|tutorial: peter & walter from fringe
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Made in Photoshop CS5
uses Vibrance, but could be translatable with Hue/Saturation instead.
OVERVIEW
This icon is of Peter and Walter Bishop from Fringe: 3x19 Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. It's a trip of an episode and has some fantastic imagery to work with which made this icon all the more fun to make and more specifically, it's the reason I chose this cap. Going into it, I had some specifics in mind what I wanted to do with this icon right off the bat. I know I really wanted to play with the sense of space in the image. They are walking through a very long hallway that is very white and brightly lit, so I knew that using a lot of screen layers to brighten this image would not be helpful because it would end up washing it out completely. Instead, I thought it would be more fun if the image was blue instead of white. This show really plays on the colors blue and red, so overall it was a perfect fit for this icon.
I. RESIZING
I pasted the full-size screencap (credit: grande_caps) into Photoshop and immediately resized it down to a more manageable size in the following manner:
image >> image size
in the dialogue box that pops up you'll note that their are fields for width and height and that to the right of these fields are drop-down boxes. When the dialogue box pops up, the drop-downs next to width and height will be set at pixels by default. i click the arrow and change it to percent.
the red arrow in the image above indicates where to select 'percent'
i am going to resize the image in increments. i find this preserves image quality the best.
i. image >> image size >> select percent >> change the number in the width field to 80 and the height should automatically change as well. I resize at 80% 3 times total.
ii. image >> image size >> select percent >> change the number in the width field to 70.
iii. image >> image size >> select percent >> change the number in the width field to 80 one more time.
the steps for resizing should be as follows:
80% 3 TIMES
70% ONE TIME
80% ONE MORE TIME AFTER THAT
my image after resizing ended up being 490px x 270px, which is a good manageable size.
and if you'll look in the bottom right corner of the screencap you'll notice the pesky FOX network logo. I don't want it there, so i'll have to remove it before going any further.
II. REMOVING A NETWORK LOGO: THE QUICK AND DIRTY WAY
i. duplicate (CTRL+J) the resized screencap x 1. (always make a copy in case you screw up!)
ii. zoom in a couple of times (hold down the CTRL key and hit + a couple of times to zoom in).
iii. grab your smudge tool (i use a soft round brush at size 15 / hardness at 80% / strength at 100%).
iv. carefully smudge the logo down until it disappears. it doesn't have to be perfect. it won't matter once the image is at icon size.
and no more logo!
III. CROPPING
ok, i'm ready to crop this thing and prepare my icon.
i. i merged and copied/pasted into a 200x200 square.
ii. using free-transform (CTRL+T) i moved and shrank the cap down inside the square until i finally settled on a crop i liked.
iii. the crop ended up leaving blank space at the top of the icon, which was ok. that's what i wanted.
iv. to fill up that space at the top, i went back to the smudge tool, using the same steps & settings as i did when i removed the FOX logo. i also smudged the sides of the icon to remove some of the wall and smudged out some of the lights. and here's where i ended up:
v. that looks fine, but it could be better. it looks too streaky and uneven to me. so i go back to my smudge tool and reduce the strength of my brush to around 30% and then smooth my brush over the background to fix the imperfections. it won't be absolutely perfect, but it will look more even. some of the streaky stuff won't be noticeable when we brighten it up later at icon size. i merge my layers and resize to 100x100 at this point.
IV. COLORING
duplicate base x 1 set to Soft Light (opacity 100%) this deepens the contrast.
duplicate Soft Light layer x 2 and set them both to Screen (opacity 100%) this brightens it up nicely. i think I like how it washed it out a little.
at this point, i decided i wanted the icon to be blue. a standard coloring on this icon would have been nice, but i wanted something a little more out-of-the-box you could say. there are many methods for saturating an icon in one color, the method i will describe below is the easiest one i've found. i picked up these coloring tips from the wonderful imaginary_lives and her icon q & a, so i can't take complete credit for this part.
layer >> new fill layer >> solid color. i used #c6e7e7. set to Hard Light (opacity 60%).
layer >> new fill layer >> solid color. i used #699fc9. set to Soft Light (opacity 50%).
layer >> new fill layer >> solid color. i used #1b61a3. set to Soft Light (opacity 100%).
layer >> new fill layer >> solid color. i used #c5e2e7. set to Multiply (opacity 70%).
