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*nervous* Right, so I've never posted a tutorial here before...I hope everyone likes it! I'd link to the one in my graphics journal but it's friends-locked so it'll just be here :] Enjoy!
Hokay, so here goes my first ever picture icon tutorial. It will be long. It will be hard. It will be confusing. There will be lots of pictures. Feel free to ask questions and/or show me what you've made with it!
It's written using Photoshop and Image Ready CS2, though I'm fairly certain that it will translate to earlier versions. I know that the text part won't translate to PSP, sorry guys.
So, we're making this icon of Anahi from the group RBD (which is AWESOME and you should check out), which was originally requested by slayheavy on GJ so that means you can't use it.
To start off, we need to make the background texture. To make my textures, I always start with a single colour and layer brushes on top of that. This time I used ff4985. And a note before anything else→ all the brushes I used to create this texture were white.
Now, I love sparkles. ALL of my textures start out with white sparkles. So, I created a new layer and used a sparkle brush from h-g.
→
I always use a few layers of sparkles, so I created another layer and used a different sparkle brush (also from h-g).
→
Another sparkle layer! This time I used one that would lighten up the background a bit. Uh, I'm just gonna say right now that all of the sparkle brushes in this tutorial came from h-g, because man I love that site.
→
Next, I created another layer and used some retro-ish dots brush by myrasis (the set can be found here). I set the opacity for this layer to 80%.
→
I decided that it still needed more sparkles, so I created another layer and used another sparkle brush (from h-g, haha).
→
And now for the last sparkle layer. One last h-g sparkle brush and we're calling this a done texture.
→
Yay. Now for the picture part. The full-size picture can be found here. I cropped it down to 130x130, pasted it on top of the texture, and cut out the edges using the magic wand and the feathering tool. I also sharpened it once.
That's not very pretty, now is it? So, here's the magic part that makes everything prettier→ I dragged the very first layer (the one that's just filled with a colour) to the very top and set it to Screen.
WHOO-HOO IT'S PRETTIER ALREADY! But I want my picture to be a bit lighter, I duplicated the picture layer, desaturated it, gaussian blurred it, and set it to Screen. Whee.
Now for my favourite brush ever. It makes everything amazing. I created a new layer on top of everything else and stamped this brush (made by mwah) in black and set the layer to Soft Light.
→
Isn't that nice? Now for text. This'll take awhile. I'm using the font Soopafresh (yes that is my favourite font in the world, shush) at 30pt in the same pink we've been using.
It needs effects...badly. First for a 1px stroke in the same colour as the font.
Then Bevel and Emboss, in these settings.
Now for Inner Glow.
Next comes Outer Glow (yes, I like the glows, shushy).
Finally, Drop Shadow.
That's much better now.
But it definitely needs to blend better with the icon. So, I set the layer to Lighten.
There's still more text to be put on this icon though, so I whip out my favourite pixel font, which is in fact called simply Pixel. It's 7pt and white for this.
It's not even visible, so it's time for some layer effects. First comes a 1px Outer Glow.
Followed by Bevel and Emboss.
It's much better now, but it stands out too much, so I put the layer opacity to 70%.
Okay, now for the part I'm sure that you're all excited for→ the moving heart part. Fwee! This'll take awhile. First, I created a heart (in the same pink that this icon is basically based off of) using Photoshop's custom shape tool.
→
Now, the effects for the heart are exactly the same as the ones that I used on the big text. I'm lazy like that.
Next I rotated the heart using the free transform tool (Ctrl+T).
Then I duplicated that layer, moved it up some, and rotated the heart the opposite direction.
I duplicated the first heart layer again and moved it to the top of the icon. Yay hearts.
Finally, I tagged it (same as the other pixel text, just without the Bevel and Emboss) and slapped on a 1px border in, yes, you guessed it, the same pink.
You could be done here. It's a perfectly good icon. But everyone loves animation, so we can add that next. So click this button to transfer the file to Image Ready.
Alright, so the first frame should be set to 0.1 sec and have just the bottom heart visible. Create a new frame which should have just the middle heart visible. Then create another frame that has just the top heart visible. Finally, create one last frame that has none of the hearts visible.
Yeah, that's probably confusing if you're not used to Image Ready. Sadly, this is not an IR tutorial, so I'd suggest Googling one if you're confused, or ask me and I can try to explain.
So, moving on...tween the first frame to the second, adding three frames in between. Repeat process for the other two heart frames, and tween the last frame to the first.
Next, frames 1, 5, 9, and 14 should be set to 0.2 sec.
And ta-da. Finished icon.
*wipes sweat off brow* Wow, that took about two hours ^^;; ...ugh, I hope you all appreciate it :D Once again, feel free to ask me questions! And I would love to see what you make with this tutorial!
