Tutorial: Extending caps 1
NOTE: I actually started writing this over several weeks ago, but RL stuff got in the way and I just got around to finishing this today, lol.
I was asked if I could make a tutorial on how I extend caps, but the approach I take varies depending on the nature of the cap, so I'll probably do more than one of these. I'm starting off with a simple one. Next one (when ever I get around to doing it) will be more complicated where I extend a cap that has a pattern or lines in the background. But for now....
How to go from:
to:
Using Photoshop Elements 6
Since the focus of this tutorial is on extending the cap, I'm not going to go into too much detail explaining Levels adjustment layers I use for coloring, though I will mention all the steps briefly. Explaining fully why I pick the options/numbers I use would be a whole other tutorial in and of itself. And the Levels I use here won't look the same on a different cap anyway.
Of course, the first step is to crop the cap. This is what I decided on:
Next, to lighten the image, I duplicated the base and set it to Screen 100%:
While the screen layer lightened the icon, it also made it look a bit washed out, so I added a Levels adjustment layer to adjust the contrast:
Settings: RBG: 26, 0.97, 239
I added a second Levels adjustment layer to adjust the coloring:
Settings:
RBG: Default
R: 9, 1.21, 2.50
B: 11, 1.11, 255
G: 32, 1.26, 244
The coloring still looked a bit flat, so I decided to duplicate the coloring Levels layer:
Next I decided to adjust the sharpening a bit. And apparently, I forgot to write down what settings I used when I sharpened. Not a huge deal since its really not the point of this tutorial. I'm just mentioning it for the sake of knowing that it was sharpened. I always wait to sharpen until I add the screen and levels layers as those can sometime make an image look more sharp on their own. I like my icons to look crisp, but not TOO sharp. Here is what I ended up with after sharpening. Its only a very subtle difference.
Now we're moving on to the meat of the tutorial, extending the cap upward to fill the entire icon
The first thing I do before starting to extend the cap upward is set the view to "Fit on Screen" and then create a new view of the icon as "Actual Pixels." My screen looks like this:
The reason I set up with two views of icon is because I have greater control of my smudging on the larger work area of the blown up image, but I can still see what the icon looks like in 100x100 pixels after each smudge in the regular view.
Next, I move on to the actual extending. To do this, I use the smudge option, selecting a soft-edged round brush, and a size of 5 px.
I use the soft edged brush for this because it is a bit more forgiving and gives a soft look that lets my smudges blend together and look more natural.
So then, I go to my base layer I use the smudge tool and work upward with it it in smallish strokes. Since the lighting in the cap is coming from the top right of the cap, that is the direction that I make my smudges. You can see the angle that the light makes when it hits the wall, and that is the angle I tried to follow. It looked like this at first:
Screenshot 1
At this point, I'm focusing on the edge of the cap and making sure that I have a smooth transition before I start trying to extent the cap to fill the entire icon. One thing I try to make sure of when extending caps like this one up is not to distort any details in the original image, so I paid extra close attention when I was smudging up around the round "eye of Jupiter" that Kara has pained on the wall, since the rounded part of it comes right up close to the edge of the cap. I made sure to work my smudges up around the smudge until they meet in the middle and blend together.
Screenshot 2
So I continued to work on the bottom layer until I extended the entire top of the cap, and then I moved on to the screen layer, following the same basic process as I did for the bottom layer.
Screenshot 3
Now that the top edge of the cap is extended up some, I alternate between the normal and screen layer, again, smudging upward in the direction of the angles the light formed on the wall, so that it looks like the wall just continues upward. Some of you might wonder why I don't just merge the normal layer and screen layer into one layer and work on extending the one base, but in my experience, doing the layers separately is a bit more forgiving of smudging mistakes, since it is difficult to EXACTLY match the angle of light that you see in the cap. So one smudge stroke that may be slightly off in one layer will not be the same in the other layer, so they kind of balance each other out. (I hope my explanation makes sense here) Also, I think it gives more of a paint-like effect when I do it this way.
Anyway, I basically just keep extending the cap upward, alternating between the two layers until I reach the top of the icon. See screenshots:
Screenshot 4 Screenshot 5 Screenshot 6
Finally, I get to the top:
At this point, the top of the icon looked too streaky for my tastes, so to smooth things out, I changed the soft edged smudge brush I was using. I increased it to 21 px and set the strength to 50. I then went back with this large brush and smudged upward in the same diagonal direction as the light source as I had done before, but in larger strokes. By setting the strength of the smudge tool to 50, it allowed me to smooth things out without making it too blurry. I don't want the top too look blurrier than the bottom.
This is what I got as the final result of all my smudging:
At this point, I decided to add some textures to give the extended region a bit of dimension and depth, and well...texture. ;-)
First, I used this texture:
by ack_attack and set the layer to multiply.
