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icon questions and answers 01/13/2011
coloring & cropping 04/11/2011
font/text guide 05/08/2011
ask me about my icons 10/04/2011
updated font/text guide 01/27/13
tutorials tag for other tuts 05/04/17
icon specific tutorials
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inspired by fuuurs at bourbonate
last updated: 02.15.13
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[orphan black & supernatural tutorials]
01. Orphan Black
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The crop was really the focus of this particular icon as it was for a close crop challenge at iconsomething. The goal was to keep a tight fix on facial features, while maintaining the close crop and keeping the quality of the icon at its highest. For me, cropping is always the same: copy full-size image, paste into a 100x100 canvas and use Free-Transform (CTRL+T) to size the image down. With close crops this might take a few tries!
After the image was cropped, I duplicated the base and used Auto-Contrast. After that I applied a Vibrance adjustment layer set to Screen with Fill lowered to around 60-70% opacity. Next, I added a Color Balance adjustment layer to bring out some colors. This Color Balance layer was pretty extreme. In the Midtones, I added tons of red, green and blue (there were no negative values) to instantly pop out all the colors I could in the icon. I don't remember the exact settings. Basically, I just push all the sliders to +100% and then pull back gradually on each channel until I get a result I like. I always set the blend mode of Color Balance layers to Color. This is more of a habit than anything else, but I find that I like the way things look when the blend mode is on Color (lol).
I liked the way the coloring was going so far. The original base was dark and tinted a horrid green color. After some adjustments it had a light pink hue to it which was much nicer and more natural, which is ultimately what I was going for. At this point I stamped my layers (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) and sharpened (filter -> sharpen -> sharpen) and then added Topaz Clean. I don't remember the Topaz settings but I think it was just some adjustments on the Crisp channel. It still looked a little flat to me so at this point I added a brownish/beige gradient map set to Soft Light to pump up the colors and contrast a bit more. I stamped my layers again, blurred with Gaussian Blur and set it to Soft Light to further pop out some colors and contrast. I lowered the opacity of the layer to around 50%. The icon lacked a little warmth, so I added a greenish gradient that I got from who knows where and set that to Soft Light.
Stamped the layers again, sharpened and set to Soft Light around 20% opacity. I really wanted to add some depth to the shadows around Sarah's face and also use some light to enhance her features so I added two black & white gradient fill layers (layer -> new fill layer -> gradient -> choose the black/white gradient) which were both set to Soft Light respectively. I stamped and sharpened once more (you'll get used to me, I stamp layers a lot, lol) and then added a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer (+5, -5) and duplicated it for a little more light/contrast. Next came a black/white gradient map with opacity lowered to around 30%. These are useful for tamping down the intensity of the contrast and toning down colors, which also gives you a soft muted result. To preserve some of the colors left over, I added another Vibrance layer with Vibrance on 50% and Saturation at 0.
I wanted to brighten Sarah's skin just a bit more, so once again, I stamped my layers and then created a new blank layer set to Soft Light above the new stamped layer. Using the Color Picker tool I chose a light beige-ish color from Sarah's skin. I zoomed in pretty close and then using a small soft round brush at around 3px size with 80% hardness, I brushed over the lightest parts of Sarah's skin. The layer blend mode is set to Soft Light so the painting doesn't show up too much and overwhelm the entire thing. Also, the light beige-ish color blends in nicely with Sarah's skin tone. Lastly, I blur the layer slightly with Gaussian blur and then erase areas as needed. For the last step, I stamp all my layers again, desaturate, sharpen and set the layer to Hard Light at around 10% opacity for a final bit of sharpening.
02. Supernatural
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The crop for this icon was kind of obscure. I liked the back shot of Sam with his season 1 hair, plus I loved all the space over his right shoulder. I love obscure caps and somehow I can only find the really cool ones by browsing the random files of a gallery. Some icons just happen by accident, which was the case with this one. :) I also had no idea going into what I was going to do, so this sort of just happened by chance, no rhyme or reason to it.
