tutorial #2: isaac lahey
Welcome to my second tutorial, and my first for an Ask the Maker activity! reebeecaa asked for a tutorial for this icon, and while I didn't remember exactly what I'd done there, I got pretty close, I think. This is fairly lengthy and does not, I think, require much knowledge of photoshop beyond general use of tools.
to
I made this icon for a challenge at teenwolf_elite, where we were meant to go to a Random Color Palette Generator and make an icon using one or more of those colors. This is the palette I got:
#54e3d7, #984b31, and #2fb67d. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to push myself to work with an icon that was largely one color, so I picked a screencap of Isaac where I knew it would be difficult for me to bail on that idea. That is, a pretty dark screencap without a lot of light or color variation in it.
>
To prep the base, I added a black and white gradient set to soft light at 100%. My personal favorite way of doing this is to make a duplicate layer of the base, double click the layer, and add check "Gradient Overlay" in the layer style menu. (You can set the gradient to soft light from there.) However, you could also just go to Layer -> New Fill Layer -> Gradient and achieve the same effect. I like this trick because it automatically gives the icon a sense of dynamic lighting that it didn't have otherwise.
From here, I added a new fill layer of #54e3d7 set to color at 100%. I initially tried this with the darker green, but I've personally found that it's a lot easier to pick a lighter color and build on top of that, rather than starting with something darker and trying to pull light out of it.
That was looking kind of dark so I added a brightness/contrast layer set to Brightness +60 / Contrast +11.
I copy-merged all of the layers and stamped them on top. I applied guassian blur with a setting of 3.3. This gave the image a nice contrast in lighting, but was a little too saturated for my liking, so I hit Command+Shift+U (Ctrl+Shift+U on PC) in order to desaturate the layer.
Now that I've got enough contrast and color in the icon, it's time to brighten it. I made a curves layer with these settings. This was enough to bring out some highlights and a bit of texture on his jacket that had been hidden. I initially brightened it a bit more, but it ended up being better to build up the lighting slowly, as it usually is with darker screencaps.
Next, I added a gradient fill layer that went between #984b31 and #2fb67d set to soft light at 100%. This was a nice way to bring back the other colors in the palette and vary the color and lighting already in the icon.
>
This step might be a little trickier. I copy-merged and stamped all of the layers again. I then used Motion Blur (Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur) with the angle set to 90 degrees (straight up and down) and the distance set to 10 pixels. I then added Noise (Filter -> Noise -> Add Noise...). My settings for adding noise were Uniform and 4%, though the percentage will vary depending on how much texture you're hoping to get. I set this layer (seen on the left) to Screen at 48%.
I like this trick because it added some interesting light and texture to the icon without changing too much of the color scheme I had going, or being too overwhelming.
I added another curves layer with these settings to up the overall brightness a bit more.
I added this texture by midnight_road set to Soft Light at 100%.
I added a color fill layer of #2fb67d set to Soft Light at 60%. This brought out some variation in the color, as well as showing the texture a bit more.
I added a gradient fill layer that went from #984b31 to transparent, set to Soft Light at 100%.
I duplicated the brown/green gradient from earlier and dragged it to the top of the layers, setting it to Soft Light at 50%.
I added a Vibrance layer to calm the colors down a bit. Both the Vibrance and Saturation sliders were set to -7.
I wanted to add a bit more contrast to the darker bits of the icon, so I added a selective color layer. Under the Blacks tab, I set the Black slider to +13.
I added a final curves layer with these settings to bring a bit more light to the icon.
Time to sharpen! Sharpening is my least favorite part of icon-making, hands down. I copy-merged all of the layers and pasted that down on top of everything else. I went to Filter -> Sharpen -> Smart Sharpen, and set it to "Amount: 100%" and "Radius: 0.4". I then set this layer to 30% opacity, because I only needed a slight sharpening.
My last step was to add a few more noise textures. (I did this above the sharpening because sometimes sharpening textures like these can make the icon look a lot more sharp than I want it to.) I used this texture by rosebein. I inverted the texture (Adjustments -> Invert) and set it to Screen at 100%. I then duplicated this layer and set it at 30% opacity.
