Tutorial #004
This tutorial is part of my test for teachelite to prove I know what I'm talking about, lol. It is suppose to be for beginners which is why I sound like a condescending prat. However, for those of you who aren't beginners, towards the end of the tutorial, there are some fun tips that you might be interested in.
Program: Photoshop 7.0; translatable to other versions of Photoshop, and the first part of the tutorial is, I believe, translatable to other programs. However, if you carry onto to the tutorial's end, Selective Coloring and Photoshop specific filters is used, and render the instructions untranslatable.
Okay, so first off, here's a little list of the tools we'll be using today. This tutorial is for beginners, and I will try and explain the best I can each tool I am using. However, I'm also going to cheat a little and link everyone to other tutorials that will be useful as you test and fiddle about with these new tools, okay?
TOOLS of the TRADE
- the Selection Tool (It looks like THIS, and the menu where you mess about with its settings looks like THIS)
- Image Size (Image >> Image Size, and the menu looks like THIS)
- Layer Masks, Color Swatches, and the Brush Tool (The Layer Mask Tool looks like THIS, color swatches look like THIS, and the Brush tool and its menu look like THIS. A layer mask, once added, looks like THIS, but we'll talk more about that later on in the tutorial, okay?)
- Layer Blending Options (The menu looks like THIS.)
- Various Photoshop Filters (The menu looks like THIS, and I'll explain more about each Filter as we use it later on.)
- Selective Coloring Adjustment Layers (Layer >> New Adjustment Layer >> Selective Coloring; The menu looks like THIS)
ORIGINAL IMAGE >>
>>
Now the real fun begins. But before we start, I have to make two things clear:
1. I talk A LOT. Probably too much. I've tried to simply my process to make it easy to follow, but if something becomes too convoluted, I apologize.
2. I make icons on 300x300 canvases (300 pixels wide by 300 pixel tall), and then resize at the very end. This is simply something that I've adopted over the years, and has become an integral part of my iconing style. By no means do you have to copy me. If you prefer to start on a 100x100 canvas, then go right ahead. However, all the image examples will be in 300x300 squares because that's how I made the icon.
Step Zero
This isn't really a step; just some advice! You don't have to know what to do with an icon immediately! No, really. When I received the picture we'll be working with today, I had to stare at it for ages. And then I made a couple of things before I went forward with what we'll be making today. So feel free to experiment, go off the beaten path, and never feel inadequate just because you don't immediately get a light bulb over your head when you look at a picture. Icons don't always just fall into place. Sometimes all the time you have to work with them for a while. But let's get one thing straight, if you spend, oh, five minutes on an icon? I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOU. Haha. Alright. Moving on.
Step One
Okay. So, you've got your graphics program open, and you've got the image sitting pretty on a canvas (erm, in case someone doesn't know canvas is the lingo for,um, I guess a document in Photoshop. Every time you open something, you've opened a canvas. ), and you're ready to make an icon! Huzzah!
This step can be different for different people, but for me (and for the purposes of this tutorial) we're cropping first! So, how should we crop Jessica (who is amazingly gorgeous, by the way. Has any one noticed?)? Well, because she is so amazingly gorgeous (and because my so called creative genius won't kick in until later), we're going to give her a center crop. That means, quite obviously, that Jessica is going to sit at the center of our icon.
So, I click on my handy dandy selection tool (because, while you can use the Crop Tool to crop, I prefer the variety that the Selection Tool gives you). If you scroll back up to the beginning of this tutorial, there's a lovely link to what the selection tool looks like (A dashed square), and a picture of the menu that pops up at the top of your Photoshop when you choose to use it. In that menu you need to make sure you've got a couple of things set correctly.
First of all, you should NOT have it set to feather. There's the word Feather and then a box. In that box, it should say zero. Very important. Secondly, you will see the word Style and then a drop down menu; under that menu, please select normal. Done that? Awesome. Then just make sure you've got the image of Jessica selected (meaning that she's the image you are currently working with in PS), and then hit CTRL+a (this is the Photoshop short cut for Select All). A bounding box should appear around the image (meaning a bunch of dashed lines are dancing around the image); this means that you've selected all of the image. So next you'll want to hit CTRL+C (the short cut for COPY).
Now we're going to move away from the original image for a moment and create a new canvas. So please hit CTRL+n (the shortcut for Create New). A menu should pop up, and it will look like THIS. A couple of important things here. A: Down at the bottom where it says Contents? That absolutely MUST be set to transparent. B: Leave the image size alone for now. C: And finally, just in case, make sure the Mode is set to RBG Mode. With all that done, you can hit okay, and a new canvas should appear! Huzzah! Simply paste the image into the canvas by pressing CTRL+v (the shortcut for PASTE). Then you need to resize the image because presently it is too large for an icon of any sort (just a little note to those of you who are wondering 'why didn't she just resize the first image?'; NO. NEVER. Ahem. Typically, I reuse the original image for various things, and we will be doing so in this tutorial. So it is good to have the original image in the original size on hand at any given time).
If you remember back in the beginning, I gave you an example of the Image Size menu (found under Image >> Image Size). Two steps here. 1: Make completely certain you have CONSTRAIN PROPORTIONS checked. This is an absolute must. If you don't do this, I can promise you, the results will be deadly (hyperbole much? But they will be bad. *nods*). So make sure you have that checked and then 2: change the HEIGHT only to 300 pixels. You'll notice that the width has also changed which is what we wanted it to do, so don't worry about that. Alright, hit okay.
Now CTRL+a, CTRL+c, and CTRL+n again (Select all, copy, create a new canvas). Then follow the same steps for creating a new canvas as we did last time only with one exception! When you get to B, do this: Change the actual image size. Now, as I said earlier, I am working with a 300x300 canvas to begin with. Therefore, I change both the width and the height to 300 pixels. Pixels; nothing else, okay? Right, once you've done that (and everything else), then hit okay.
Then in this lovely, blank new canvas, we're going to place the amazing and equally lovely Jessica. So hit CTRL+v (the short cut for PASTE again). The image you previously copied of Jessica should appear in the new canvas. And we're done with step one. \O/ Told ya I talked too much.
Side note: You'll notice here that you can't see the checkered boxes that made up the transparent canvas on PS in the image here. That's one of the benefits of a transparent canvas and saving as a .png file. More on that later!
Step Two
Gosh, I'm already tired. Haha. Okay. So step two is...kind of hinky. Because it is me, and as I am always saying I am crazy and never do things in the right order. So pay attention or you'll lose me. ;D
In reality, I spent a while trying to come up with this step. I played around with various ideas and tricks. But we'll just pretend I didn't and get straight to it.
What we're going to do in this step is use the original (the BIG image of Jessica; told ya we'd need it!) image to create a background of sorts for the blank space (the parts where you can still see checkered boxes) in the icon.
So go back to the original image, and hit CTRL+a and CTRL+c (select all and copy). Then head back to the icon image (the 300x300 canvas), and hit CTRL+v (paste). Now some pretty nifty trees should be covering our image of Jessica.
Righty-o. Now then. You might be wondering how I'm going to fix the problem of the trees covering Jessica and looking ridiculous. Well, that's easy. Basically, in the layer palette, I select the layer that has the trees, and then I drag it below the layer that has the image of Jessica. Here's my rather crude illustration of what that looks like. So, now, having done that, Jessica should be sitting overtop the trees, and we're done with step two.
Step Three
This step involves layer masks. I will try to explain these the best I can, but If you have never used them before/don't know what they are, I recommend looking at a few tutorials on the subject. Here's one that, aside from all the technical mumbo jumbo, seems like it would be very useful!
Okay, so step three is, in summary, blending Jessica with the trees behind her. To do this, we'll need to use a layer mask. So make sure the layer containing the image of Jessica is selected in your layer palette (like so). And then, if you remember from our Tool Box, click the little button that adds a layer mask. You'll see that once you've clicked the button, a white square appears beside the image of Jessica in the layer palette (looks like this); that's your layer mask!
Right, so a few things about layer masks: you use the brush tool to manipulate your layer mask, and the color swatches I mentioned in the Tool Box? Yeah, those need to be set to Black (#000000) and White (#FFFFFF). Black erases and White adds back. So, for example, if I took a black brush, and, on the layer mask, colored over Jessica's head, it would disappear on the icon and the trees would be visible instead. If I then switched my brush color to white and colored over where her head previously was, it would reappear. Make sense?
So, I set my brush color to black (meaning the color swatch on top is black), and then I pick out my brush using the brush menu. I don't download brushes usually, so all the brushes I use are Photoshop 7 Defaults. In this case, I am using a soft, round brush (like so) set to omg, I can't remember about 50 pixels. Using that brush, I "erase" the background behind Jessica (so the trees/flowers/etc). Try your best not to get rid of any parts that belong to Jessica, lol, but if you do, just use the little arrows beside the color swatches to switch from black to white and fix it! (Just an aside: I've done this step twice now, and I swear my layer masks are practically identical. That's unreal.)
Okay, so as you can see, my cut out of Jessica is a little bit messy. This is for two reasons: I am lazy and I like short cuts (pretend I didn't say that) and the second is because later on, the messiness won't matter for various reasons. Anyway, thus ends step three. (By the way, the layer mask example in the tool box is what my layer mask for this step looks like. The black is where I erased and the white is the part of the image still visible.)
Step Four
Like I said, the sloppy cut out of Jessica won't matter, and this is the step that makes that statement true. We're going to make use of my favorite layer Blending Mode: Soft Light. Layers have a variety of blending modes that change the look and feel of an icon, and you can find these blending modes two ways:
The First Way is to double click on the layer. It will bring up a menu that looks like this. The drop down box beside the word Mode allows you to change the blending mode of the layer, and the opacity slider below it changes the opacity (Opacity explained) of that layer.
The Second Way is probably better to use once you've gotten the hang of blending modes and what they do. If you look at the layer palette, and then click on a layer, you'll notice that up at the top there's a drop down box and other opacity setting. This is the less detailed blending mode menu. If you click on the drop down box, you can change the blending mode and the opacity slider, again, allows you to change the opacity.
Right, now then we'll get back to the icon we're supposed to be making. :) For this step, we'll require this image once more (the 300x200 image before we put a layer mask on it). You take that image and paste it onto our icon canvas so that it is the top layer (meaning that this will be a new layer on top of both the tree layer and the layer with Jessica that we've layer masked. Your layer palette will look something like this.). Then you're going to change the blending mode of the layer. I recommend, as beginners, that you change the blending mode using the first way until you get used to it. So you're changing the blend mode to Soft Light. This particular blending mode does a few things. First of all, it adds contrast and depth to the icon (meaning that is adds and strengths shadows and makes the light parts of your icon stronger). It will also maker your icon, overall, darker.
Yes! I know! You're wondering why I bothered to mask the original image of Jessica at all. Well, I'll tell you why. While I want the Jessica to be strong and at the forefront, I don't actually want the background to stand out all that much. I want it to blend with the trees we've put behind Jessica. If we didn't mask the original image but followed all these steps anyway, you'd get this which isn't what we're going for at all. I want Jessica to stand out and the background to be soft, dreamy, and attractive; that's why we masked the first image.
Okay, so this step has just a few more instructions before we can move on. The layer we just set to soft light? It needs to be duplicated twice. To do this, you right click on the layer in the layer palette, and hit Duplicate Layer. Your layer palette will look something like this. Now this is the interesting part. We aren't going to leave those layers as they are.
We are going to use the two duplicated layers to fill up the space HERE. To do this we'll need to use the Move Tool (it looks like THIS). After selecting that, select the first duplicated layer in the layer palette and move it to the left of Jessica to fill up that space. Then select the second duplicated layer in the layer palette and move it to the right of Jessica to fill up the space.