After cropping, I knew I had to brighten this thing up (because early season SN caps are dark and hideous). I tried a few things (Vibrance on Screen, Curves on 'auto') and that didn't get the result I wanted, so instead I opted for a ton of Screen layers. Screen layers tend to wash things out so I always add a Soft Light duplicate of the base to hit it with tons of contrast. Usually one Soft Light duplicate of the base is enough to get good contrast. Sometimes I'll add a second Soft Light duplicate if it needs more, but I lower the opacity so it's not so intense. In this case I duplicated the base 4 times and put the first 3 copies on Screen 100% and the last copy on Screen 50%. Then I duplicated one more time and set that to Soft Light 100%. Boom. Contrast, baby.
At this point, I decided that going for a monochrome color would be the best route to take as the cap is pretty colorless and gray. I opened up my Color Swatches palette and just randomly selected a nice orange-y color. You can't go wrong with orange or yellow I say. Between the Soft Light duplicate and the Screen 50% duplicate, I filled three layers with the orange color. I set each color fill to Hard Light varying the opacities (30%, 50% and 100% is what I went with for this icon) on each one until I got a result I liked. Hard Light is my favorite blend mode for monochrome icons. You can use Soft Light or Screen but I find I get cleaner results with Hard Light. This also depends on your image. This won't work with everything!
Above the Soft Light duplicate I added two Vibrance layers to really pop the oranges out more. Go big or go home, right? Both Vibrance layers are at Vibrance: 100%. I set them both to Color. I fiddled with the Saturation setting on the second Vibrance layer and then lowered the opacity of the layer to 50% because it was a little too intense.
After that I added a blueish/black texture (not sure who it's by, sorry) that I set to Screen around 30-40%. I didn't like the way the background looked at this point, so I decided to remove it completely. I created a new layer and filled it with a really warm orange-red color. I then hid the orange layer, selected the layer below it and stamped the layers. I moved the stamped copy of the icon above the orange layer and then turned the orange layer back on. Next, I went to Layer -> Layer Mask -> From Transparency to make the stamped layer transparent for easier removing of the background. This also adds a layer mask! (A nifty trick I picked up from endearest) With a small soft brush in #000000 and hardness at around 75-80% I brushed over the background to remove it. For the details around Sam's hair I zoomed in closely and brushed around his head varying the size of my brush by pressing [ or ] until I was satisfied with the way it looked.
3 gradient fill layers followed the removal of the background; one in orange (soft light 40%) and two in black/white (overlay 30% and soft light 100%) to make the color of the background more solid and vibrant and to add more light/depth around Sam. For more information on gradient fills I would suggest checking out snorkjuice and endearest's tutorials. She explains them more in depth than I could. :)
I stamped the layers twice. On the first copy I added filter -> artistic -> film grain with the settings at 2, 1, 2. This adds a nice grainy quality to the icon which I like better than adding a grungy texture. It also super!brightens things up. I lower the opacity of the layer to around 25-50% if it's too intense. I then sharpen the second stamped copy. I'm pretty sure I Topazed one or both of these layers. Next came a reddish brown color fill set to Screen 100% and a new layer with some blobs of white painted on it. I blurred the white blobs and set the layer to Soft Light.
Stamped and sharpened again, which was followed by Brightness/Contrast and Vibrance for preserving light and color when saving.
The text really had no rhyme or reason to it. I went with the old stand-by for a Supernatural icon which is 'carry on my wayward son' a sort-of theme song for the show (cuz I'm boring and unoriginal like that). However, I thought it would look a little bit more unique and different if I made the text different colors and then added some nifty brackets around the first sentence, just to make it stand out more. The brackets were just a fluke that I thought looked pretty good. I used the font Futura LT for 'carry on' in bold at 10pt size with tracking adjusted to -25 and anti-alias on crisp. For 'wayward son' it was also Futura LT in bold, at 12-13pt size, but this time with tracking set to 0. I kept anti-alias on crisp. After that I rasterized the text layers, merged them and then blurred and sharpened, fading each. I then positioned the text with the move tool and voila! it was done. :)
You can find a handy-dandy font guide here if you are interested in a little more in-depth explanations of how I text. Feel free to hit me up in comments if there are questions or something is not clear here. :)