How to Handle Manga for Icons
I was asked to make a tutorial for handling Manga/Anime icons by garinungkadol so I thought I'd try at least.
To get any one of these and how to clean up your manga image and tips and stuff like that.
LONG AND IMAGEHEAVY!
For Photoshop CS2
I don't know how well this translates to other programs, as I've never touched anything but PS CS and CS2 (PSP scared me).
I'll start off with Manga, as it's my favorite out of the two to work with.
First thing, pick your image. Try to always pick high quality scans/scanlations/whatever. It is the base of the icon, so it has to be good.
I'm going to use this picture of Renji from Bleach so I can look at him lots ♥♥♥.
It doesn't look that great here, but it looks better to size it down as I'm going to do to save your internet.
Much better. Now, you could leave it like this, but sometimes the lines will look alot fainter. To fix this, duplicate the layer and set it to Multiply. Lower the opacity as nesscessary til you're happy with it.
Some people have had issues with when they crop their picture it turns out all grainy and terrible looking. That's when the image mode is set to Index mode. Now, the Renji image I'm going to be working with is in Greyscale mode, I'll use a different one.
Now, this manga scan is in Index mode. You can tell by looking at the bar at the top (forget what they're called....) and see what mode it's in.
--- should be RGB/8
I'm not sure how it all works, but RGB is the best mode I believe.
To change the image mode go Image>Mode and change it to RGB before you crop. Doing it after you crop the image down doesn't change it (with the crop tool anyway, I don't use the marquee tool to crop things 'cept for big stuff)
Compare:
Index Mode:
RGB Mode:
(I'm just randomly cropping so you can see the difference)
See? Much better. Now, back to the Renji image.
SHARPENING
I can't stress this enough. DO NOT SHARPEN AT FULL STRENGTH. Seriously. It looks all grainy and icky. Same thing goes for anime pics too. Or any art. I like to unsharpen it by going Edit>Fade Sharpen. Now let's compare.
Sharpened Full Strength (100%) =
Sharpened 75% =
Sharpened 50% =
Sharpened 25% =
I know it's not that huge of a difference, but I'm really anal about stuff like that. Personally, I prefer to keep it at around 15-50%. Sometimes, your base won't need to be sharpened at all either.
CLEANING UP IMAGE
My personal way of cleaning up the base is by making a new layer and filling it with white (or black, depends on the background) and applying a layer mask.
You could, of course just use your paint brush/eraser normally over it to get rid of whatever you want to get rid of, but what about when you make a mistake?
You're going along, tediously covering up _____ when suddenly *insert something that causes hand to jerk* happens!
YOU MESSED UP POOR RENJI'S FACE! *gasp* Now he going to be the faceless shinigami :(.
After all that tedious work with the 5px eraser you messed it up and have to start all over again! Or you could use layer masks ;)
Layer masks are one of my favorite tools/effects/whatevers. If you make a mistake (as I often do) you can go back and fix it.
So now, I filled my new layer with white, and am going over Renji with the black brush to erase the white off. Once you've gone over it once with a big brush (going over it all with a 5px brush is boring and tedious, plus you could leave stuff unerased), go back over it with a smaller white brush (which brings back the white) and keep going smaller and smaller til you have it cleaned. Watch out for the hair though. The hair's tricky since it's gravity defying.
I left the side of the wall there because you should leave things that the character is touching. Otherwise it would look rather odd.
Now I know it's not that huge of a difference for this paticular image since there isn't much to get rid of except the wall behind him, but if you had speech bubbles or whatnot, this is a rather handy technique for getting rid of those.
So now we pretty much have our base (Obviously, yours would be smaller, but I'm just using something larger so it's easier to see) so we can get on with the various techniques.
PRETTYIFYING (yay!)
There are lots of techniques for making manga icons.