Don't worry if you have overlapping. This icon is all about the overlapping. ;D
And now we're done with step four!
Step Five
Okay, so in finishing step four, we've successfully created what I call a base. In my case, an icon is still in the 'base' stage until I start doing things that spice it up (coloring, textures, etc). So that's what we're going to start doing now. And to begin with, I am going to introduce you to my very, very good friends the Photoshop Filters!
Now a lot of people will say 'steer clear of the Filters! They bring nothing but trouble!'. And some of them do! I've yet to find a proper use for all of them. But, in moderation, a good deal of the Filters are really handy!
So to start off with, we're going to use one of my favorites: Diffuse Glow. Now really, I am cheating a bit here because, to be honest, I wouldn't encourage beginners to use the Diffuse Glow tool. Not until they'd learned the basics of the program and had a good grasp on icon making because Diffuse Glow in the hands of people who don't know how to use it? The abuse will happen and it will be scary. This shouldn't put you off it though! Diffuse Glow, used well, is really nifty and very useful. I use it ALL. THE. TIME. (And even I abuse it on occasion; so none of us are infallible. Haha.) Anyway, I've explained Diffuse Glow is detail in this tutorial I wrote up, so I'm not going to explain it here so much.
But basically, you Shift+CTRL+c (Copy Merged) and then CTRL+v (paste) which will create a new layer that has everything you've done on it thus far all merged together. Then you use Diffuse Glow. The basics: You make sure the bottom color swatch (we've talked about these before; if you've forgotten check the tool box!) is set to white, open the Diffuse Glow menu (Filter >> Distort >> Diffuse Glow), make sure Graininess is set to zero, and then you can fiddle about with the Glow Amount/Clear Amount to taste. In my case, the clear amount usually sticks at the default 15, and the Glow Amount varies. For this icon, I used Glow Amount 10. Then hit okay.
Then you set that layer to Soft Light (go back to Step Four if you've forgotten how to do that!). The soft light ups the contrast and the shadows again, but the glow from the Diffuse Glow lightens up and draws attention to certain places (in this case, Jessica's face).
Okay, since the next part involves Filters as well, we're just going to lump it in with this step. :D
Shift+CTRL+c (Copy Merged) and then CTRL+v (paste) again! So now we've got a new layer that combines everything we've done thus far. Fun times! And we're going to use a filter that has recently become a staple in my coloring style (yes, I know! This is actual coloring! Fooled ya, didn't I? Color Layers and Selective Coloring aren't the only ways to color things, you know.). It is called Paint Daubs.
You can find it by going to Filters >> Artistic >> Paint Daubs. The menu that pops up will look like THIS. Er, well, actually, it'll come up with the Photoshop Default which looks slightly different, but it doesn't matter. This is a quick and dirty way to create a light texture from an image you already have. And I am in love with it. As you can see in the menu example, I set the Brush size to 50, the sharpness to 0, and the brush type to simple. I encourage everyone to play around with these settings just to see what they do. It makes for some interesting experiments, let me tell you! Anyway, back to the icon. You need to change the settings and then hit okay. And now the painting-like light texture is the newest layer in your palette. Set it to Soft Light.
Now the thing about Paint Daubs is this, it'll add warmth and color to your image. It'll make certain things darker and certain things lighter. But it will also, on occasion, look kind of off. Like Jessica has a halo. Which, I am sure she's an angel, but we don't want her to look like that. So. Solution is this! GAUSSIAN BLUR, another very good friend of mine. You can find it under Filters >> Blur > Gaussian Blur. The menu should be very simple to figure out (you push the slider left, you get less blur. You push the slider right, you get more intense blur), and it looks like THIS. That will smooth out the Paint Daubs layer a bit.
Now, the thing is...upon my own inspection of the icon, I discovered that the Paint Daubs made her face too bright (a problem I've encountered plenty of times). So in order to change that, I opened the Blending Mode menu for the layer, and changed the opacity to 60% to lower the intensity of the layer.
And we're done with Step Five!
Step Six
Right so, once again, in reality, I fiddled around a bit and did a few different things before settling in on the things we're going to do in this step. But we're ignoring my icon process in favor of TEACHING. \O/
So. We're going to do two things in this step and they both amount to this: make the icon look more interesting and dynamic.
The first thing I noticed is that, well, the icon looks a bit boring. Don't you think? So I decided to use the icon itself to spice things up a bit. I recommend this to all icon makers, actually. Instead of relying on a texture made by someone else, find ways to make your own so to speak.
This time we'll be adding the bars you can see on the top and bottom of the final icons. To do this, Shift+CTRL+c (Copy Merged) and then CTRL+v (paste) TWICE (layer palette). Then, just like in step four, we're going to use the move tool to move the layers up and down respectively. Once you've done that, you're going to change the blend mode of both layers to Overlay which is basically the obnoxious cousin of Soft Light. It does everything Soft Light does only...way more intensely.
Okay, so we've done that and already the icon looks a lot more interesting, right? Haha, I thought so anyway. So the next bit is another Filter friend of mine! It's called High Pass. I explain it in the tutorial I linked when we were talking about Diffuse Glow, but a quick run down now. It adds contrast while keeping the light in an image. It can also assist in the sharpening of an image. Those are the basics.
So Shift+CTRL+c (Copy Merged) once more (with feeling), and then go to Filter >> Other >> High Pass. That should bring up a menu that looks like this. Uh huh. It does, in fact, make your image look wacked out and alien! Isn't it great? XD In all seriousness though, this is what you want it to look like. As you can see in the image, I keep the radius at 60.0 pixels. You can play around with that, but generally speaking, I just leave it alone because it works well on that setting. Anyway, hit okay.
And then (and this is going to be a huge surprise, I know!) set the layer to SOFT LIGHT! *gasp* Haha. Right, so after you've set it to Soft Light, you'll notice that this layer, at full opacity, is a little strong. She looks like a snow woman. So, er, we need to lower the opacity a bit. In this case, I went to 30% after I fiddled a bit.
