Choose your screencap. Mine is of Thirteen (played by Olivia Wilde) from House, MD. The cap has been resized for this tutorial but is still fine to work with if you are following along. I got the cap from jukebox_grad, who I highly recommend for good quality House caps.
Yes. I know she has a funny expression on her face, which is why I chose the crop I did for this icon.
002. Resize. The screencap was 1280x720 originally. I resized it first to 500 px and then finally to 350 px. Why do I do it this way you ask? This is the best method I know of for eventually getting a good crop on an icon.
003. Study the cap. At this point in my process I decide if the cap is going to need touch ups. If it's blurry, I sharpen. If the colors are wonky, I use my Auto functions in PS and various adjustment layers to fix coloring and/or lighting issues. I'm not going to go into exact base prep because I have fourteen other tutorials that do that. As you can see, this cap is damn near perfect, so no base prep was required.
004. Cropping. At this point, I'm ready to crop. I copied my screencap and pasted it onto a transparent 100x100 square.
I always go with transparent when I make icons, just in case on a whim I decide to cut out the background and add textures or whatnot. I had more of a close crop in mind for this icon. Here's what I went with.
005. Color. I already made a colored icon of this cap (you can find it in my latest icon post), so to vary it up a little, I decided a black and white version would be cool as well. Variations on icons can be fun -- just don't get carried away. I'm still working on that, LOL. :D
I don't make good black and white icons, I'll admit that. They always end up too dark and contrasty. I wanted to avoid that with this icon, so I chose this tutorial by lucide_icons, because IMO it's the best one for brightly lit black and white icons. But. I didn't follow the tutorial exactly. Like I always do, I mix it up...omit steps, add extra steps... e.t.c. e.t.c. It's important to know that the tutorial I linked is for Photoshop, but like I mentioned above there are tons of ways to go black and white.
006. My coloring steps are outlined below.
» LAYER -- >DUPLICATE LAYER
» FILTER -- >OTHER -- >HIGH PASS / Set RADIUS to 60.0 - Set this layer's blend mode to Soft Light 100%. On a high quality image, this will improve the overall quality and contrast of your image. It's a very handy tool and one I will use often when I need that quick shot of contrast in an image.
» Select the base layer and go to IMAGE -- >ADJUSTMENTS -->AUTO LEVELS/AUTO CONTRAST/AUTO COLOR. You can use all three autos at the same time, or you can omit one. You can fade the effect of the Autos by immediately going to EDIT-->FADE after applying the effect. Sometimes that can help reduce the intensity if your image looks totally out of whack. Or you can skip this step altogether if you feel the effect isn't needed. In my case, I really liked how the result turned out so I kept all three autos applied and did not fade any of them. In most cases, the autos can improve overall contrast when making an icon black and white. This is what I have so far:
I know the skin on her cheek looks a little pixelly. We'll fix that in a moment.
» LAYER -- >FLATTEN IMAGE. Time to make it black and white. I felt a gradient map would work best for turning this image black and white. I've tried the other methods for black and white and just really prefer the gradient map method. In my opinion, gradient maps offer the most contrast and clarity than the other methods out there and it's what I stick with.
» First, check to make sure the background and foreground colors on your color palette are set to black and white.
Like this:
» LAYER -- >NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER -- >GRADIENT MAP. If the icon looks weird, just click 'reverse' and it should go back to normal.
» LAYER -- >NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER -- >BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST
Brightness: +25
Contrast: +20
Our image is now better lit with great contrast -- but not so intensely it hurts your eyes to look at it. The icon so far:
However, I wanted to up the brightness on the icon just a little bit more.
» LAYER -- >NEW FILL LAYER -- >SOLID COLOR. Fill with #FFFFFF (white), click OK and set the blend mode to Soft Light. Holy shit, that's bright. Lower the opacity of the layer to 30%. Thirteen is even better lit now, but it appears we've lost a little contrast. Easy fix.
» Grab your eraser (a soft eraser is preferable) and set it like so: Size - 14 / Opacity - 100% / Flow - 73%. See that little square filled with white next to the color fill layer you just made? That's a mask. You want to click on that. Here's an example of what I mean:
The black on the mask is where I used my eraser.
Make sure the foreground color on your swatch palette is set to white or your erasing won't work. Now carefully erase over Thirteen's hair -- see how it's getting darker? You're erasing where the white made it too bright and bringing the contrast back to the hair. I still wasn't happy with the contrast, so I decided to erase all of Thirteen's face from the icon. I left what little background there was in the icon alone as I wanted the brightness to remain there. The icon so far:
» LAYER -- >NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER -- >LEVELS
RGB
Input: 19, 100, 2,42
It's slight, but there's more contrast now.
At this point, our coloring is complete. Now, I wanted to make the icon softer. In the process here, the slight pixellation that was on Thirteen's cheek has gotten a little worse with all of the contrast we added. Time to fix that.
» CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E - this stamps all your layers. It's basically the lazy way to merge all your layers and duplicate, LOL. Plus, I can easily go back if I screw something up instead of hitting 'Undo' until my fingers cramp up.
» To fix that pixelly stuff on Thirteen's cheek I use my smudge brush set anywhere from 5-7 pixels with opacity on 6%, a nifty trick I learned from grrliz. Zoom in closely on Thirteen and smudge her cheek with the smudge brush using small circles. Don't get crazy with it, the effect is supposed to be subtle. Smudge Thirteen's neck as well. I lowered the opacity of the layer to 81% so the effect wasn't too intense. The result so far:
I wanted to add some softness to the icon. There's a really simple way to do that I've learned. I've loosely based it off the most recent tutorial that was posted by drankmywar a few days ago. You can find that tutorial here.
» LAYER -- >NEW LAYER. Grab your paintbrush -- I went with a medium-sized soft brush. Set the hardness of your brush anywhere from 40-50%. In my case I went with a 28 px brush with the hardness set to 45%. Opacity should be at 100% and flow at 50% with airbrush enabled. Make sure your're painting in white. Paint some random dots around Thirteen's hair.
» FILTER -- >BLUR -- >GAUSSIAN BLUR. Set RADIUS to whatever you feel looks good. I set it to 28.0. Set the layer's blend mode to Screen at 46% to take down the intensity of the blurring -- we don't want to obliterate Thirteen's face. I then went back down to my brightness/contrast layer and fiddled with the settings because I thought it was getting too contrasty and bright looking. The result so far:
» Last step. Finally. I know. Stamp your layers again. Add another Brightness/Contrast Adjustment layer.
This is something I do all the time when I'm just about finished with the icon -- adjusting brightness/contrast. I think I also went to selective coloring (in image -->adjusments) and fiddled with the blacks and neutrals, too. Go with whatever you feel looks best. For me, I wanted it less bright so I went with:
Brightness: -12
Contrast: -12
And that's it. You have a nice crisp black and white icon. You can find an icon similiar to this one in my latest batch of icons. Any questions feel free to ask.
Credits:
-- lucide_icons, for the helpful black and white tut.
-- drankmywar @defaultsettings
-- jukebox_grad for the House caps.
Involves: Mostly adjustment layers.
Translatable: It could be translatable I suppose.
Steps: around 5-10 steps, I guess.
Difficulty: Easy to Medium.
From THIS to
001. Choose your screencap. Mine is of Thirteen (played by Olivia Wilde) from House, MD. The cap has been resized for this tutorial but is still fine to work with if you are following along. I got the cap from jukebox_grad, who I highly recommend for good quality House caps.
Yes. I know she has a funny expression on her face, which is why I chose the crop I did for this icon.
002. Resize. The screencap was 1280x720 originally. I resized it first to 500 px and then finally to 350 px. Why do I do it this way you ask? This is the best method I know of for eventually getting a good crop on an icon.
003. Study the cap. At this point in my process I decide if the cap is going to need touch ups. If it's blurry, I sharpen. If the colors are wonky, I use my Auto functions in PS and various adjustment layers to fix coloring and/or lighting issues. I'm not going to go into exact base prep because I have fourteen other tutorials that do that. As you can see, this cap is damn near perfect, so no base prep was required.
004. Cropping. At this point, I'm ready to crop. I copied my screencap and pasted it onto a transparent 100x100 square.
I always go with transparent when I make icons, just in case on a whim I decide to cut out the background and add textures or whatnot. I had more of a close crop in mind for this icon. Here's what I went with.
005. Color. I already made a colored icon of this cap (you can find it in my latest icon post), so to vary it up a little, I decided a black and white version would be cool as well. Variations on icons can be fun -- just don't get carried away. I'm still working on that, LOL. :D
I don't make good black and white icons, I'll admit that. They always end up too dark and contrasty. I wanted to avoid that with this icon, so I chose this tutorial by lucide_icons, because IMO it's the best one for brightly lit black and white icons. But. I didn't follow the tutorial exactly. Like I always do, I mix it up...omit steps, add extra steps... e.t.c. e.t.c. It's important to know that the tutorial I linked is for Photoshop, but like I mentioned above there are tons of ways to go black and white.
006. My coloring steps are outlined below.
» LAYER -- >DUPLICATE LAYER
» FILTER -- >OTHER -- >HIGH PASS / Set RADIUS to 60.0 - Set this layer's blend mode to Soft Light 100%. On a high quality image, this will improve the overall quality and contrast of your image. It's a very handy tool and one I will use often when I need that quick shot of contrast in an image.
