icon tutorial (ask the maker)
I hope I'm not flooding anyone's f-lists - I'm not quite done yet ;)
Requested at Ask the Maker 2.0 by firstillusion
Ask the Maker 2.0 || Icon Tutorial
going from
to
Program used: Photoshop CS5
Difficulty: Intermediate - some basic knowledge about how the different tools work and what they generally do is required, you should also be familiar with using layer masks
Overview:
cursive: These steps are also described in my last icon guide here and might be a little more detailed over there.
· These steps contain the use of layer masks; in case you don't know how to do them, you might want to have a look here.
Note: There is a slight difference to the original icon, since I had to recreate some of the steps.
Images used (original size): 1
I have the german version of Photoshop, so the screencaptures of my settings are all german, too; if you are unsure about anything, just ask and I'll look up the translation for you.
-- PART 1 --
1. Gradient
Layer → New Fill Layer → Gradient
For some reason I did not adjust the contrast with Levels here like I normally do, but started right away with using gradients instead. I wanted to try something very different with this picture, so I suppose that is why I did this. (Or I simply forgot, anyway.)
First, I wanted to shift the focus of the image around a bit and bring it more to the upper half of the picture, where Sansa's face is. You can do this for example with gradients, so I created a new Gradient layer and chose two colors directly from the image: a dark muted blue from somewhere in the shadows and a light tan color from the lighter area of her face. I could also have used a black and white gradient, but I wanted to add a touch of color here, so I used a slightly colored one instead.
In the dialogue for the gradient, I set the angle to 90°, because I wanted the darker color to cover the bottom half of the screencap and the lighter color to cover the upper half of it. The blending mode of this layer was then set to soft light and the opacity was left at 100%.
I wanted the effect of this to be a lot stronger, so I duplicated this layer two more times.
2. Curves
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Curves
Using the gradients in the last step made me lose a lot of contrast in my image, so I had to bring some of it back again. Here, I used a Curves layer for that purpose.
In the RGB channel, I created a strong s-curve as seen in the picture below, which made the dark parts of my image darker and the lighter parts of it lighter.
3. Color Balance
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Color Balance
To get the colors a little more separated from each other and make the shadows in the lower area of the image less red tinted, I created a Color Balance layer and added a good deal of cyan in the shadows section. Adding cyan can sometimes make things look a little bit greenish, though, so to balance this out I added a bit of magenta (which is the complementary color to green) as well.
4. Vibrance
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Vibrance
The image was still very washed out; I wanted all the colors to be a lot stronger and more saturated, so I created a Vibrance layer and added lots of Vibrance and a bit of saturation, which made quite a big difference.
5. Crop & Resize
Image → Image Size
This was the point where I resized and cropped my image into a new 100x100 pixel canvas, until I had this:
I knew already that I was going to work with textures in this icon, so I did not worry about the black line at the top and the little white spot in the left bottom corner for now.
-- PART 2 --
7. Texture 1
At the time when I made this icon I was legitimately obsessed with these gorgeous watercolour textures by midnight_road, so I picked one of the textures from this set and placed it on top of everything. I tried a few different blending modes for this layer and quickly settled for setting it to soft light at 100% opacity, which gave me this:
+
set to soft light →
Sansa's face looked a little bit washed out afterwards, so I used a layer mask to tone the effect down in this area of the image:
using layer mask:
→
Then I duplicated this layer (including the mask) for an overall stronger effect:
8. Texture 2
The black border at the top was beginning to distract me now, so I decided to look for another texture that I could use as a background for my icon. I always skim through my texture folders trying out a lot of different textures before I finally decide for a specific one; here I already had a bit of an idea of where I wanted to go, so I chose a texture that had some kind of structure to it and might suit the icon.
Before I added the texture to my canvas, I created a copy layer (called stamp here) by pressing Ctrl → Alt → Shift → E, then I placed the texture right underneath this layer.
Then, on the copy (stamp) layer, I created a layer mask and tried to mask the background away, using the lasso tool and a very small brush - I wanted the face to stand out clearly but her neckline to blend into the texture a bit:
texture, used as background (by midnight_road)
layer mask, used on copy layer
9. Texture 3
I wanted to give this icon a very structured and textured appearance, so I added yet another texture with a scratchy look to it (texture again by midnight_road). I set the blending mode of this layer to soft light and left the opacity at 100%.
+
set to soft light →
Then I duplicated the texture layer one time and lowered the opacity of this duplicated layer to 50% (in hindsight, I might have been better off leaving this duplicate layer away or maybe desaturating the texture here, but as it is, I didn't).