And we're done with step five. NOTE: If you do NOT have Selective Coloring capabilities, then please skip step seven and move on to step eight. For those of you with selective coloring (and who want to learn how to achieve icon example #2) please proceed to step seven as normal.
Step Seven
So...to anyone who follows my work, it is pretty clear that I like purples, blues, and greens as opposed to reds and yellows. So I decided to go crazy with the Selective Coloring and switch things up a bit. This step is voluntary, of course, and the red/yellow icon that comes out of this tutorial looks perfectly fine without my crazy. :D
But, for those of you who want to start experimenting with Selective Coloring (or those who already use it and just want to make the crazy icon), I'm including it!
Now Selective Coloring is a wily tool, and it can spell any icon makers doom. It is another tool in which moderation is the key. Although, I might be flouting the rules just a smidge. Anyway, once you've got Selective Coloring down, you can do all sorts of really cool stuff with it! THIS is just a really, really basic selective coloring guide that can give you a springboard into what selective coloring can do for an image. Here's another one that has some basic SC theory.
I admit that SC isn't a strong point off mine because I use it so very rarely. But I do use it occasionally, like in this icon!
So the idea then was to get rid of some of the yellow and some of the red because I didn't like them. So. In the SC drop down menu, you'll see a list of colors starting with RED. These are the main colors. SO the RED menu deals with all the reds in the icon. This is the menu we want first. Now, it is the yellow in the red that keeps it from being pink/purple, so that's what I was concerned with. I went down to the yellow slider, and pulled it to the left (this decreases the amount of yellow in the red parts of your icon).
So, as you can see, all the parts of the like that were red before (like her jacket, for example) are now pink/purple in color. But I couldn't just stop there because the icon was looking A) a little dull and B) still too yellow. You can already see in places in the icon where the shadows are a greenish color. So I decided to increase those a bit by going to the drop down menu and going to NEUTRALS. The last three in the drop down menu of the SC menu are NEUTRALS, WHITES, and BLACKS. They are the big three; the titans, if you will, of SC. BLACKS changes the blacks in the icon, WHITES the whites, and NEUTRALS everything in between.
So focusing on the NEUTRAL sliders, I changed the amount of cyan in my image. In fact, I increased it all the way by moving the slider right until I hit 100%. You can see the difference; everything is slightly more green/blue than it was before.
Right, so, if you look at this, you can see the problem. While, in my opinion, it is okay to have the background look unnatural, I don't think it is okay to make people look ridiculous. So, Jessica's face. Not only is she far too pale, but she's too cyan as well. Which means we're going to go back and revisit layer masks.
Now SC layers (and all adjustment layers in PS) come with their own layer masks already. You might have noticed in your layer palette that the SC layer already has the little white box beside it? Right, so we don't need to create a layer mask for this layer. We can just go right ahead about our masking business. So if you remember back when we were masking away the background from Jessica, you need a soft, round brush (at about 50 pixels) and you need to use the color black. Then paint over Jessica's face on the layer mask (if you start brushing and black appears on the actual icon, undo and then make sure you have the actual layer mask-the white box-selected in your layer palette). get all of her face, her chest, and, if you like, her hair.
And thus concludes step seven!
Step Eight
Finishing touches! \O/
For people who already know their way around a bit, I recommend checking out THIS tutorial as it gives a little background to how I came about obsessively using this particular technique (although, adapted to suit myself, of course). And newbies should definitely bookmark it for perusal later!
So regardless of whether or not you went through the Selective Coloring process, you're icon is looking a little flat, wouldn't you agree? So we're going to use a little trick of the light (lol, that's a pun >.<) to add some depth to our icon!
To do that we need to create a new (empty) layer. You can do that long hand by going to Layer >> New >> Layer. You can use the short cut : Shift+CTRL+n. Or you can use the little button that looks like this. Which ever way you end up doing it, do it.
On that new layer, we're going to take the brush we've been using (the soft, round one) and we're going to paint with it. I recommend upping the size a tad (maybe 150 pixels instead of 50), and then change the color to light beige (click on the swatch that we've been using to layer mask-so the one that's black currently or whatever color you had selected-and a color menu will come up that looks like this. You can drag the slider, click in the large colorful box, or imput a HEX code-like #FDE8DC for instance-to change the color).
Now you want to paint in areas that you need to be lighter. In this case (since we've already made Jessica lighter), I wanted to lighten up the background that has become quite dark over the course of spicing it up. So I painted around her shoulders, the edges, and so on to my liking. This part is really hard to just nail down into words because everyone does it differently every time. So do whatever feels right. Then, once you've finished painting, bring up the blending modes menu for the layer and do two things: first, set the layer to Soft Light (this will blend the brush in with the icon while also lightening everything up) and the lower the opacity to around 60% so that the brush isn't quite to strong. Hit okay.
Finally, duplicate that layer once (right click on the layer, duplicate layer).
And the only thing left to do, for this icon anyway, is to resize down to 100x100 images. :D
Notes:
1. I discovered yesterday that my icons are a touch brighter on desktop monitors, so if something looks too bright for you, I'm sorry. It is just part of having different computers, I guess. Haha, I feel like I need to say that all the time now. >.<
2. I cheated, I know! This tutorial, though simplified down and then over-explained so that, should a beginner attempt it, they could make the icon if they follow the steps exactly, is really for people with a more advanced knowledge of PS. Beginners, while I believe capable of following this tutorial and learning some of the basics through it, are not going to get as much from it as the people who are more experienced with PS will.
