19. | Tutorials 1 + 2
Requested by kirtash_girl
I started out with this screencap and Photoshop Elements 7. It's a pretty screencap to start with. Next, I cropped it down to 200x200 since I almost always start on that size canvas these days.
This cap is a little flat and a tiny bit dim, so I duplicated the base layer twice, set the bottom one on screen (68%) to brighten it, and the top one on soft light (100%) to add contrast.
It's still a bit dark, but that's okay. The next step is going to make that a moot point. Next, create a color fill layer in #A132E3 and move it between the soft light and the screen layers. Set it on soft light.
At this point, I decided that Claire's face was a little too purple and it would be better if the color wasn't quite so strong there. So I erased it using my paint brush (100 point soft round set at 45%) set on black on the color fill mask. I also made sure not to erase all of the color from Claire's face because otherwise the end result would end up looking a bit washed out and I wanted to avoid that.
Now, I love vibrant colors. They are one of my very favorite things in the world. Between that and how dark some of the icon still was, I decided it was time for a color fill layer set on screen, which is one of my go-to techniques.
All of my contrast has gone straight out the door here, but that's okay. We're not keeping all of this anyway. Using the same brush from before, I toned down the purple over Claire's face and body.
This is much better. The contrast is back and there's glowy effect from the screen layer. The last step is to resize from 200x200 to 100x100 and we're done.
For this one, I started out with this screencap from Screencapped. This one is easier for me to reconstruct because of the way I made it originally (which was, actually, in the car. I don't advise iconing in the backseat of a car.) As usual, I cropped it down to 200x200.
Since it's essentially a fake background icon, I used the quick select tool to cut El out of the background and then I cleaned up the edges a little bit with a hard round brush eraser around the edge. I put her on top of a black color fill layer as a base - plus it makes it easier to see the imperfections where I cut her out and try to fix them. There are still a few
This is still a bit dull, so I duplicated the layer El was on twice and set the bottom one to screen (100%) and soft light (100%).
Next, I added this texture by mm3butterfly, rotated it 90 degrees to the left, and set it to screen.
Next, I added a color fill layer (#651CB0) set on screen right below the soft light layer.
Obviously there needs to be some erasing done because the contrast was lost and El looks hazy. This time I used a 100 point soft round brush set at 67% to paint over the color fill mask.
All that is left to do is to resize and voila!
Original | Reconstruction
Please note that these tutorials are not meant so that anyone can reproduce my work exactly. They are for instructional purposes only.