layer >> new fill layer >> solid color. i used #5abae2. set to Soft Light (opacity 80%).
this is the result so far:
for a more saturated blue, i added a vibrance layer. (100% vibrance / +19 saturation) you could easily do this with hue/saturation as well, you just have to play around more.
i added some light blobs in white with a large soft round brush (size 65) and then blurred the blobs with gaussian blur (radius 6.0) and then lowered the opacity of the layer to 60%. i made sure to dab my brush the most around the lights to the left and right of peter and walter to enhance their effect.
i noticed a lot of contrast had been lost at this point.
duplicate base >> drag to top >> set to Soft Light (opacity 100%) and voila! more contrast!
aaand more blue. this time with color balance.
MID: -45, 0, +45
SHAD: 0, 0, +15
HIGH: 0, 0, +10
for more contrast i added a levels layer.
RGB (input channel only): 12 | 1,00 | 255
the coloring is completed for this icon for the most part, so for finishing touches on that aspect, i copy-merged, pasted and blurred with gaussian blur (radius 10.0). i set the layer to Soft Light (opacity 30%).
i copy-merged again, sharpened and lowered the opacity of the layer to 30%.
if you wanted, you could call it good at this point. but i'm never satisfied with just boring 'ol coloring, so i went a little further and decided to play around with some textures.
IV. ADDING TEXTURES
i was excited to try out the new texture set i'd downloaded from pandavirus, so it wasn't too time-consuming trying to find the perfect texture. after playing around with a few of the textures in the set, i finally settled on this one. i chose it because of the shape and the color and when i pasted it onto my icon and set it to Screen (opacity 100%) it did this:
looks awesome, yes?
i wanted more light for the icon and some additional movement, so i also added this texture from the same set by pandavirus. i inverted the texture (CTRL+I) and then set it to Lighten (opacity 20%). i erased bits of the texture that were covering up peter and walter as well.
and finally, i think i'm satisfied with calling it a done deal here. so i repeated the steps from above (copy-merge, blur, set to Soft Light, copy-merge again and sharpen) and this is the result.
and for comparison purposes: a before and after.
our base before coloring:
and our base after coloring:
i wanted to try out some text with this icon, so that's where we will head to next.
V. TEXT
text was pretty simple for this icon. i knew going in that i wanted the icon to have 'down the rabbit hole' on it somewhere. the episode deals with LSD and tripping and going into someone's mind, so immediately what popped into my head was Alice in Wonderland and the text kind of added itself from that point forward, LOL.
here are the settings I used:
FONT: Elephant (italic)
SIZE: 12pt
i know that I played around with the words A LOT. at first, i wanted to emphasize the words 'down' and 'rabbit hole', but that didn't seem to work without covering up the entire icon or making the words unreadable. finally, i decided to build a pyramid with the text and just shrink it down with free transform. simple, i know, but it worked and looked good. win/win. i selected the blue color for the text with my color picker tool, just a blue from the icon itself, nothing special.
whenever you are manipulating your text the way i did with free-transform it's always important to RASTERIZE RASTERIZE RASTERIZE. i can't emphasize this enough. basically, rasterizing makes your text layer transparent, but it also maintains the quality and clarity of the text when you are moving it, sharpening it, blurring it, etc. i always merge my text layers into one layer as well, it makes it so much easier to play around with in terms of placement, moving it around the icon and shrinking it down.
after i had settled on placement and color and had moved and shrunk it to the desired location on the icon, i blurred the text a little. this step varies for me, depending on the text itself and how small it is. i only blurred slightly with gaussian blur (radius i think? was around the 0.1 to 0.3 setting). immediately after blurring, i faded it to around 50% because i wanted the text to remain readable. i then sharpened the text and faded to around 55%.
at last, we have the final icon (or the text version at least):
and that's it. i hope i was detailed enough here. i find that some of my tutorials tend to be formulaic on occasion. hit me up in comments if there are questions and whatnot.
PSD DOWNLOAD | NOTES | CREDITS
+ download the psd zip file -> here.
+ please use tutorial and psd AS A GUIDE. do not copy these straight out. this tutorial will NOT work for all images.
+ tips for parts of this tutorial were taken from tutorials and guides: here and here.
+ questions and comments are welcome. :)