⇨ Giving Cartoon Icons Oomph Using the High Pass Filter

[lavaliere]

Program: Photoshop 7
Translatable: No
Skill: Easy → Medium

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❶ Prep your base. I used a cap of Pride Salim Bradley from the anime Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Crop your base. I used Auto-contrast, Auto-levels, and Auto-colors to get this:


➋ Adding oomph. This is a lot more simple than it looks. Duplicate your base and drag it to the top. Then, add a High Pass filter. You can find it in PS7 under Filter » Other » High Pass. You'll get this pop up window. The default is usually 10, but as you can see, I set mine to 15. Feel free to play with this until you get a setting you like.

Result:

Not very pretty, is it? The vibrancy and the vivid colors are lost, not to mention weird shading, right? But we'll fix that.

➌ Set the High Pass layer to Overlay. It doesn't necessarily have to be Overlay. Soft Light and Hard Light can work too, depending on the cap. Try other settings and opacity to get whatever you think works best. Mine is on Overlay 100%.

Result:

My first result was a bit too over sharpened for my taste, so I added a 0.5 Gaussian Blur.

Can't tell the difference between the base and the new version? Here's a comparison. See how it gives the base more dimension? Shadows are deepened and there's more contrast. And not just that. The saturation is a better level. And you didn't even have to use an adjustment layer!

➍ Add your coloring "recipe". From here, I used a coloring similar to what unasuvas uses here. For your icon, go with whatever style you like best. Experiment with Selective Coloring, Color Levels, and Curves until you find something that works for you. But I suggest staying away from toying with Levels. This tends to overwhelm the icon when toyed with too much along with the High Pass.

Result:

My layer pallet.

➎ Finish and save. Feel free to play with your icon. Add lighting or textures as you like to make it your own. I added a light texture by shalowater for mine.

NOTES:
→ Thoughts?
→ Critique welcome.
→ resources
→ Other icons using this technique: