xi. tutorials - icon specific

[fuuurs]

one
I crop my image to 100x100 first 99.9% of the time. There is nothing worse than spending loads of time on coloring a cap and then having to scrap all that work because you discover you can't find a decent crop. So save yourself the trouble and make sure you've got the crop you want before you even think of coloring!
I wanted an icon that had the whole gang in it... which can be a little difficult when you have 100 pixels to cram 5 people into. Anyways, I stuffed them all into this one.


Next I did some rough lighting. IDK about you, but I personally think lighting is a bitch, and that there had to be an easy process to make it quick and painless. AND THERE IS. I use it on practically every icon I make now, just to give me an idea of what areas should be light and what should be dark (should I choose to do more in-depth lighting later, which I very rarely do because I am the laziest person on earth.)
Duplicate your cropped base (as opposed to the layer). I always use the keyboard shortcuts (COMMAND+A; COMMAND+J on macs) to do this, but I'm sure there is a way to do it through the menu. Next go to Filter → Distort → Diffuse Glow.
Graininess: 0
Glow Amount: 15
Clear Amount: 6
I pretty much always use those settings. They give the icon a nice soft lighting that really amps up the brightness but also leaves some of the darker areas intact so you don't wash out your image.
Your duplicated base should look like this now:


Set the duplicated base to soft light, and then duplicate it again. (It's not always necessary to have 2 copies of the lighting layer, but in the case of this icon I knew I wanted an extreme lighting, so I made 2 of them.) 



I decided I wanted a gradient effect where the bottom of the icon was really dark and the top of the icon was light, and I also wanted to make the icon feel warmer.  Plus at this point in making the icon I had gotten distracted and gone off in search of textures (this always happens.)  I found this texture by pandavirus at welt_herrschaft (check out this comm, there are some SERIOUSLY great texture sets up for grabs) and set it to multiply.  It would worked well lighting-wise but I needed to modify it to warm up the colors.
Make a hue/saturation adjustment layer (clipped to the texture layer.)
Hue: -180,
Saturation: +55 



Originally I thought I wanted a really warm orange and violet icon, but then I changed my mind and decided green (obnoxiously saturated green) was the way to go.  I made a selective color adjustment layer where I only adjusted the neutrals:
Neutrals
Cyan: -29
Magenta: -47
Yellow: +100


The icon felt kind of flat, so I figured I'd up the contrast.  Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer time!
Brightness: 0
Contrast: +35


Since I had pretty much already destroyed the details in the upper portion of the icon, I figured I'd indulge my inner sharpening demon.  I stamped everything into a new layer, which I then sharpened twice.  Filter → Sharpen → Smart Sharpen.
Amount: 150%
Radius: 0.2 pixels
Remove: Gaussian Blur
Normally I only do this once to sharpen, but I figured, "what the hell" and did it twice to make everything look super sharp and crispy.


two
Okay, just a disclaimer... when I made this one, there were quite a few things I would NEVER EVER do normally and for that reason some of the stuff from this tutorial probably won't be of much use. BUT. Here it is anyway.

Crop yo' base! (This is like the most boring crop ever and looking back on it now I really should have never allowed that amount of forehead into the crop.)


Initial lighting (that turned out to be the only lighting, as usual.)
Duplicate your cropped base (as opposed to the layer). I always use the keyboard shortcuts (COMMAND+A; COMMAND+J on macs) to do this, but I'm sure there is a way to do it through the menu. Next go to Filter → Distort → Diffuse Glow.
Graininess: 0
Glow Amount: 15
Clear Amount: 6
(Are you seeing a pattern here?) Set the layer to soft-light.


Following the general trend of laziness, I decided I couldn't be bothered to use selective color or any of the other more involved tools to warm up the icon. (I swear I'm usually not this lazy when making icons!) I went straight to Photo Filter and used Warming Filter (85). Duplicate this layer to make it extra warm in tone.



I thought the icon was incredibly bland at this point, and that it was too dark. A Brightness/Contrast layer was called for.
Brightness: 15
Contrast: 40


I was dying to use this texture by neke but the coloring just wasn't doing it (at the time, looking back now I think I should have left it as it is, but c'est la vie or whatever.) So I set it to soft light and then clipped a hue/saturation layer to it.
Hue: +26



Obligatory gradient map time. Choose the "copper" gradient map, set it to soft light, 50%. Yes, I know it looks wonky now.


Duplicate the gradient map, but set it to reverse and 100%.


So now that I've completely destroyed my icon, the pressure to make something flawless is gone and I just went completely wild ~with reckless abandon.
I made a vibrance layer...
Vibrance: +100
Saturation: +100
LOOK, IDK WHAT I WAS THINKING, I was pretty sauced up at this point. Normally I would NEVER EVER do this, but for some reason all I could think was "DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE, BITCHES" as if that excused this shoddy photoshopping. So for the record I do not condone abusing the vibrance tool like this!


IDEK what my thinking was at this point, so I'm not going to explain the "why" anymore. Brightness/Contrast.
Brightness: 0
Contrast: -50


Sharpening! Filter → Sharpen → Smart Sharpen.
Amount: 150%
Radius: 0.2 pixels
Remove: Gaussian Blur


Somehow I was not done (IDK I must have gotten a second wind or something.) I used selective color.
REDS: magenta: 40
YELLOWS: cyan: 60
MAGENTAS: magenta: 30


All in all I like how this icon came out, tbh.
three
Start with this as your base.


Duplicate your cropped base (as opposed to the layer). I always use the keyboard shortcuts (COMMAND+A; COMMAND+J on macs) to do this, but I'm sure there is a way to do it through the menu. Next go to Filter → Distort → Diffuse Glow.
Graininess: 0
Glow Amount: 15
Clear Amount: 6
Set the layer to soft-light.


The lighting isn't dramatic enough, so duplicate the lighted base (set to soft light) and clip a brightness/contrast adjustment layer to it.
brightness: +75
contrast: 0


It was at this point I decided I wanted this icon to be a blue monochrome. Apply a gradient map ("copper") and set it to soft light. Clip a hue/saturation adjustment layer to the gradient map.
hue: -180


Do the same thing again, but with the copper gradient set to reverse and 75% opacity. Clip a hue/saturation adjustment layer to the new gradient map.
hue: -149


I thought it was too purple-y, so I set out to fix this. I used a selective color adjustment layer, where I only adjusted the neutrals:
cyan: 0
magenta: -46
yellow: -25
black: 0


I wanted to add some texture (because I always want to add textures...) so I set this texture by happy_harper13 at mosaically to screen.


Obviously I can't stop there with the textures so I added one more. Set this texture by lookslikerain at soaked to soft light.


Sharpening! Filter → Sharpen → Smart Sharpen.
Amount: 150%
Radius: 0.2 pixels
Remove: Gaussian Blur


note。
psd and/or tutorial available on request
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