Hokay, so here goes my first ever picture icon tutorial. It will be long. It will be hard. It will be confusing. There will be lots of pictures. Feel free to ask questions and/or show me what you've made with it!
It's written using Photoshop and Image Ready CS2, though I'm fairly certain that it will translate to earlier versions. I know that the text part won't translate to PSP, sorry guys.
So, we're making this icon of Anahi from the group RBD (which is AWESOME and you should check out), which was originally requested by slayheavy on GJ so that means you can't use it.
To start off, we need to make the background texture. To make my textures, I always start with a single colour and layer brushes on top of that. This time I used ff4985. And a note before anything else→ all the brushes I used to create this texture were white.
Now, I love sparkles. ALL of my textures start out with white sparkles. So, I created a new layer and used a sparkle brush from h-g.
→
I always use a few layers of sparkles, so I created another layer and used a different sparkle brush (also from h-g).
→
Another sparkle layer! This time I used one that would lighten up the background a bit. Uh, I'm just gonna say right now that all of the sparkle brushes in this tutorial came from h-g, because man I love that site.
→
Next, I created another layer and used some retro-ish dots brush by myrasis (the set can be found here). I set the opacity for this layer to 80%.
→
I decided that it still needed more sparkles, so I created another layer and used another sparkle brush (from h-g, haha).
→
And now for the last sparkle layer. One last h-g sparkle brush and we're calling this a done texture.
→
Yay. Now for the picture part. The full-size picture can be found here. I cropped it down to 130x130, pasted it on top of the texture, and cut out the edges using the magic wand and the feathering tool. I also sharpened it once.
That's not very pretty, now is it? So, here's the magic part that makes everything prettier→ I dragged the very first layer (the one that's just filled with a colour) to the very top and set it to Screen.
WHOO-HOO IT'S PRETTIER ALREADY! But I want my picture to be a bit lighter, I duplicated the picture layer, desaturated it, gaussian blurred it, and set it to Screen. Whee.
Now for my favourite brush ever. It makes everything amazing. I created a new layer on top of everything else and stamped this brush (made by mwah) in black and set the layer to Soft Light.
→
Isn't that nice? Now for text. This'll take awhile. I'm using the font Soopafresh (yes that is my favourite font in the world, shush) at 30pt in the same pink we've been using.
It needs effects...badly. First for a 1px stroke in the same colour as the font.
Then Bevel and Emboss, in these settings.
Now for Inner Glow.
Next comes Outer Glow (yes, I like the glows, shushy).
Finally, Drop Shadow.
That's much better now.
But it definitely needs to blend better with the icon. So, I set the layer to Lighten.
There's still more text to be put on this icon though, so I whip out my favourite pixel font, which is in fact called simply Pixel. It's 7pt and white for this.
It's not even visible, so it's time for some layer effects. First comes a 1px Outer Glow.
Followed by Bevel and Emboss.
It's much better now, but it stands out too much, so I put the layer opacity to 70%.
Okay, now for the part I'm sure that you're all excited for→ the moving heart part. Fwee! This'll take awhile. First, I created a heart (in the same pink that this icon is basically based off of) using Photoshop's custom shape tool.
→
Now, the effects for the heart are exactly the same as the ones that I used on the big text. I'm lazy like that.
Next I rotated the heart using the free transform tool (Ctrl+T).
Then I duplicated that layer, moved it up some, and rotated the heart the opposite direction.
I duplicated the first heart layer again and moved it to the top of the icon. Yay hearts.
Finally, I tagged it (same as the other pixel text, just without the Bevel and Emboss) and slapped on a 1px border in, yes, you guessed it, the same pink.
You could be done here. It's a perfectly good icon. But everyone loves animation, so we can add that next. So click this button to transfer the file to Image Ready.
Alright, so the first frame should be set to 0.1 sec and have just the bottom heart visible. Create a new frame which should have just the middle heart visible. Then create another frame that has just the top heart visible. Finally, create one last frame that has none of the hearts visible.
Yeah, that's probably confusing if you're not used to Image Ready. Sadly, this is not an IR tutorial, so I'd suggest Googling one if you're confused, or ask me and I can try to explain.
So, moving on...tween the first frame to the second, adding three frames in between. Repeat process for the other two heart frames, and tween the last frame to the first.
Next, frames 1, 5, 9, and 14 should be set to 0.2 sec.
And ta-da. Finished icon.
*wipes sweat off brow* Wow, that took about two hours ^^;; ...ugh, I hope you all appreciate it :D Once again, feel free to ask me questions! And I would love to see what you make with this tutorial!