10. Selective Color
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Selective Color
To give the face a little more definition, I decided to work on the coloring a bit more. I added a Selective Color layer and first went to the colors that were mainly present in the facial area: red and yellow.
I wanted to make the red tones a little bit darker and stand out more, so I added a tiny bit of magenta, reduced some of the yellow and dragged the slider for black a little to the right in this section.
In the yellow section, I also added a bit of magenta as well as some red and yellow, and dragged the black slider a tiny bit to the left, making the yellow tones a wee bit lighter. This, together with the darkened red, added a bit to the local contrast of the face.
Then, because I also wanted to emphasize the color of the background of the icon some more, I went to the cyan section, added lots of cyan and reduced the magenta and yellow by a bit.
11. Light Blobs
To bring some of the shadows and light areas out a little bit more, I created two new empty layers on top and set the blending mode of both layers to soft light.
On the first layer, I painted with a black soft circle brush over the darker parts on the right side of the icon (partly covering the background and the hair) - this darkened this area quite a bit. I left the opacity of this layer at 100% and duplicated it; the duplicate was set to 32% opacity.
On the second layer, I painted with a white brush over some parts on the left side of the icon, to brighten them a little. Same as before, I left the opacity of this layer at 100% and duplicated the layer one time; the duplicate was then set to 24%.
painted with black (on white background for better visuality)
painted with white (on black background for better visuality)
12. Vibrance / Hue/Saturation
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Vibrance
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Hue/Saturation
Now, all I thought was missing was a bit of saturation. I used a Vibrance layer at first, but then tried a Hue/Saturation layer later and finally decided to use the combination of them both, because it seemed to bring out the textured look a bit more.
First I created the Vibrance layer and added just 2 for vibrance and 12 for saturation.
Then I added a Hue/Saturation layer on top, using a value of 14.
13. Sharpen
Filter → Other → High Pass
For sharpening, I created one more copy layer, by pressing Ctrl → Alt → Shift → E again, and then went to the High Pass filter, using a radius of 0.3 (my standard setting). I set the blending mode of this layer to soft light and lowered the opacity to 40%.
And that's all! If you have survived reading all of this and still have further questions (some parts might be a bit confusing, after all), just ask. :)
Requested at Ask the Maker 2.0 by firstillusion
Ask the Maker 2.0 || Icon Tutorial
going from
to
Program used: Photoshop CS5
Difficulty: Intermediate - some basic knowledge about how the different tools work and what they generally do is required, you should also be familiar with using layer masks
Overview:
- Part 1
- Gradient
- Curves
- Color Balance
- Vibrance
- Crop & Resize Layer Palette
- Part 2
- Texture 1 ·
- Texture 2 ·
- Texture 3 ·
- Selective Color
- Light Blobs
- Vibrance / Hue/Saturation
- Sharpen Layer Palette
cursive: These steps are also described in my last icon guide here and might be a little more detailed over there.
· These steps contain the use of layer masks; in case you don't know how to do them, you might want to have a look here.
Note: There is a slight difference to the original icon, since I had to recreate some of the steps.
Images used (original size): 1
I have the german version of Photoshop, so the screencaptures of my settings are all german, too; if you are unsure about anything, just ask and I'll look up the translation for you.
-- PART 1 --
1. Gradient
Layer → New Fill Layer → Gradient
For some reason I did not adjust the contrast with Levels here like I normally do, but started right away with using gradients instead. I wanted to try something very different with this picture, so I suppose that is why I did this. (Or I simply forgot, anyway.)
First, I wanted to shift the focus of the image around a bit and bring it more to the upper half of the picture, where Sansa's face is. You can do this for example with gradients, so I created a new Gradient layer and chose two colors directly from the image: a dark muted blue from somewhere in the shadows and a light tan color from the lighter area of her face. I could also have used a black and white gradient, but I wanted to add a touch of color here, so I used a slightly colored one instead.
In the dialogue for the gradient, I set the angle to 90°, because I wanted the darker color to cover the bottom half of the screencap and the lighter color to cover the upper half of it. The blending mode of this layer was then set to soft light and the opacity was left at 100%.
I wanted the effect of this to be a lot stronger, so I duplicated this layer two more times.
2. Curves
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Curves
Using the gradients in the last step made me lose a lot of contrast in my image, so I had to bring some of it back again. Here, I used a Curves layer for that purpose.
In the RGB channel, I created a strong s-curve as seen in the picture below, which made the dark parts of my image darker and the lighter parts of it lighter.
