Tutorial 5 - Eowyn
A tutorial to make 
from
, by the request of falling_silver.
Please don't copy this exactly; where's the fun in that? This is just to give you ideas and tips for working with your own images.
Icon made in the GIMP 2.2, but definitely transferrable to Photshop and PSP.
We start with this base of Eowyn, cropped from a screencap that I got from shagalote.
As you can see, the base is dull, too blue, and it's almost impossible to make out who that is in there. Luckily, GIMP has a fix for this. Open the Levels dialog (Layers>>Colors>>Levels). There should be a button entitled 'Auto' near the bottom right. Click it, and this is the result:
The result differs from image to image - Auto Levels doesn't work everywhere. (I do know that the Levels tool is there on Photoshop and PSP, I just don't know where. Sorry.)
Now, I sharpen the base on a strength of 40 (Filters>>Enhance>>Sharpen). That gives me this:
While I like the sharp edges, I don't like the way Eowyn's skin looks all rumpled. So, I go over it carefully with the blur tool, to get this:
I duplicate this layer, and desaturate:
Then I bring the coloured layer to the top, and set it to screen at 50:
And soft light at 100:
Ta-dah!
Now, I take this gradient (made by me; it'll be up for download soon):
And set it to Difference, at opacity 20. This gives me a nice colour effect, like this:
Then, I took a pastel texture that I made and blurred (Filters>>Blur>>Gaussian Blur) it because it was too grungy:
I set it to soft light at 70 percent opacity:
I added some tiny text (Arial Black at 1px):
Now, I selected a rectangle in the middle of the picture on a new layer, inverted the selection (Select>>Invert), and filled that with white. This gave me a nice white border, like so:
(I realise it doesn't show up on white. You'll just have to believe that it's there...)
I drew three 4x4 squares at the bottom in varying shades of grey:
Now, I took this gradient (by crumblingwalls):
And set it to Lighten Only at 100 opacity:
It looks nice enough, but I wanted something more. I cropped a bit of a stock photo of a galaxy, desaturated it, and blacked out the bits that covered Eowyn's face. Then I set it to Addition at 100 percent opacity:
There. All done. If you have any suggestions/requests/comments, comment away; feel free to show me what you made with this tutorial.
from
, by the request of falling_silver.
Please don't copy this exactly; where's the fun in that? This is just to give you ideas and tips for working with your own images.
Icon made in the GIMP 2.2, but definitely transferrable to Photshop and PSP.
We start with this base of Eowyn, cropped from a screencap that I got from shagalote.
As you can see, the base is dull, too blue, and it's almost impossible to make out who that is in there. Luckily, GIMP has a fix for this. Open the Levels dialog (Layers>>Colors>>Levels). There should be a button entitled 'Auto' near the bottom right. Click it, and this is the result:
The result differs from image to image - Auto Levels doesn't work everywhere. (I do know that the Levels tool is there on Photoshop and PSP, I just don't know where. Sorry.)
Now, I sharpen the base on a strength of 40 (Filters>>Enhance>>Sharpen). That gives me this:
While I like the sharp edges, I don't like the way Eowyn's skin looks all rumpled. So, I go over it carefully with the blur tool, to get this:
I duplicate this layer, and desaturate:
Then I bring the coloured layer to the top, and set it to screen at 50:
And soft light at 100:
Ta-dah!
Now, I take this gradient (made by me; it'll be up for download soon):
And set it to Difference, at opacity 20. This gives me a nice colour effect, like this:
Then, I took a pastel texture that I made and blurred (Filters>>Blur>>Gaussian Blur) it because it was too grungy:
I set it to soft light at 70 percent opacity:
I added some tiny text (Arial Black at 1px):
Now, I selected a rectangle in the middle of the picture on a new layer, inverted the selection (Select>>Invert), and filled that with white. This gave me a nice white border, like so:
(I realise it doesn't show up on white. You'll just have to believe that it's there...)
I drew three 4x4 squares at the bottom in varying shades of grey:
Now, I took this gradient (by crumblingwalls):
And set it to Lighten Only at 100 opacity:
It looks nice enough, but I wanted something more. I cropped a bit of a stock photo of a galaxy, desaturated it, and blacked out the bits that covered Eowyn's face. Then I set it to Addition at 100 percent opacity:
There. All done. If you have any suggestions/requests/comments, comment away; feel free to show me what you made with this tutorial.