3. That being said, I took beginner seriously. Despite writing a tutorial for an icon maker who is more at my level of ease with PS, I tried to provide instructions and example images that would assist someone with very, very minimal knowledge of PS. basically, the only thing that I assumed they knew, for some reason, was what a layer palette was. o.O
4. I apologize for any typos! I spent 30-45 minutes on the icon, but 4-5 hours on the tutorial. *headdesk*
Program: Photoshop 7.0; translatable to other versions of Photoshop, and the first part of the tutorial is, I believe, translatable to other programs. However, if you carry onto to the tutorial's end, Selective Coloring and Photoshop specific filters is used, and render the instructions untranslatable.
Okay, so first off, here's a little list of the tools we'll be using today. This tutorial is for beginners, and I will try and explain the best I can each tool I am using. However, I'm also going to cheat a little and link everyone to other tutorials that will be useful as you test and fiddle about with these new tools, okay?
TOOLS of the TRADE
- the Selection Tool (It looks like THIS, and the menu where you mess about with its settings looks like THIS)
- Image Size (Image >> Image Size, and the menu looks like THIS)
- Layer Masks, Color Swatches, and the Brush Tool (The Layer Mask Tool looks like THIS, color swatches look like THIS, and the Brush tool and its menu look like THIS. A layer mask, once added, looks like THIS, but we'll talk more about that later on in the tutorial, okay?)
- Layer Blending Options (The menu looks like THIS.)
- Various Photoshop Filters (The menu looks like THIS, and I'll explain more about each Filter as we use it later on.)
- Selective Coloring Adjustment Layers (Layer >> New Adjustment Layer >> Selective Coloring; The menu looks like THIS)
ORIGINAL IMAGE >>
>>
Now the real fun begins. But before we start, I have to make two things clear:
1. I talk A LOT. Probably too much. I've tried to simply my process to make it easy to follow, but if something becomes too convoluted, I apologize.
2. I make icons on 300x300 canvases (300 pixels wide by 300 pixel tall), and then resize at the very end. This is simply something that I've adopted over the years, and has become an integral part of my iconing style. By no means do you have to copy me. If you prefer to start on a 100x100 canvas, then go right ahead. However, all the image examples will be in 300x300 squares because that's how I made the icon.
Step Zero
This isn't really a step; just some advice! You don't have to know what to do with an icon immediately! No, really. When I received the picture we'll be working with today, I had to stare at it for ages. And then I made a couple of things before I went forward with what we'll be making today. So feel free to experiment, go off the beaten path, and never feel inadequate just because you don't immediately get a light bulb over your head when you look at a picture. Icons don't always just fall into place. Sometimes all the time you have to work with them for a while. But let's get one thing straight, if you spend, oh, five minutes on an icon? I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOU. Haha. Alright. Moving on.
Step One
Okay. So, you've got your graphics program open, and you've got the image sitting pretty on a canvas (erm, in case someone doesn't know canvas is the lingo for,um, I guess a document in Photoshop. Every time you open something, you've opened a canvas. ), and you're ready to make an icon! Huzzah!
This step can be different for different people, but for me (and for the purposes of this tutorial) we're cropping first! So, how should we crop Jessica (who is amazingly gorgeous, by the way. Has any one noticed?)? Well, because she is so amazingly gorgeous (and because my so called creative genius won't kick in until later), we're going to give her a center crop. That means, quite obviously, that Jessica is going to sit at the center of our icon.
So, I click on my handy dandy selection tool (because, while you can use the Crop Tool to crop, I prefer the variety that the Selection Tool gives you). If you scroll back up to the beginning of this tutorial, there's a lovely link to what the selection tool looks like (A dashed square), and a picture of the menu that pops up at the top of your Photoshop when you choose to use it. In that menu you need to make sure you've got a couple of things set correctly.
First of all, you should NOT have it set to feather. There's the word Feather and then a box. In that box, it should say zero. Very important. Secondly, you will see the word Style and then a drop down menu; under that menu, please select normal. Done that? Awesome. Then just make sure you've got the image of Jessica selected (meaning that she's the image you are currently working with in PS), and then hit CTRL+a (this is the Photoshop short cut for Select All). A bounding box should appear around the image (meaning a bunch of dashed lines are dancing around the image); this means that you've selected all of the image. So next you'll want to hit CTRL+C (the short cut for COPY).
Now we're going to move away from the original image for a moment and create a new canvas. So please hit CTRL+n (the shortcut for Create New). A menu should pop up, and it will look like THIS. A couple of important things here. A: Down at the bottom where it says Contents? That absolutely MUST be set to transparent. B: Leave the image size alone for now. C: And finally, just in case, make sure the Mode is set to RBG Mode. With all that done, you can hit okay, and a new canvas should appear! Huzzah! Simply paste the image into the canvas by pressing CTRL+v (the shortcut for PASTE). Then you need to resize the image because presently it is too large for an icon of any sort (just a little note to those of you who are wondering 'why didn't she just resize the first image?'; NO. NEVER. Ahem. Typically, I reuse the original image for various things, and we will be doing so in this tutorial. So it is good to have the original image in the original size on hand at any given time).
If you remember back in the beginning, I gave you an example of the Image Size menu (found under Image >> Image Size). Two steps here. 1: Make completely certain you have CONSTRAIN PROPORTIONS checked. This is an absolute must. If you don't do this, I can promise you, the results will be deadly (hyperbole much? But they will be bad. *nods*). So make sure you have that checked and then 2: change the HEIGHT only to 300 pixels. You'll notice that the width has also changed which is what we wanted it to do, so don't worry about that. Alright, hit okay.
Now CTRL+a, CTRL+c, and CTRL+n again (Select all, copy, create a new canvas). Then follow the same steps for creating a new canvas as we did last time only with one exception! When you get to B, do this: Change the actual image size. Now, as I said earlier, I am working with a 300x300 canvas to begin with. Therefore, I change both the width and the height to 300 pixels. Pixels; nothing else, okay? Right, once you've done that (and everything else), then hit okay.
Then in this lovely, blank new canvas, we're going to place the amazing and equally lovely Jessica. So hit CTRL+v (the short cut for PASTE again). The image you previously copied of Jessica should appear in the new canvas. And we're done with step one. \O/ Told ya I talked too much.
Side note: You'll notice here that you can't see the checkered boxes that made up the transparent canvas on PS in the image here. That's one of the benefits of a transparent canvas and saving as a .png file. More on that later!
Step Two
Gosh, I'm already tired. Haha. Okay. So step two is...kind of hinky. Because it is me, and as I am always saying I am crazy and never do things in the right order. So pay attention or you'll lose me. ;D
In reality, I spent a while trying to come up with this step. I played around with various ideas and tricks. But we'll just pretend I didn't and get straight to it.
What we're going to do in this step is use the original (the BIG image of Jessica; told ya we'd need it!) image to create a background of sorts for the blank space (the parts where you can still see checkered boxes) in the icon.
So go back to the original image, and hit CTRL+a and CTRL+c (select all and copy). Then head back to the icon image (the 300x300 canvas), and hit CTRL+v (paste). Now some pretty nifty trees should be covering our image of Jessica.
Righty-o. Now then. You might be wondering how I'm going to fix the problem of the trees covering Jessica and looking ridiculous. Well, that's easy. Basically, in the layer palette, I select the layer that has the trees, and then I drag it below the layer that has the image of Jessica. Here's my rather crude illustration of what that looks like. So, now, having done that, Jessica should be sitting overtop the trees, and we're done with step two.
Step Three
This step involves layer masks. I will try to explain these the best I can, but If you have never used them before/don't know what they are, I recommend looking at a few tutorials on the subject. Here's one that, aside from all the technical mumbo jumbo, seems like it would be very useful!
Okay, so step three is, in summary, blending Jessica with the trees behind her. To do this, we'll need to use a layer mask. So make sure the layer containing the image of Jessica is selected in your layer palette (like so). And then, if you remember from our Tool Box, click the little button that adds a layer mask. You'll see that once you've clicked the button, a white square appears beside the image of Jessica in the layer palette (looks like this); that's your layer mask!
Right, so a few things about layer masks: you use the brush tool to manipulate your layer mask, and the color swatches I mentioned in the Tool Box? Yeah, those need to be set to Black (#000000) and White (#FFFFFF). Black erases and White adds back. So, for example, if I took a black brush, and, on the layer mask, colored over Jessica's head, it would disappear on the icon and the trees would be visible instead. If I then switched my brush color to white and colored over where her head previously was, it would reappear. Make sense?
So, I set my brush color to black (meaning the color swatch on top is black), and then I pick out my brush using the brush menu. I don't download brushes usually, so all the brushes I use are Photoshop 7 Defaults. In this case, I am using a soft, round brush (like so) set to omg, I can't remember about 50 pixels. Using that brush, I "erase" the background behind Jessica (so the trees/flowers/etc). Try your best not to get rid of any parts that belong to Jessica, lol, but if you do, just use the little arrows beside the color swatches to switch from black to white and fix it! (Just an aside: I've done this step twice now, and I swear my layer masks are practically identical. That's unreal.)
Okay, so as you can see, my cut out of Jessica is a little bit messy. This is for two reasons: I am lazy and I like short cuts (pretend I didn't say that) and the second is because later on, the messiness won't matter for various reasons. Anyway, thus ends step three. (By the way, the layer mask example in the tool box is what my layer mask for this step looks like. The black is where I erased and the white is the part of the image still visible.)
Step Four
Like I said, the sloppy cut out of Jessica won't matter, and this is the step that makes that statement true. We're going to make use of my favorite layer Blending Mode: Soft Light. Layers have a variety of blending modes that change the look and feel of an icon, and you can find these blending modes two ways:
The First Way is to double click on the layer. It will bring up a menu that looks like this. The drop down box beside the word Mode allows you to change the blending mode of the layer, and the opacity slider below it changes the opacity (Opacity explained) of that layer.
The Second Way is probably better to use once you've gotten the hang of blending modes and what they do. If you look at the layer palette, and then click on a layer, you'll notice that up at the top there's a drop down box and other opacity setting. This is the less detailed blending mode menu. If you click on the drop down box, you can change the blending mode and the opacity slider, again, allows you to change the opacity.
Right, now then we'll get back to the icon we're supposed to be making. :) For this step, we'll require this image once more (the 300x200 image before we put a layer mask on it). You take that image and paste it onto our icon canvas so that it is the top layer (meaning that this will be a new layer on top of both the tree layer and the layer with Jessica that we've layer masked. Your layer palette will look something like this.). Then you're going to change the blending mode of the layer. I recommend, as beginners, that you change the blending mode using the first way until you get used to it. So you're changing the blend mode to Soft Light. This particular blending mode does a few things. First of all, it adds contrast and depth to the icon (meaning that is adds and strengths shadows and makes the light parts of your icon stronger). It will also maker your icon, overall, darker.
Yes! I know! You're wondering why I bothered to mask the original image of Jessica at all. Well, I'll tell you why. While I want the Jessica to be strong and at the forefront, I don't actually want the background to stand out all that much. I want it to blend with the trees we've put behind Jessica. If we didn't mask the original image but followed all these steps anyway, you'd get this which isn't what we're going for at all. I want Jessica to stand out and the background to be soft, dreamy, and attractive; that's why we masked the first image.
Okay, so this step has just a few more instructions before we can move on. The layer we just set to soft light? It needs to be duplicated twice. To do this, you right click on the layer in the layer palette, and hit Duplicate Layer. Your layer palette will look something like this. Now this is the interesting part. We aren't going to leave those layers as they are.
We are going to use the two duplicated layers to fill up the space HERE. To do this we'll need to use the Move Tool (it looks like THIS). After selecting that, select the first duplicated layer in the layer palette and move it to the left of Jessica to fill up that space. Then select the second duplicated layer in the layer palette and move it to the right of Jessica to fill up the space.
Don't worry if you have overlapping. This icon is all about the overlapping. ;D
And now we're done with step four!
Step Five
Okay, so in finishing step four, we've successfully created what I call a base. In my case, an icon is still in the 'base' stage until I start doing things that spice it up (coloring, textures, etc). So that's what we're going to start doing now. And to begin with, I am going to introduce you to my very, very good friends the Photoshop Filters!
Now a lot of people will say 'steer clear of the Filters! They bring nothing but trouble!'. And some of them do! I've yet to find a proper use for all of them. But, in moderation, a good deal of the Filters are really handy!
So to start off with, we're going to use one of my favorites: Diffuse Glow. Now really, I am cheating a bit here because, to be honest, I wouldn't encourage beginners to use the Diffuse Glow tool. Not until they'd learned the basics of the program and had a good grasp on icon making because Diffuse Glow in the hands of people who don't know how to use it? The abuse will happen and it will be scary. This shouldn't put you off it though! Diffuse Glow, used well, is really nifty and very useful. I use it ALL. THE. TIME. (And even I abuse it on occasion; so none of us are infallible. Haha.) Anyway, I've explained Diffuse Glow is detail in this tutorial I wrote up, so I'm not going to explain it here so much.
But basically, you Shift+CTRL+c (Copy Merged) and then CTRL+v (paste) which will create a new layer that has everything you've done on it thus far all merged together. Then you use Diffuse Glow. The basics: You make sure the bottom color swatch (we've talked about these before; if you've forgotten check the tool box!) is set to white, open the Diffuse Glow menu (Filter >> Distort >> Diffuse Glow), make sure Graininess is set to zero, and then you can fiddle about with the Glow Amount/Clear Amount to taste. In my case, the clear amount usually sticks at the default 15, and the Glow Amount varies. For this icon, I used Glow Amount 10. Then hit okay.
Then you set that layer to Soft Light (go back to Step Four if you've forgotten how to do that!). The soft light ups the contrast and the shadows again, but the glow from the Diffuse Glow lightens up and draws attention to certain places (in this case, Jessica's face).
Okay, since the next part involves Filters as well, we're just going to lump it in with this step. :D
Shift+CTRL+c (Copy Merged) and then CTRL+v (paste) again! So now we've got a new layer that combines everything we've done thus far. Fun times! And we're going to use a filter that has recently become a staple in my coloring style (yes, I know! This is actual coloring! Fooled ya, didn't I? Color Layers and Selective Coloring aren't the only ways to color things, you know.). It is called Paint Daubs.
You can find it by going to Filters >> Artistic >> Paint Daubs. The menu that pops up will look like THIS. Er, well, actually, it'll come up with the Photoshop Default which looks slightly different, but it doesn't matter. This is a quick and dirty way to create a light texture from an image you already have. And I am in love with it. As you can see in the menu example, I set the Brush size to 50, the sharpness to 0, and the brush type to simple. I encourage everyone to play around with these settings just to see what they do. It makes for some interesting experiments, let me tell you! Anyway, back to the icon. You need to change the settings and then hit okay. And now the painting-like light texture is the newest layer in your palette. Set it to Soft Light.
Now the thing about Paint Daubs is this, it'll add warmth and color to your image. It'll make certain things darker and certain things lighter. But it will also, on occasion, look kind of off. Like Jessica has a halo. Which, I am sure she's an angel, but we don't want her to look like that. So. Solution is this! GAUSSIAN BLUR, another very good friend of mine. You can find it under Filters >> Blur > Gaussian Blur. The menu should be very simple to figure out (you push the slider left, you get less blur. You push the slider right, you get more intense blur), and it looks like THIS. That will smooth out the Paint Daubs layer a bit.
Now, the thing is...upon my own inspection of the icon, I discovered that the Paint Daubs made her face too bright (a problem I've encountered plenty of times). So in order to change that, I opened the Blending Mode menu for the layer, and changed the opacity to 60% to lower the intensity of the layer.
And we're done with Step Five!
Step Six
Right so, once again, in reality, I fiddled around a bit and did a few different things before settling in on the things we're going to do in this step. But we're ignoring my icon process in favor of TEACHING. \O/
So. We're going to do two things in this step and they both amount to this: make the icon look more interesting and dynamic.
The first thing I noticed is that, well, the icon looks a bit boring. Don't you think? So I decided to use the icon itself to spice things up a bit. I recommend this to all icon makers, actually. Instead of relying on a texture made by someone else, find ways to make your own so to speak.
This time we'll be adding the bars you can see on the top and bottom of the final icons. To do this, Shift+CTRL+c (Copy Merged) and then CTRL+v (paste) TWICE (layer palette). Then, just like in step four, we're going to use the move tool to move the layers up and down respectively. Once you've done that, you're going to change the blend mode of both layers to Overlay which is basically the obnoxious cousin of Soft Light. It does everything Soft Light does only...way more intensely.
Okay, so we've done that and already the icon looks a lot more interesting, right? Haha, I thought so anyway. So the next bit is another Filter friend of mine! It's called High Pass. I explain it in the tutorial I linked when we were talking about Diffuse Glow, but a quick run down now. It adds contrast while keeping the light in an image. It can also assist in the sharpening of an image. Those are the basics.
So Shift+CTRL+c (Copy Merged) once more (with feeling), and then go to Filter >> Other >> High Pass. That should bring up a menu that looks like this. Uh huh. It does, in fact, make your image look wacked out and alien! Isn't it great? XD In all seriousness though, this is what you want it to look like. As you can see in the image, I keep the radius at 60.0 pixels. You can play around with that, but generally speaking, I just leave it alone because it works well on that setting. Anyway, hit okay.
And then (and this is going to be a huge surprise, I know!) set the layer to SOFT LIGHT! *gasp* Haha. Right, so after you've set it to Soft Light, you'll notice that this layer, at full opacity, is a little strong. She looks like a snow woman. So, er, we need to lower the opacity a bit. In this case, I went to 30% after I fiddled a bit.
And we're done with step five. NOTE: If you do NOT have Selective Coloring capabilities, then please skip step seven and move on to step eight. For those of you with selective coloring (and who want to learn how to achieve icon example #2) please proceed to step seven as normal.
Step Seven
So...to anyone who follows my work, it is pretty clear that I like purples, blues, and greens as opposed to reds and yellows. So I decided to go crazy with the Selective Coloring and switch things up a bit. This step is voluntary, of course, and the red/yellow icon that comes out of this tutorial looks perfectly fine without my crazy. :D
But, for those of you who want to start experimenting with Selective Coloring (or those who already use it and just want to make the crazy icon), I'm including it!
Now Selective Coloring is a wily tool, and it can spell any icon makers doom. It is another tool in which moderation is the key. Although, I might be flouting the rules just a smidge. Anyway, once you've got Selective Coloring down, you can do all sorts of really cool stuff with it! THIS is just a really, really basic selective coloring guide that can give you a springboard into what selective coloring can do for an image. Here's another one that has some basic SC theory.
I admit that SC isn't a strong point off mine because I use it so very rarely. But I do use it occasionally, like in this icon!
So the idea then was to get rid of some of the yellow and some of the red because I didn't like them. So. In the SC drop down menu, you'll see a list of colors starting with RED. These are the main colors. SO the RED menu deals with all the reds in the icon. This is the menu we want first. Now, it is the yellow in the red that keeps it from being pink/purple, so that's what I was concerned with. I went down to the yellow slider, and pulled it to the left (this decreases the amount of yellow in the red parts of your icon).
So, as you can see, all the parts of the like that were red before (like her jacket, for example) are now pink/purple in color. But I couldn't just stop there because the icon was looking A) a little dull and B) still too yellow. You can already see in places in the icon where the shadows are a greenish color. So I decided to increase those a bit by going to the drop down menu and going to NEUTRALS. The last three in the drop down menu of the SC menu are NEUTRALS, WHITES, and BLACKS. They are the big three; the titans, if you will, of SC. BLACKS changes the blacks in the icon, WHITES the whites, and NEUTRALS everything in between.
So focusing on the NEUTRAL sliders, I changed the amount of cyan in my image. In fact, I increased it all the way by moving the slider right until I hit 100%. You can see the difference; everything is slightly more green/blue than it was before.
Right, so, if you look at this, you can see the problem. While, in my opinion, it is okay to have the background look unnatural, I don't think it is okay to make people look ridiculous. So, Jessica's face. Not only is she far too pale, but she's too cyan as well. Which means we're going to go back and revisit layer masks.
Now SC layers (and all adjustment layers in PS) come with their own layer masks already. You might have noticed in your layer palette that the SC layer already has the little white box beside it? Right, so we don't need to create a layer mask for this layer. We can just go right ahead about our masking business. So if you remember back when we were masking away the background from Jessica, you need a soft, round brush (at about 50 pixels) and you need to use the color black. Then paint over Jessica's face on the layer mask (if you start brushing and black appears on the actual icon, undo and then make sure you have the actual layer mask-the white box-selected in your layer palette). get all of her face, her chest, and, if you like, her hair.
And thus concludes step seven!
Step Eight
Finishing touches! \O/
For people who already know their way around a bit, I recommend checking out THIS tutorial as it gives a little background to how I came about obsessively using this particular technique (although, adapted to suit myself, of course). And newbies should definitely bookmark it for perusal later!
So regardless of whether or not you went through the Selective Coloring process, you're icon is looking a little flat, wouldn't you agree? So we're going to use a little trick of the light (lol, that's a pun >.<) to add some depth to our icon!
To do that we need to create a new (empty) layer. You can do that long hand by going to Layer >> New >> Layer. You can use the short cut : Shift+CTRL+n. Or you can use the little button that looks like this. Which ever way you end up doing it, do it.
On that new layer, we're going to take the brush we've been using (the soft, round one) and we're going to paint with it. I recommend upping the size a tad (maybe 150 pixels instead of 50), and then change the color to light beige (click on the swatch that we've been using to layer mask-so the one that's black currently or whatever color you had selected-and a color menu will come up that looks like this. You can drag the slider, click in the large colorful box, or imput a HEX code-like #FDE8DC for instance-to change the color).
Now you want to paint in areas that you need to be lighter. In this case (since we've already made Jessica lighter), I wanted to lighten up the background that has become quite dark over the course of spicing it up. So I painted around her shoulders, the edges, and so on to my liking. This part is really hard to just nail down into words because everyone does it differently every time. So do whatever feels right. Then, once you've finished painting, bring up the blending modes menu for the layer and do two things: first, set the layer to Soft Light (this will blend the brush in with the icon while also lightening everything up) and the lower the opacity to around 60% so that the brush isn't quite to strong. Hit okay.
Finally, duplicate that layer once (right click on the layer, duplicate layer).
And the only thing left to do, for this icon anyway, is to resize down to 100x100 images. :D
Notes:
1. I discovered yesterday that my icons are a touch brighter on desktop monitors, so if something looks too bright for you, I'm sorry. It is just part of having different computers, I guess. Haha, I feel like I need to say that all the time now. >.<
2. I cheated, I know! This tutorial, though simplified down and then over-explained so that, should a beginner attempt it, they could make the icon if they follow the steps exactly, is really for people with a more advanced knowledge of PS. Beginners, while I believe capable of following this tutorial and learning some of the basics through it, are not going to get as much from it as the people who are more experienced with PS will.
3. That being said, I took beginner seriously. Despite writing a tutorial for an icon maker who is more at my level of ease with PS, I tried to provide instructions and example images that would assist someone with very, very minimal knowledge of PS. basically, the only thing that I assumed they knew, for some reason, was what a layer palette was. o.O
4. I apologize for any typos! I spent 30-45 minutes on the icon, but 4-5 hours on the tutorial. *headdesk*