» Select the base layer and go to IMAGE -- >ADJUSTMENTS -->AUTO LEVELS/AUTO CONTRAST/AUTO COLOR. You can use all three autos at the same time, or you can omit one. You can fade the effect of the Autos by immediately going to EDIT-->FADE after applying the effect. Sometimes that can help reduce the intensity if your image looks totally out of whack. Or you can skip this step altogether if you feel the effect isn't needed. In my case, I really liked how the result turned out so I kept all three autos applied and did not fade any of them. In most cases, the autos can improve overall contrast when making an icon black and white. This is what I have so far:
I know the skin on her cheek looks a little pixelly. We'll fix that in a moment.
» LAYER -- >FLATTEN IMAGE. Time to make it black and white. I felt a gradient map would work best for turning this image black and white. I've tried the other methods for black and white and just really prefer the gradient map method. In my opinion, gradient maps offer the most contrast and clarity than the other methods out there and it's what I stick with.
» First, check to make sure the background and foreground colors on your color palette are set to black and white.
Like this:
» LAYER -- >NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER -- >GRADIENT MAP. If the icon looks weird, just click 'reverse' and it should go back to normal.
» LAYER -- >NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER -- >BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST
Brightness: +25
Contrast: +20
Our image is now better lit with great contrast -- but not so intensely it hurts your eyes to look at it. The icon so far:
However, I wanted to up the brightness on the icon just a little bit more.
» LAYER -- >NEW FILL LAYER -- >SOLID COLOR. Fill with #FFFFFF (white), click OK and set the blend mode to Soft Light. Holy shit, that's bright. Lower the opacity of the layer to 30%. Thirteen is even better lit now, but it appears we've lost a little contrast. Easy fix.
» Grab your eraser (a soft eraser is preferable) and set it like so: Size - 14 / Opacity - 100% / Flow - 73%. See that little square filled with white next to the color fill layer you just made? That's a mask. You want to click on that. Here's an example of what I mean:
The black on the mask is where I used my eraser.
Make sure the foreground color on your swatch palette is set to white or your erasing won't work. Now carefully erase over Thirteen's hair -- see how it's getting darker? You're erasing where the white made it too bright and bringing the contrast back to the hair. I still wasn't happy with the contrast, so I decided to erase all of Thirteen's face from the icon. I left what little background there was in the icon alone as I wanted the brightness to remain there. The icon so far:
» LAYER -- >NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER -- >LEVELS
RGB
Input: 19, 100, 2,42
It's slight, but there's more contrast now.
At this point, our coloring is complete. Now, I wanted to make the icon softer. In the process here, the slight pixellation that was on Thirteen's cheek has gotten a little worse with all of the contrast we added. Time to fix that.
» CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E - this stamps all your layers. It's basically the lazy way to merge all your layers and duplicate, LOL. Plus, I can easily go back if I screw something up instead of hitting 'Undo' until my fingers cramp up.
» To fix that pixelly stuff on Thirteen's cheek I use my smudge brush set anywhere from 5-7 pixels with opacity on 6%, a nifty trick I learned from grrliz. Zoom in closely on Thirteen and smudge her cheek with the smudge brush using small circles. Don't get crazy with it, the effect is supposed to be subtle. Smudge Thirteen's neck as well. I lowered the opacity of the layer to 81% so the effect wasn't too intense. The result so far:
I wanted to add some softness to the icon. There's a really simple way to do that I've learned. I've loosely based it off the most recent tutorial that was posted by drankmywar a few days ago. You can find that tutorial here.
» LAYER -- >NEW LAYER. Grab your paintbrush -- I went with a medium-sized soft brush. Set the hardness of your brush anywhere from 40-50%. In my case I went with a 28 px brush with the hardness set to 45%. Opacity should be at 100% and flow at 50% with airbrush enabled. Make sure your're painting in white. Paint some random dots around Thirteen's hair.
» FILTER -- >BLUR -- >GAUSSIAN BLUR. Set RADIUS to whatever you feel looks good. I set it to 28.0. Set the layer's blend mode to Screen at 46% to take down the intensity of the blurring -- we don't want to obliterate Thirteen's face. I then went back down to my brightness/contrast layer and fiddled with the settings because I thought it was getting too contrasty and bright looking. The result so far:
» Last step. Finally. I know. Stamp your layers again. Add another Brightness/Contrast Adjustment layer.
This is something I do all the time when I'm just about finished with the icon -- adjusting brightness/contrast. I think I also went to selective coloring (in image -->adjusments) and fiddled with the blacks and neutrals, too. Go with whatever you feel looks best. For me, I wanted it less bright so I went with:
Brightness: -12
Contrast: -12
And that's it. You have a nice crisp black and white icon. You can find an icon similiar to this one in my latest batch of icons. Any questions feel free to ask.
Credits:
-- lucide_icons, for the helpful black and white tut.
-- drankmywar @defaultsettings
-- jukebox_grad for the House caps.