Hopefully this has been helpful! Please let me know if you have any questions! PSDs will not be available as this is an Ask the Maker activity.
to
I made this icon for a challenge at teenwolf_elite, where we were meant to go to a Random Color Palette Generator and make an icon using one or more of those colors. This is the palette I got:
#54e3d7, #984b31, and #2fb67d. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to push myself to work with an icon that was largely one color, so I picked a screencap of Isaac where I knew it would be difficult for me to bail on that idea. That is, a pretty dark screencap without a lot of light or color variation in it.
>
To prep the base, I added a black and white gradient set to soft light at 100%. My personal favorite way of doing this is to make a duplicate layer of the base, double click the layer, and add check "Gradient Overlay" in the layer style menu. (You can set the gradient to soft light from there.) However, you could also just go to Layer -> New Fill Layer -> Gradient and achieve the same effect. I like this trick because it automatically gives the icon a sense of dynamic lighting that it didn't have otherwise.
From here, I added a new fill layer of #54e3d7 set to color at 100%. I initially tried this with the darker green, but I've personally found that it's a lot easier to pick a lighter color and build on top of that, rather than starting with something darker and trying to pull light out of it.
That was looking kind of dark so I added a brightness/contrast layer set to Brightness +60 / Contrast +11.
I copy-merged all of the layers and stamped them on top. I applied guassian blur with a setting of 3.3. This gave the image a nice contrast in lighting, but was a little too saturated for my liking, so I hit Command+Shift+U (Ctrl+Shift+U on PC) in order to desaturate the layer.
Now that I've got enough contrast and color in the icon, it's time to brighten it. I made a curves layer with these settings. This was enough to bring out some highlights and a bit of texture on his jacket that had been hidden. I initially brightened it a bit more, but it ended up being better to build up the lighting slowly, as it usually is with darker screencaps.
Next, I added a gradient fill layer that went between #984b31 and #2fb67d set to soft light at 100%. This was a nice way to bring back the other colors in the palette and vary the color and lighting already in the icon.
>
This step might be a little trickier. I copy-merged and stamped all of the layers again. I then used Motion Blur (Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur) with the angle set to 90 degrees (straight up and down) and the distance set to 10 pixels. I then added Noise (Filter -> Noise -> Add Noise...). My settings for adding noise were Uniform and 4%, though the percentage will vary depending on how much texture you're hoping to get. I set this layer (seen on the left) to Screen at 48%.
I like this trick because it added some interesting light and texture to the icon without changing too much of the color scheme I had going, or being too overwhelming.
I added another curves layer with these settings to up the overall brightness a bit more.
I added this texture by midnight_road set to Soft Light at 100%.
I added a color fill layer of #2fb67d set to Soft Light at 60%. This brought out some variation in the color, as well as showing the texture a bit more.
I added a gradient fill layer that went from #984b31 to transparent, set to Soft Light at 100%.
I duplicated the brown/green gradient from earlier and dragged it to the top of the layers, setting it to Soft Light at 50%.
I added a Vibrance layer to calm the colors down a bit. Both the Vibrance and Saturation sliders were set to -7.
I wanted to add a bit more contrast to the darker bits of the icon, so I added a selective color layer. Under the Blacks tab, I set the Black slider to +13.
I added a final curves layer with these settings to bring a bit more light to the icon.
Time to sharpen! Sharpening is my least favorite part of icon-making, hands down. I copy-merged all of the layers and pasted that down on top of everything else. I went to Filter -> Sharpen -> Smart Sharpen, and set it to "Amount: 100%" and "Radius: 0.4". I then set this layer to 30% opacity, because I only needed a slight sharpening.
My last step was to add a few more noise textures. (I did this above the sharpening because sometimes sharpening textures like these can make the icon look a lot more sharp than I want it to.) I used this texture by rosebein. I inverted the texture (Adjustments -> Invert) and set it to Screen at 100%. I then duplicated this layer and set it at 30% opacity.
Hopefully this has been helpful! Please let me know if you have any questions! PSDs will not be available as this is an Ask the Maker activity.