This texture is perfect for this icon because you have the smears/strokes in the texture going in the same direction as the light source in the icon. Also, the dark smudges are only on the top of the texture, so it doesn't obscure the image of Kara in the bottom of the icon much.
And this is the result:
I like the definition this texture gives to the part the I extended up, but now it looks a bit too dark and dull for my tastes, so I took the texture layer and moved it below the screen layer:
----->
And this is the result:
Next, I decided I wanted to at a light texture. I picked this light texture:
by ohfreckle and set it to soft light.
Again, I selected this texture because the light source in it is at the top right of the texture, the same as in the cap.
This is the result:
I like how the texture emphasized the light source and to me, gives the icon a more cohesive feeling to it. What I don't like is the purple coloring and how much darker it makes the icon. But I never let the color of a texture stop me from using it. This is where the beauty of gradient maps comes in. I frequently find myself changing the color of textures with a gradient map to suit my own purposes.
Here, I create a gradient map and pick the pastel, beige one:
Then I merged the gradient map layer with the light texture layer (from the top menu: Layer->Merge Down) and got this:
Now the icon isn't as dark, and I got rid of the purple color. The beige gradient map is a favorite of mine because it warms up the coloring, as a opposed to a black and white gradient maps, which can dull the colors.
At this point, I wanted to make the color pop a bit more, so I switched the light texture layer from Soft Light to Overlay. I always like to experiment with different layer settings. I find the Overlay setting gives more intense coloring and contrast, but it can sometimes be too over powering and make the image look over-saturated or pixellated. This is one of those cases where the overlay works well. So it always pays to experiment. This is what I got:
I wanted to make the coloring even brighter, so I duplicated the light texture layer:
I really like the coloring, but feel like I've lost a liiiiiitle bit of the detail of the paintings on the wall on the right side, so I use the eraser tool with a large, soft edged brush (49 px) and the opacity set to 33%. I use this to erase a little of the the second duplicated light texture to allow the paintings on the wall to show though a little more.
Here's what I got (its a very subtle difference):
Lastly, after I add textures, I sometimes like to add another Levels adjustment layer to top it all off and give coloring on the icon a cohesive feel and to to make make sure the colors really "pop."
Levels setting (in this case, I just made minor tweaks on each channel until I got the coloring JUST right):
RBG 16, 1.21, 251
Red 0, 1.06, 255
Green 7, 1.00, 255
Blue 0, 0.93, 255
And this is my final result:
If anyone is curious, here is what all my layers looked like at the end:
And that's pretty much it. I apologize if this is too wordy or confusing. I didn't realize it would turn out to be so long when I started writing this thing, lol.
I was asked if I could make a tutorial on how I extend caps, but the approach I take varies depending on the nature of the cap, so I'll probably do more than one of these. I'm starting off with a simple one. Next one (when ever I get around to doing it) will be more complicated where I extend a cap that has a pattern or lines in the background. But for now....
How to go from:
to:
Using Photoshop Elements 6
Since the focus of this tutorial is on extending the cap, I'm not going to go into too much detail explaining Levels adjustment layers I use for coloring, though I will mention all the steps briefly. Explaining fully why I pick the options/numbers I use would be a whole other tutorial in and of itself. And the Levels I use here won't look the same on a different cap anyway.
Of course, the first step is to crop the cap. This is what I decided on:
Next, to lighten the image, I duplicated the base and set it to Screen 100%:
While the screen layer lightened the icon, it also made it look a bit washed out, so I added a Levels adjustment layer to adjust the contrast:
Settings: RBG: 26, 0.97, 239
I added a second Levels adjustment layer to adjust the coloring:
Settings:
RBG: Default
R: 9, 1.21, 2.50
B: 11, 1.11, 255
G: 32, 1.26, 244
The coloring still looked a bit flat, so I decided to duplicate the coloring Levels layer:
Next I decided to adjust the sharpening a bit. And apparently, I forgot to write down what settings I used when I sharpened. Not a huge deal since its really not the point of this tutorial. I'm just mentioning it for the sake of knowing that it was sharpened. I always wait to sharpen until I add the screen and levels layers as those can sometime make an image look more sharp on their own. I like my icons to look crisp, but not TOO sharp. Here is what I ended up with after sharpening. Its only a very subtle difference.
Now we're moving on to the meat of the tutorial, extending the cap upward to fill the entire icon
The first thing I do before starting to extend the cap upward is set the view to "Fit on Screen" and then create a new view of the icon as "Actual Pixels." My screen looks like this:
The reason I set up with two views of icon is because I have greater control of my smudging on the larger work area of the blown up image, but I can still see what the icon looks like in 100x100 pixels after each smudge in the regular view.
Next, I move on to the actual extending. To do this, I use the smudge option, selecting a soft-edged round brush, and a size of 5 px.
I use the soft edged brush for this because it is a bit more forgiving and gives a soft look that lets my smudges blend together and look more natural.