3. Color Balance
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Color Balance
To get the colors a little more separated from each other and make the shadows in the lower area of the image less red tinted, I created a Color Balance layer and added a good deal of cyan in the shadows section. Adding cyan can sometimes make things look a little bit greenish, though, so to balance this out I added a bit of magenta (which is the complementary color to green) as well.
4. Vibrance
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Vibrance
The image was still very washed out; I wanted all the colors to be a lot stronger and more saturated, so I created a Vibrance layer and added lots of Vibrance and a bit of saturation, which made quite a big difference.
5. Crop & Resize
Image → Image Size
This was the point where I resized and cropped my image into a new 100x100 pixel canvas, until I had this:
I knew already that I was going to work with textures in this icon, so I did not worry about the black line at the top and the little white spot in the left bottom corner for now.
-- PART 2 --
7. Texture 1
At the time when I made this icon I was legitimately obsessed with these gorgeous watercolour textures by midnight_road, so I picked one of the textures from this set and placed it on top of everything. I tried a few different blending modes for this layer and quickly settled for setting it to soft light at 100% opacity, which gave me this:
+
set to soft light →
Sansa's face looked a little bit washed out afterwards, so I used a layer mask to tone the effect down in this area of the image:
using layer mask:
→
Then I duplicated this layer (including the mask) for an overall stronger effect:
8. Texture 2
The black border at the top was beginning to distract me now, so I decided to look for another texture that I could use as a background for my icon. I always skim through my texture folders trying out a lot of different textures before I finally decide for a specific one; here I already had a bit of an idea of where I wanted to go, so I chose a texture that had some kind of structure to it and might suit the icon.
Before I added the texture to my canvas, I created a copy layer (called stamp here) by pressing Ctrl → Alt → Shift → E, then I placed the texture right underneath this layer.
Then, on the copy (stamp) layer, I created a layer mask and tried to mask the background away, using the lasso tool and a very small brush - I wanted the face to stand out clearly but her neckline to blend into the texture a bit:
texture, used as background (by midnight_road)
layer mask, used on copy layer
9. Texture 3
I wanted to give this icon a very structured and textured appearance, so I added yet another texture with a scratchy look to it (texture again by midnight_road). I set the blending mode of this layer to soft light and left the opacity at 100%.
+
set to soft light →
Then I duplicated the texture layer one time and lowered the opacity of this duplicated layer to 50% (in hindsight, I might have been better off leaving this duplicate layer away or maybe desaturating the texture here, but as it is, I didn't).
10. Selective Color
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Selective Color
To give the face a little more definition, I decided to work on the coloring a bit more. I added a Selective Color layer and first went to the colors that were mainly present in the facial area: red and yellow.
I wanted to make the red tones a little bit darker and stand out more, so I added a tiny bit of magenta, reduced some of the yellow and dragged the slider for black a little to the right in this section.
In the yellow section, I also added a bit of magenta as well as some red and yellow, and dragged the black slider a tiny bit to the left, making the yellow tones a wee bit lighter. This, together with the darkened red, added a bit to the local contrast of the face.
Then, because I also wanted to emphasize the color of the background of the icon some more, I went to the cyan section, added lots of cyan and reduced the magenta and yellow by a bit.
11. Light Blobs
To bring some of the shadows and light areas out a little bit more, I created two new empty layers on top and set the blending mode of both layers to soft light.
On the first layer, I painted with a black soft circle brush over the darker parts on the right side of the icon (partly covering the background and the hair) - this darkened this area quite a bit. I left the opacity of this layer at 100% and duplicated it; the duplicate was set to 32% opacity.
On the second layer, I painted with a white brush over some parts on the left side of the icon, to brighten them a little. Same as before, I left the opacity of this layer at 100% and duplicated the layer one time; the duplicate was then set to 24%.
painted with black (on white background for better visuality)
painted with white (on black background for better visuality)
12. Vibrance / Hue/Saturation
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Vibrance
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Hue/Saturation
Now, all I thought was missing was a bit of saturation. I used a Vibrance layer at first, but then tried a Hue/Saturation layer later and finally decided to use the combination of them both, because it seemed to bring out the textured look a bit more.
First I created the Vibrance layer and added just 2 for vibrance and 12 for saturation.
Then I added a Hue/Saturation layer on top, using a value of 14.
13. Sharpen
Filter → Other → High Pass
For sharpening, I created one more copy layer, by pressing Ctrl → Alt → Shift → E again, and then went to the High Pass filter, using a radius of 0.3 (my standard setting). I set the blending mode of this layer to soft light and lowered the opacity to 40%.
And that's all! If you have survived reading all of this and still have further questions (some parts might be a bit confusing, after all), just ask. :)