icon tutorial (ask the maker)
Yet another one... and now I'll be quiet, I promise :)
Requested at Ask the Maker 2.0 by firstillusion, seconded by likealight
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 somewhat familiar with using layer masks
Overview:
· 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: Again, there is a slight difference to the original icon, since I had to recreate some of the steps.
Images used (original size): 1 | 2
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.
First, some words about inspiration, composition and failed coloring-attempts
The idea
This icon was inspired by a couple of things. First, I've always wanted to use some more blending in my icons in general, because I really love blended icons. The main reason that hindered me so far was simple laziness on my part in trying to find pictures that went well enough together.
Then, one of the challenges at elitesimplicity came up, 'Opposites attract', which basicly demanded the icon to be about opposites, which might have been two different characters from a show, as an example. I really wanted to try my hands at this and, since I had wanted to make an icon with Morgana and Gwen both for a long while already, and with them really being quite opposite characters in the later seasons of Merlin, I thought this was a great chance to attempt this. Needless to say, that I did not end up participating in the challenge... but still, the idea stemmed from this. ♥
Chosing pictures
Chosing the caps for the icon was relatively simple after that. The first thought that immediately came to my mind was the image of them both being shown as queens of Camelot (yes, I was being very innovative here ;P), and luckily enough, there was that scene with Morgana sitting on the throne, and also the dream sequence that gave us the crowning of Gwen.
I already knew that I wanted to have some kind of silhouette effect for the blending, so I chose a screencap that showed Gwen up-close and in profile, and then the one with Morgana on the throne, which was a little more zoomed out. I also wanted to have Morgana in the foreground and a little smaller, because in that scene she has already such a strong cold air and presence about her; as opposed to Gwen, who's appearance is a lot more soft and gentle and who I wanted to cover the background of the icon.
To color... or not to color
Originally, I had planned to make the icon black and white, so it's all good. bright and vibrant and COLORFUL. I wanted to have Morgana in dark strong purple and Gwen in a bright saturated red, the contrast of the colors underlining the whole idea of being 'opposite'. The sad truth is, that I simply could not make it work, which still annoys me a little. So, in the end I had to resolve to black and white instead and do something completely different from what I originally wanted to do. Sigh.
Anyway, now that we've had enough babbling, let's hurry on to the the practical part of this - for once, there are not even a lot of things to do.
1. Blending
Having chosen my caps and with the idea of the silhouette effect in mind, I resized my images to the size I needed them in and placed them on top of each other in a new 100x100 pixel canvas.
To see how the pictures would blend together, I changed the blending mode of the layer at the top (the one with Morgana) to screen, so it looked like this:
2. Levels
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Levels
The lightning in Gwens picture made it very easy to use her as a silhouette, but I still needed to make her a little darker for this purpose. I did not want to change anything in Morgana's image, so I made it temporarily invisible by clicking the small eye next to her layer in the layer palette; this way I could concentrate on Gwen's picture only.
Then I created a simple Levels layer right above the Gwen layer and pulled the slider in the middle a little further to the right, which made the midtones in it quite a bit darker and gave it some more contrast overall.
After that, I made Morgana's layer visible again, again by clicking that small eye next to her layer, so I was back to having both images in front of me.
3. Blending/Refining
The blending still needed some refining; the background of Morgana's picture was way too busy and partly covering Gwen, so I wanted to mask these spots out to make the two women really the focus of the icon, without any unnecessary distractions.
I created a layer mask on the layer with Morgana and carefully brushed with black over the parts that I thought were not needed, using a small soft circle brush.
using layer mask:
→
4. Gradient Map
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Gradient Map
After literally hours of trying to get that coloring working that I talked about earlier, I finally gave up at some point and decided to make the icon simply black and white here.
I did this by adding a black and white Gradient Map layer, which also gave a bit more contrast to the image. The layer mode of the Gradient Map layer was left at normal and the opacity at 100%.
Now, this looked really muddy, the icon was in desperate need of even more contrast, so I duplicated the Gradient Map layer two more times; the blending mode of the first duplicate was set to screen at 37% opacity, the blending mode of the second duplicate was set to soft light and left at 100% opacity.
5. Silhouette
To reduce the icon only to the silhouette, I used another layer mask here.
First, I created a new copy layer on top by pressing Ctrl → Alt → Shift → E, then I did the layer mask for this layer, masking everything but the silhouette out - doing this took a while, since I literally painted the whole mask, zooming in and out and using a very small brush to get all the details right.
After that, I created a simple white Color Fill layer (Layer → New Fill Layer → Solid Color) and dragged it beneath the layer with the layer mask, for it to be used as a new background. (A little boring maybe, but well. In the original icon, I think I used a slightly textured background, but I managed to lose that layer somehow, so for now a simple white layer will have to do.)
using layer mask:
→
6. Light Blobs
Finally, as a last step, I wanted to add a few highlights to the icon, so I created two new empty layers on top - I think in the original icon it were a couple more, but here I'm going to leave it at two.
On the first layer, I painted with a white and a soft circle brush slightly over the part at the bottom with Morgana's dress, because I wanted to lighten this area up a little. The layer mode of this layer was set to soft light and the opacity left at 100%.
set to soft light →
On the second layer, I did the same, only that I painted on the area of the left and right side of Gwen's silhouette, then I set the blending mode of that layer to screen and lowered the opacity to 65%, which gave me just a few highlights in those places.
set to screen →
Well, and we're done already... now that was suprisingly short! ;) Tell me if you find any potential mistakes, and in case I have not covered the details enough here or you have any other questions, just ask.
