Tutorial #3: The King's Speech 1
In the fantastic Ask the Maker meme over at icon_talk, miatoscane asked if I could write a tutorial for two icons from The King's Speech, and I was happy to oblige, because I love working with screencaps from that movie.
I'm going one at a time, so expect lots of tutorials in the next few weeks. If you want to request something yourself, feel free to do so here or here.
We'll be using Photoshop CS4 to do this:
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For this tutorial, I'm going to assume that you know your way around Photoshop a bit, that you know how to create Adjustment layers, how to mask parts of a layer you don't like and how to use the Clone Stamp tool. If you don't, just tell me and I'll try to explain it better. But there's a tutorial where I deal with the Clone Stamp tool here.
I start off with this screencap by Rawr Caps.
When I saw that cap, I wanted to make an icon that emphasized the height of the staircase and the cool angle of the shot, so I had to create as much negative space above Elizabeth and Bertie as possible.
I cropped the icon accordingly and resized the image so that the width was 100 pixels. Unfortunately, with that aspect ratio, the height only came to 89 pixels, so I had to fill up that space:
When I have to create space I first make sure the empty space is filled up with a solid color. I do that by adjusting my canvas.
I go to Image > Canvas size and change the settings to 100 x 100 pixels. I make sure that the image is positioned at the bottom, otherwise the canvas will be resized around the image, creating space above and under the original image, and pick a colour from the background close to the edge.
I then get this base:
When I icon, I always keep that base at the bottom of my layer palette. I duplicate the base and start working from that layer, because if at any point something goes horribly wrong, I can always go back the original base.
As you can see in the image below, I used the Clone Stamp tool to fill the empty gray space with the brick pattern of the rest of the wall:
This image needs to be a lot lighter, so for a quick fix, I create a fierce Curves layer, dragging the point in the RGB mode to create this curve (Output: 178, Input: 82):
The opacity of the Curves layer was lowered to 72%.
I duplicated my base and set it to screen, placing it above the base and underneath the Curves layer. I did that again and lowered the opacity of both layers to 35% and 53%. I then duplicated my base again and put it between the base and the screen layers. This layer was set to soft light.
I used a Gaussian blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur) on the soft light layer and then lowered the opacity of the layer until the result on the icon was soft enough but not too blurry. In this case, that was reached at 21%.
This is how the icon looks now:
I know it looks very light and without a lot of contrast, but those are things I tend to fix later.
I like lighting up my subjects, so I created a new layer between the base and the soft light layer. I used a soft round brush at 17pts at a low opacity (24%) to draw some lines where I wanted the light. I then give that layer a Gaussian blur at about 4.0.
Because it might be difficult to see, I've added a solid black layer underneath this layer so you can see how the brush strokes look before and after they are given the Gaussian Blur treatment:
And when I delete that black layer again, this is how my icon looks:
I duplicated that layer with the blurred brush strokes and set it to a lower opacity for some more effect.
Now for the actual colouring and contrast: I created a Color Fill layer with #a1e5fb and set it to Saturation at 22%. I put this layer underneath the Curves layer.
I wanted the icon to have a more yellow hue, so I created a Levels layer in which I move the cursor in the Blue channel to 84, again putting it underneath the Curves layer:
I created a Selective Color layer where I emphasized Elizabeth's yellow accents, but otherwise mostly upped the blues and cyans. I put this layer between the Color Fill layer and the Levels layer.
These are the settings:
Layer 1
Yellows: Yellow +47
Cyans: Cyan +51 | Magenta +73 | Yellow -88 | Black +84
Blues: Cyan +54 | Magenta -53 | Yellow -24 | Black +47
Whites: Magenta -39 | Yellow -72
Blacks: Black +100
I gave the cyans and blues more emphasis and added some contrast with another Selective Color layer. In the end I also added a third Selective Color layer with some red to keep them look healthy. Both were placed on top of the first Selective Color layer and underneath the Levels layer. The settings:
Layer 2
Cyans: Cyan +54 | Magenta -100 | Yellow -83 | Black +28
Blues: Cyan +83 | Magenta -60 | Yellow +20 |
Whites: Cyan +85 | Yellow -100
Layer 3
Reds: Cyan -18 | Yellow +53
Yellows: Yellow +40
-->
I was going for a bright effect, so I made another Curves layer to go above the first one. I created a curve in the RGB mode with two points, with the following settings:
(For the upper point) Output: 189 | Input: 159
(For the lower point) Output: 72 | Input: 68
I erased some of the parts where the light was giving poor Bertie a grainy suit.
Finally, I used this texture by innocent_lexys on top to bring some more texture to the wall. I set it to Color burn at 78% and used a layer mask to erase the parts where it covered Bertie and Elizabeth.
And then this is the final result, with my layer palette looking like this:
Please by aware that I don't give out PSDs.