There's the gradient-extravagana techinque where you take a billion multicolour gradients and set then to a billion different blending modes which is one helluva lot of experimenting:
THIS AIN'T HOW YOU DO IT... I just took gradients I thought were pretty and just randomly changed the blend modes. That's all I did. Just experiment
=
(dunno who the exact makers of the gradients are, but they're in my resources for sure)
You can also colour in your manga. Looks quite nice if done right (which I didn't, as this is the first time I've tried it).
I opened up a pic of him from the anime and picked the colours from that.
=
It's a bit sloppy too.
These are a few good tutorials for colouring manga as I obviously have no idea what I'm doing with that.
My personal favorite technique would be the texture one. It's quite easy. Just set it to Multiply and go.
Though you should try to pick the right textures. Try and get something more... understated. Not quite as busy as some others.
For example:
You could use something like this (by inxsomniax btw). It covers up too much, and it draws attention away from the focus of the icon (in this case Renji).
Or you could use something like this (also by inxsomniax):
Texture is much more understated, and doesn't draw attention away from the subjext. Mind you, this is just my personal preference about this, if you like the other example, go ahead and do it.
You could just call that an icon (not this one obviously... but you get what I mean) and be done with it, or you could be wild and crazy and have textures on it and colour it in!
But my personal favorite is the one I do all the time with the textures on the background and the manga on top in b/w.
All I do for that is, (after cleaning everything up, etc) I select around the person/focus
Then I right click on the selection and go Select Inverse
Then I go Control+J which is Layer Via Copy and I get the part that was selected as a new layer. Next I drag that layer to the top over the texture.
Now, this next step isn't really nesscessary, but I like to do it anyway. You can't really see this unless you zoom in.
See all the white dots? That's because the magic wand tool isn't very precise. So I like to go around and (of course) use a layer mask to get rid of the white bits.
Much better.
Now to compare:
to
.
You just erase the top layer around the edge and let the layer underneath the texture show through since it looks much neater. You just need to be really precise with this and use a small brush.
Easy peasy. Now rock on and make not terrible manga icons!
**All manga scans used from Bleach7 (I think)
To get any one of these and how to clean up your manga image and tips and stuff like that.
LONG AND IMAGEHEAVY!
For Photoshop CS2
I don't know how well this translates to other programs, as I've never touched anything but PS CS and CS2 (PSP scared me).
I'll start off with Manga, as it's my favorite out of the two to work with.
First thing, pick your image. Try to always pick high quality scans/scanlations/whatever. It is the base of the icon, so it has to be good.
I'm going to use this picture of Renji from Bleach so I can look at him lots ♥♥♥.
It doesn't look that great here, but it looks better to size it down as I'm going to do to save your internet.
Much better. Now, you could leave it like this, but sometimes the lines will look alot fainter. To fix this, duplicate the layer and set it to Multiply. Lower the opacity as nesscessary til you're happy with it.
Some people have had issues with when they crop their picture it turns out all grainy and terrible looking. That's when the image mode is set to Index mode. Now, the Renji image I'm going to be working with is in Greyscale mode, I'll use a different one.
Now, this manga scan is in Index mode. You can tell by looking at the bar at the top (forget what they're called....) and see what mode it's in.
--- should be RGB/8
I'm not sure how it all works, but RGB is the best mode I believe.
To change the image mode go Image>Mode and change it to RGB before you crop. Doing it after you crop the image down doesn't change it (with the crop tool anyway, I don't use the marquee tool to crop things 'cept for big stuff)
Compare:
Index Mode:
RGB Mode:
(I'm just randomly cropping so you can see the difference)
See? Much better. Now, back to the Renji image.
SHARPENING
I can't stress this enough. DO NOT SHARPEN AT FULL STRENGTH. Seriously. It looks all grainy and icky. Same thing goes for anime pics too. Or any art. I like to unsharpen it by going Edit>Fade Sharpen. Now let's compare.