So then, I go to my base layer I use the smudge tool and work upward with it it in smallish strokes. Since the lighting in the cap is coming from the top right of the cap, that is the direction that I make my smudges. You can see the angle that the light makes when it hits the wall, and that is the angle I tried to follow. It looked like this at first:
Screenshot 1
At this point, I'm focusing on the edge of the cap and making sure that I have a smooth transition before I start trying to extent the cap to fill the entire icon. One thing I try to make sure of when extending caps like this one up is not to distort any details in the original image, so I paid extra close attention when I was smudging up around the round "eye of Jupiter" that Kara has pained on the wall, since the rounded part of it comes right up close to the edge of the cap. I made sure to work my smudges up around the smudge until they meet in the middle and blend together.
Screenshot 2
So I continued to work on the bottom layer until I extended the entire top of the cap, and then I moved on to the screen layer, following the same basic process as I did for the bottom layer.
Screenshot 3
Now that the top edge of the cap is extended up some, I alternate between the normal and screen layer, again, smudging upward in the direction of the angles the light formed on the wall, so that it looks like the wall just continues upward. Some of you might wonder why I don't just merge the normal layer and screen layer into one layer and work on extending the one base, but in my experience, doing the layers separately is a bit more forgiving of smudging mistakes, since it is difficult to EXACTLY match the angle of light that you see in the cap. So one smudge stroke that may be slightly off in one layer will not be the same in the other layer, so they kind of balance each other out. (I hope my explanation makes sense here) Also, I think it gives more of a paint-like effect when I do it this way.
Anyway, I basically just keep extending the cap upward, alternating between the two layers until I reach the top of the icon. See screenshots:
Screenshot 4 Screenshot 5 Screenshot 6
Finally, I get to the top:
At this point, the top of the icon looked too streaky for my tastes, so to smooth things out, I changed the soft edged smudge brush I was using. I increased it to 21 px and set the strength to 50. I then went back with this large brush and smudged upward in the same diagonal direction as the light source as I had done before, but in larger strokes. By setting the strength of the smudge tool to 50, it allowed me to smooth things out without making it too blurry. I don't want the top too look blurrier than the bottom.
This is what I got as the final result of all my smudging:
At this point, I decided to add some textures to give the extended region a bit of dimension and depth, and well...texture. ;-)
First, I used this texture:
by ack_attack and set the layer to multiply.
This texture is perfect for this icon because you have the smears/strokes in the texture going in the same direction as the light source in the icon. Also, the dark smudges are only on the top of the texture, so it doesn't obscure the image of Kara in the bottom of the icon much.
And this is the result:
I like the definition this texture gives to the part the I extended up, but now it looks a bit too dark and dull for my tastes, so I took the texture layer and moved it below the screen layer:
----->
And this is the result:
Next, I decided I wanted to at a light texture. I picked this light texture:
by ohfreckle and set it to soft light.
Again, I selected this texture because the light source in it is at the top right of the texture, the same as in the cap.
This is the result:
I like how the texture emphasized the light source and to me, gives the icon a more cohesive feeling to it. What I don't like is the purple coloring and how much darker it makes the icon. But I never let the color of a texture stop me from using it. This is where the beauty of gradient maps comes in. I frequently find myself changing the color of textures with a gradient map to suit my own purposes.
Here, I create a gradient map and pick the pastel, beige one:
Then I merged the gradient map layer with the light texture layer (from the top menu: Layer->Merge Down) and got this:
Now the icon isn't as dark, and I got rid of the purple color. The beige gradient map is a favorite of mine because it warms up the coloring, as a opposed to a black and white gradient maps, which can dull the colors.
At this point, I wanted to make the color pop a bit more, so I switched the light texture layer from Soft Light to Overlay. I always like to experiment with different layer settings. I find the Overlay setting gives more intense coloring and contrast, but it can sometimes be too over powering and make the image look over-saturated or pixellated. This is one of those cases where the overlay works well. So it always pays to experiment. This is what I got:
I wanted to make the coloring even brighter, so I duplicated the light texture layer:
I really like the coloring, but feel like I've lost a liiiiiitle bit of the detail of the paintings on the wall on the right side, so I use the eraser tool with a large, soft edged brush (49 px) and the opacity set to 33%. I use this to erase a little of the the second duplicated light texture to allow the paintings on the wall to show though a little more.
Here's what I got (its a very subtle difference):
Lastly, after I add textures, I sometimes like to add another Levels adjustment layer to top it all off and give coloring on the icon a cohesive feel and to to make make sure the colors really "pop."
Levels setting (in this case, I just made minor tweaks on each channel until I got the coloring JUST right):
RBG 16, 1.21, 251
Red 0, 1.06, 255
Green 7, 1.00, 255
Blue 0, 0.93, 255
And this is my final result:
If anyone is curious, here is what all my layers looked like at the end:
And that's pretty much it. I apologize if this is too wordy or confusing. I didn't realize it would turn out to be so long when I started writing this thing, lol.