Tutorial #15 > Derek & Casey
Made with Adobe Photoshop CS3. Not translatable.
Level: Hard. Uses selective coloring and color balance.
Please do not claim this as your own.
As always, please remember that tutorials are just guides. You may need to adjust the coloring or brightness depending on the image you have chosen.
1. Crop your image to 100x100 px. (For an easy way to do this, check out this tutorial.)
I left some white space at the top, because I knew I wanted to add a texture above their heads. I just got a new set, so I'm putting them in, like, every icon I make.
2. Layer > New adjustment layer > Curves
RGB
Point 1: 61, 78
Point 2: 158, 180
Curves are an easy way to brighten up an icon and add contrast, which is very important.
3. Layer > New adjustment layer > Hue/saturation. Set master saturation to +20.
I like colorful icons. I add a hue/saturation layer to every icon I make.
4. Layer > New adjustment layer > Selective color
REDS
Cyan: -55
Magenta: 11
Yellow: 22
Black: -20
YELLOWS
Cyan: -66
Magenta: -19
Yellow: -22
Black: -30
NEUTRALS
Cyan: 20
Magenta: 10
Yellow: 10
Black: -10
When I use selective color, which I pretty much always do, I use it to bring out the reds and give the whole icon a bluish tint. So I tend to stick with REDS, YELLOWS, and NEUTRALS, and I just play around with the values until I find something that looks halfway decent.
5. Layer > New adjustment layer > Selective color
REDS
Cyan: -44
Magenta: -11
Yellow: -20
Black: 19
YELLOWS
Cyan: -33
Magenta: -20
Yellow: -33
Black: -40
NEUTRALS
Cyan: 20
BLACKS
Black: 10
6. Layer > New adjustment layer > Color balance
Midtones: -30, -15, -10
Make sure "preserve luminosity" is checked.
This goes along with that whole bluish tint thing I like to do. I like blue.
7. Duplicate your base and drag it to the top. Set it to soft light 40.
Using soft light adds much needed contrast to an icon, but definitely play with the opacity. Sometimes it makes the icon too dark, which is why I set this one so low.
8. Make a new layer. Fill it with
(#180303). Set it to exclusion 100.
I really like exclusion layers. They can soften an icon and give it different hues. I tend to stick with dark reds and dark blues.
9. Make a new layer. Fill it with
(#02010c). Set it to exclusion 100.
10. Layer > New adjustment layer > Brightness/contrast
Brightness: 5
Contrast: 10
This step may not be necessary, depending on your base. But I always think my icons are too dark, so I tend to add brightness whenever possible.
11. I still thought their faces were a little too dark, so I created a new layer, then used a soft round brush, 65 px, and painted a few white splotches over them. I then set this layer to soft light 50.
12. Take this texture (made by fightstar) and set it to lighten. I then used the eraser (at 80% opacity) and erased the parts of that texture that were covering Derek and Casey.
13. Take this texture (made by babliz) and set it to multiply 100. I applied a layer mask and "erased" the area of the texture that was covering Casey's head.
Merge all layers, and you're done!
For some other great tutorials (some by me, most by other people), check out my tutorial list.