Sharpened Full Strength (100%) =
Sharpened 75% =
Sharpened 50% =
Sharpened 25% =
I know it's not that huge of a difference, but I'm really anal about stuff like that. Personally, I prefer to keep it at around 15-50%. Sometimes, your base won't need to be sharpened at all either.
CLEANING UP IMAGE
My personal way of cleaning up the base is by making a new layer and filling it with white (or black, depends on the background) and applying a layer mask.
You could, of course just use your paint brush/eraser normally over it to get rid of whatever you want to get rid of, but what about when you make a mistake?
You're going along, tediously covering up _____ when suddenly *insert something that causes hand to jerk* happens!
YOU MESSED UP POOR RENJI'S FACE! *gasp* Now he going to be the faceless shinigami :(.
After all that tedious work with the 5px eraser you messed it up and have to start all over again! Or you could use layer masks ;)
Layer masks are one of my favorite tools/effects/whatevers. If you make a mistake (as I often do) you can go back and fix it.
So now, I filled my new layer with white, and am going over Renji with the black brush to erase the white off. Once you've gone over it once with a big brush (going over it all with a 5px brush is boring and tedious, plus you could leave stuff unerased), go back over it with a smaller white brush (which brings back the white) and keep going smaller and smaller til you have it cleaned. Watch out for the hair though. The hair's tricky since it's gravity defying.
I left the side of the wall there because you should leave things that the character is touching. Otherwise it would look rather odd.
Now I know it's not that huge of a difference for this paticular image since there isn't much to get rid of except the wall behind him, but if you had speech bubbles or whatnot, this is a rather handy technique for getting rid of those.
So now we pretty much have our base (Obviously, yours would be smaller, but I'm just using something larger so it's easier to see) so we can get on with the various techniques.
PRETTYIFYING (yay!)
There are lots of techniques for making manga icons.
There's the gradient-extravagana techinque where you take a billion multicolour gradients and set then to a billion different blending modes which is one helluva lot of experimenting:
THIS AIN'T HOW YOU DO IT... I just took gradients I thought were pretty and just randomly changed the blend modes. That's all I did. Just experiment
=
(dunno who the exact makers of the gradients are, but they're in my resources for sure)
You can also colour in your manga. Looks quite nice if done right (which I didn't, as this is the first time I've tried it).
I opened up a pic of him from the anime and picked the colours from that.
=
It's a bit sloppy too.
These are a few good tutorials for colouring manga as I obviously have no idea what I'm doing with that.
My personal favorite technique would be the texture one. It's quite easy. Just set it to Multiply and go.
Though you should try to pick the right textures. Try and get something more... understated. Not quite as busy as some others.
For example:
You could use something like this (by inxsomniax btw). It covers up too much, and it draws attention away from the focus of the icon (in this case Renji).
Or you could use something like this (also by inxsomniax):
Texture is much more understated, and doesn't draw attention away from the subjext. Mind you, this is just my personal preference about this, if you like the other example, go ahead and do it.
You could just call that an icon (not this one obviously... but you get what I mean) and be done with it, or you could be wild and crazy and have textures on it and colour it in!
But my personal favorite is the one I do all the time with the textures on the background and the manga on top in b/w.
All I do for that is, (after cleaning everything up, etc) I select around the person/focus
Then I right click on the selection and go Select Inverse
Then I go Control+J which is Layer Via Copy and I get the part that was selected as a new layer. Next I drag that layer to the top over the texture.
Now, this next step isn't really nesscessary, but I like to do it anyway. You can't really see this unless you zoom in.
See all the white dots? That's because the magic wand tool isn't very precise. So I like to go around and (of course) use a layer mask to get rid of the white bits.
Much better.
Now to compare:
to
.
You just erase the top layer around the edge and let the layer underneath the texture show through since it looks much neater. You just need to be really precise with this and use a small brush.
Easy peasy. Now rock on and make not terrible manga icons!
**All manga scans used from Bleach7 (I think)