Look, it's a tutorial!
In icontalking's Ask the Maker I was asked to write a tutorial. So here's how I made this icon:
First of all: the cap! Here at 27,4%, if you wanna know (you probably don't, I know).
I wanted to icon this for the hair. Well, also because I like Bill and the look of amazement she has there, but mostly because I have a thing for iconning fuzzy hair and replacing its original background.
To give you an overview, let me show you the layers, so you know what is where. Because I'll probably fail at understandably putting into words what I did with those layers.
I like to be able to understand later what I did with those layers or even recreate it (only at a different size, for example), so I usually rename them.
I started with an image I capped myself, which is why I kept it in the file. Otherwise I would have put the URL (or the most important parts of it) in the name of the resized layer.
I reduced a copy of the cap to 14% and (later, after I could see enough) placed it so that Bill's head is in the center of the icon.
As caps generally are dark as fuck (Stop editing in the absolute dark, editors! Ugh. There are caps whose light or color isn't fixable because of this and it annoys me a lot. /rant), I had to make it brighter. My preferred method is Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights.
When it comes to image layers, I generally copy the previous one for every different thing I do with it. Makes it easier to go back and change something, if it turns out I don't like it. So the "Weichzeichner" layer is a copy of the "Tiefen: 50/50/20" layer where I've defused one of the blue lights behind Bill with the Blur tool. That layer is just a remnant of the icon from whose copy I started this icon here.
Then I made another copy of the "Tiefen: 50/50/20" layer and used the Sharpen filter on it. I added a layer mask and erased the parts that were too sharp for my taste.
The image still wasn't bright enough, so I adjusted the Levels.
And made a second Levels adjustment.
I drew in white with a soft brush around the edge of Bill's hair to make the parts of it stand out that didn't yet. The layer is set to Overlay.
The light that's shining through her hair wouldn't look good once the light source is covered, so I drew all over the hair in #4A321D and set the layer to Saturation.
I covered the background with a color taken from it, #FFFFE5.
Over that I put a texture from bttrfly-kiss's icon-texture set 14, set to Multiply.
To give the icon a spacier color, I made a Hue/Saturation adjustment: set the hue (standard) to -84. To make this adjustment only apply to the layer below, I created a Clipping Mask.
Though there's a layer mask on this, it's of no consequence, because of the step after next.
I wanted to make it more colorful to match Bill's amazement. With Selective Color I changed White's Cyan to -100% and its Yellow to +50%, method: absolute.
Also Clipping Mask and a layer mask of very little consequence.
Then Bill's face and some of her jacket were too dark and too yellow. So back to the texture layer: I put a layer mask on it and erased parts, which then left the color of Bill's face not matching the background.
I filled the erased part with Layer Style > Stroke in #A4699C set to Soft Light.
To represent space, I used a fiberglass texture by sparklingeye set to Overlay at 75%.
I added a layer mask and erased over Bill's face, her clothes and the inner parts of her hair.
Onto that layer I Clipping Masked Levels with which I made the texture's dark parts lighter.
First of all: the cap! Here at 27,4%, if you wanna know (you probably don't, I know).
I wanted to icon this for the hair. Well, also because I like Bill and the look of amazement she has there, but mostly because I have a thing for iconning fuzzy hair and replacing its original background.
To give you an overview, let me show you the layers, so you know what is where. Because I'll probably fail at understandably putting into words what I did with those layers.
I like to be able to understand later what I did with those layers or even recreate it (only at a different size, for example), so I usually rename them.
I started with an image I capped myself, which is why I kept it in the file. Otherwise I would have put the URL (or the most important parts of it) in the name of the resized layer.
I reduced a copy of the cap to 14% and (later, after I could see enough) placed it so that Bill's head is in the center of the icon.
As caps generally are dark as fuck (Stop editing in the absolute dark, editors! Ugh. There are caps whose light or color isn't fixable because of this and it annoys me a lot. /rant), I had to make it brighter. My preferred method is Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights.
When it comes to image layers, I generally copy the previous one for every different thing I do with it. Makes it easier to go back and change something, if it turns out I don't like it. So the "Weichzeichner" layer is a copy of the "Tiefen: 50/50/20" layer where I've defused one of the blue lights behind Bill with the Blur tool. That layer is just a remnant of the icon from whose copy I started this icon here.
Then I made another copy of the "Tiefen: 50/50/20" layer and used the Sharpen filter on it. I added a layer mask and erased the parts that were too sharp for my taste.
The image still wasn't bright enough, so I adjusted the Levels.
And made a second Levels adjustment.
I drew in white with a soft brush around the edge of Bill's hair to make the parts of it stand out that didn't yet. The layer is set to Overlay.
The light that's shining through her hair wouldn't look good once the light source is covered, so I drew all over the hair in #4A321D and set the layer to Saturation.
I covered the background with a color taken from it, #FFFFE5.
Over that I put a texture from bttrfly-kiss's icon-texture set 14, set to Multiply.
To give the icon a spacier color, I made a Hue/Saturation adjustment: set the hue (standard) to -84. To make this adjustment only apply to the layer below, I created a Clipping Mask.
Though there's a layer mask on this, it's of no consequence, because of the step after next.
I wanted to make it more colorful to match Bill's amazement. With Selective Color I changed White's Cyan to -100% and its Yellow to +50%, method: absolute.
Also Clipping Mask and a layer mask of very little consequence.
Then Bill's face and some of her jacket were too dark and too yellow. So back to the texture layer: I put a layer mask on it and erased parts, which then left the color of Bill's face not matching the background.
I filled the erased part with Layer Style > Stroke in #A4699C set to Soft Light.
To represent space, I used a fiberglass texture by sparklingeye set to Overlay at 75%.
I added a layer mask and erased over Bill's face, her clothes and the inner parts of her hair.
Onto that layer I Clipping Masked Levels with which I made the texture's dark parts lighter.