Thoughts? Questions? Things that are unclear? Please leave a comment. :)
I'm going one at a time, so expect lots of tutorials in the next few weeks. If you want to request something yourself, feel free to do so here or here.
We'll be using Photoshop CS4 to do this:
-->
For this tutorial, I'm going to assume that you know your way around Photoshop a bit, that you know how to create Adjustment layers, how to mask parts of a layer you don't like and how to use the Clone Stamp tool. If you don't, just tell me and I'll try to explain it better. But there's a tutorial where I deal with the Clone Stamp tool here.
I start off with this screencap by Rawr Caps.
When I saw that cap, I wanted to make an icon that emphasized the height of the staircase and the cool angle of the shot, so I had to create as much negative space above Elizabeth and Bertie as possible.
I cropped the icon accordingly and resized the image so that the width was 100 pixels. Unfortunately, with that aspect ratio, the height only came to 89 pixels, so I had to fill up that space:
When I have to create space I first make sure the empty space is filled up with a solid color. I do that by adjusting my canvas.
I go to Image > Canvas size and change the settings to 100 x 100 pixels. I make sure that the image is positioned at the bottom, otherwise the canvas will be resized around the image, creating space above and under the original image, and pick a colour from the background close to the edge.
I then get this base:
When I icon, I always keep that base at the bottom of my layer palette. I duplicate the base and start working from that layer, because if at any point something goes horribly wrong, I can always go back the original base.
As you can see in the image below, I used the Clone Stamp tool to fill the empty gray space with the brick pattern of the rest of the wall:
This image needs to be a lot lighter, so for a quick fix, I create a fierce Curves layer, dragging the point in the RGB mode to create this curve (Output: 178, Input: 82):
The opacity of the Curves layer was lowered to 72%.
I duplicated my base and set it to screen, placing it above the base and underneath the Curves layer. I did that again and lowered the opacity of both layers to 35% and 53%. I then duplicated my base again and put it between the base and the screen layers. This layer was set to soft light.
I used a Gaussian blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur) on the soft light layer and then lowered the opacity of the layer until the result on the icon was soft enough but not too blurry. In this case, that was reached at 21%.
This is how the icon looks now:
I know it looks very light and without a lot of contrast, but those are things I tend to fix later.
I like lighting up my subjects, so I created a new layer between the base and the soft light layer. I used a soft round brush at 17pts at a low opacity (24%) to draw some lines where I wanted the light. I then give that layer a Gaussian blur at about 4.0.
Because it might be difficult to see, I've added a solid black layer underneath this layer so you can see how the brush strokes look before and after they are given the Gaussian Blur treatment:
And when I delete that black layer again, this is how my icon looks:
I duplicated that layer with the blurred brush strokes and set it to a lower opacity for some more effect.
Now for the actual colouring and contrast: I created a Color Fill layer with #a1e5fb and set it to Saturation at 22%. I put this layer underneath the Curves layer.
I wanted the icon to have a more yellow hue, so I created a Levels layer in which I move the cursor in the Blue channel to 84, again putting it underneath the Curves layer:
I created a Selective Color layer where I emphasized Elizabeth's yellow accents, but otherwise mostly upped the blues and cyans. I put this layer between the Color Fill layer and the Levels layer.
These are the settings:
Layer 1
Yellows: Yellow +47
Cyans: Cyan +51 | Magenta +73 | Yellow -88 | Black +84
Blues: Cyan +54 | Magenta -53 | Yellow -24 | Black +47
Whites: Magenta -39 | Yellow -72
Blacks: Black +100
I gave the cyans and blues more emphasis and added some contrast with another Selective Color layer. In the end I also added a third Selective Color layer with some red to keep them look healthy. Both were placed on top of the first Selective Color layer and underneath the Levels layer. The settings:
Layer 2
Cyans: Cyan +54 | Magenta -100 | Yellow -83 | Black +28
Blues: Cyan +83 | Magenta -60 | Yellow +20 |
Whites: Cyan +85 | Yellow -100
Layer 3
Reds: Cyan -18 | Yellow +53
Yellows: Yellow +40
-->
I was going for a bright effect, so I made another Curves layer to go above the first one. I created a curve in the RGB mode with two points, with the following settings:
(For the upper point) Output: 189 | Input: 159
(For the lower point) Output: 72 | Input: 68
I erased some of the parts where the light was giving poor Bertie a grainy suit.
Finally, I used this texture by innocent_lexys on top to bring some more texture to the wall. I set it to Color burn at 78% and used a layer mask to erase the parts where it covered Bertie and Elizabeth.
And then this is the final result, with my layer palette looking like this:
Please by aware that I don't give out PSDs.
Thoughts? Questions? Things that are unclear? Please leave a comment. :)