Icon tutorial
Going from 
to
Program: PhotoImpact 12.
Translatable: Yes.
Includes: Levels, several layers, saturation.
Difficulty: Medium, I guess.
1. We start with our lovely base of Blake Lively in Gossip Girl.
2. The you duplicate the base twice, set the first one to screen and the second one to soft light. I really like to do this step with most of my caps, because it makes the colors more vivid and increases the contrast.
3. Merge your layers. After that you add a hue/saturation layer with sat +10 and set it too screen at 70%.
4. Merge your layers. Now we are done with the cap. You can do whatever you want with this now. Add a texture, background or some text. I choose a close up crop of Blake's face. Resize your icon to 100x100px.
5. Now that's pretty dark. But we'll fix this in no time. You just add a levels layer with the following settings:
RGB Input: 0 | 1.42 | 255
6. Sharpen your image. Now you can a) make some white bloops with a small brush over the image and then set those to gausian blur. (I don't know the settings, because I'm not working with Photoshop. You'll need to try that for yourself.) or b) add this nice and shiny texture by myself.
Whatever you choose, your next step is to set the layer too screen at 70%. And you're done.
Other results with just a few changes:
Please show me your results and feel free to ask any questions you have. I hope it was understandable enough. ;) If you could please comment on the original post, it makes it easier to reply to all of your comments. Thanks.
to
Program: PhotoImpact 12.
Translatable: Yes.
Includes: Levels, several layers, saturation.
Difficulty: Medium, I guess.
1. We start with our lovely base of Blake Lively in Gossip Girl.
2. The you duplicate the base twice, set the first one to screen and the second one to soft light. I really like to do this step with most of my caps, because it makes the colors more vivid and increases the contrast.
3. Merge your layers. After that you add a hue/saturation layer with sat +10 and set it too screen at 70%.
4. Merge your layers. Now we are done with the cap. You can do whatever you want with this now. Add a texture, background or some text. I choose a close up crop of Blake's face. Resize your icon to 100x100px.
5. Now that's pretty dark. But we'll fix this in no time. You just add a levels layer with the following settings:
RGB Input: 0 | 1.42 | 255
6. Sharpen your image. Now you can a) make some white bloops with a small brush over the image and then set those to gausian blur. (I don't know the settings, because I'm not working with Photoshop. You'll need to try that for yourself.) or b) add this nice and shiny texture by myself.
Whatever you choose, your next step is to set the layer too screen at 70%. And you're done.
Other results with just a few changes:
Please show me your results and feel free to ask any questions you have. I hope it was understandable enough. ;) If you could please comment on the original post, it makes it easier to reply to all of your comments. Thanks.