Requested at Ask the Maker 2.0 by firstillusion, seconded by likealight
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 somewhat familiar with using layer masks
Overview:
- Blending
- Levels
- Blending/Refining ·
- Gradient Map
- Silhouette ·
- Light Blobs
- Layer Palette
· 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: Again, there is a slight difference to the original icon, since I had to recreate some of the steps.
Images used (original size): 1 | 2
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.
First, some words about inspiration, composition and failed coloring-attempts
The idea
This icon was inspired by a couple of things. First, I've always wanted to use some more blending in my icons in general, because I really love blended icons. The main reason that hindered me so far was simple laziness on my part in trying to find pictures that went well enough together.
Then, one of the challenges at elitesimplicity came up, 'Opposites attract', which basicly demanded the icon to be about opposites, which might have been two different characters from a show, as an example. I really wanted to try my hands at this and, since I had wanted to make an icon with Morgana and Gwen both for a long while already, and with them really being quite opposite characters in the later seasons of Merlin, I thought this was a great chance to attempt this. Needless to say, that I did not end up participating in the challenge... but still, the idea stemmed from this. ♥
Chosing pictures
Chosing the caps for the icon was relatively simple after that. The first thought that immediately came to my mind was the image of them both being shown as queens of Camelot (yes, I was being very innovative here ;P), and luckily enough, there was that scene with Morgana sitting on the throne, and also the dream sequence that gave us the crowning of Gwen.
I already knew that I wanted to have some kind of silhouette effect for the blending, so I chose a screencap that showed Gwen up-close and in profile, and then the one with Morgana on the throne, which was a little more zoomed out. I also wanted to have Morgana in the foreground and a little smaller, because in that scene she has already such a strong cold air and presence about her; as opposed to Gwen, who's appearance is a lot more soft and gentle and who I wanted to cover the background of the icon.
To color... or not to color
Originally, I had planned to make the icon black and white, so it's all good. bright and vibrant and COLORFUL. I wanted to have Morgana in dark strong purple and Gwen in a bright saturated red, the contrast of the colors underlining the whole idea of being 'opposite'. The sad truth is, that I simply could not make it work, which still annoys me a little. So, in the end I had to resolve to black and white instead and do something completely different from what I originally wanted to do. Sigh.
Anyway, now that we've had enough babbling, let's hurry on to the the practical part of this - for once, there are not even a lot of things to do.
1. Blending
Having chosen my caps and with the idea of the silhouette effect in mind, I resized my images to the size I needed them in and placed them on top of each other in a new 100x100 pixel canvas.
To see how the pictures would blend together, I changed the blending mode of the layer at the top (the one with Morgana) to screen, so it looked like this:
2. Levels
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Levels
The lightning in Gwens picture made it very easy to use her as a silhouette, but I still needed to make her a little darker for this purpose. I did not want to change anything in Morgana's image, so I made it temporarily invisible by clicking the small eye next to her layer in the layer palette; this way I could concentrate on Gwen's picture only.
Then I created a simple Levels layer right above the Gwen layer and pulled the slider in the middle a little further to the right, which made the midtones in it quite a bit darker and gave it some more contrast overall.
After that, I made Morgana's layer visible again, again by clicking that small eye next to her layer, so I was back to having both images in front of me.
3. Blending/Refining
The blending still needed some refining; the background of Morgana's picture was way too busy and partly covering Gwen, so I wanted to mask these spots out to make the two women really the focus of the icon, without any unnecessary distractions.
I created a layer mask on the layer with Morgana and carefully brushed with black over the parts that I thought were not needed, using a small soft circle brush.
using layer mask:
→
4. Gradient Map
Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Gradient Map
After literally hours of trying to get that coloring working that I talked about earlier, I finally gave up at some point and decided to make the icon simply black and white here.
I did this by adding a black and white Gradient Map layer, which also gave a bit more contrast to the image. The layer mode of the Gradient Map layer was left at normal and the opacity at 100%.
Now, this looked really muddy, the icon was in desperate need of even more contrast, so I duplicated the Gradient Map layer two more times; the blending mode of the first duplicate was set to screen at 37% opacity, the blending mode of the second duplicate was set to soft light and left at 100% opacity.
5. Silhouette
To reduce the icon only to the silhouette, I used another layer mask here.
First, I created a new copy layer on top by pressing Ctrl → Alt → Shift → E, then I did the layer mask for this layer, masking everything but the silhouette out - doing this took a while, since I literally painted the whole mask, zooming in and out and using a very small brush to get all the details right.
After that, I created a simple white Color Fill layer (Layer → New Fill Layer → Solid Color) and dragged it beneath the layer with the layer mask, for it to be used as a new background. (A little boring maybe, but well. In the original icon, I think I used a slightly textured background, but I managed to lose that layer somehow, so for now a simple white layer will have to do.)
using layer mask:
→
6. Light Blobs
Finally, as a last step, I wanted to add a few highlights to the icon, so I created two new empty layers on top - I think in the original icon it were a couple more, but here I'm going to leave it at two.
On the first layer, I painted with a white and a soft circle brush slightly over the part at the bottom with Morgana's dress, because I wanted to lighten this area up a little. The layer mode of this layer was set to soft light and the opacity left at 100%.
set to soft light →
On the second layer, I did the same, only that I painted on the area of the left and right side of Gwen's silhouette, then I set the blending mode of that layer to screen and lowered the opacity to 65%, which gave me just a few highlights in those places.
set to screen →
Well, and we're done already... now that was suprisingly short! ;) Tell me if you find any potential mistakes, and in case I have not covered the details enough here or you have any other questions, just ask.