(no subject)
How to go from
to
in Photoshop.
Translatable. Uses Color Balance and Curves.
Now, I use Photoshop CS5, because it looks really pretty and shiny, so your Photoshop might look a little bit different.
Do not take all the numbers in the layers litteral. It really depends on the base you have and just play around with it all.
First start of with your base. I took this cap by killcolor and resized it back to a 300x300 px canvas. I like to work in a 300 px canvas, because it gives you a bit more room for error and it works so much easier.
Duplicate your base and set it to screen. I duplicated the screen layer and added a little trick I picked up at a photography lecture by Guy Gowan. Go to your channels panel and ctrl+click on the red layer. (Does that make sense?). This selects the white parts of the layer. Now go back to your layers and add a new mask to the top screen layer. If you did it right, the mask should be the red channel. Now put the opacity of that layer(not the mask, the layer) on somewhere between 30 and 40%. I have mine on 34%. Now, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference, but I like how it highlights the darker parts.
Depending on your base you might need more or less screen layers. You can always go back and add them or remove them.
Now that we've prepared the base, we can start on colouring. I like my images to look slightly more orange, so I start off with a Color Balance layer.
Midtones; +31 , +5 , -25
Shadows; +12 , -6 , -15
Now, as you can see that made the whole thing a bit more yellow. I feel it gives the entire thing a bit more depth. That and I just like that it looks pretty.
Next up: a curves layer.
Now, we are going to use it to brighten up the entire thing again, so we're only staying in the RGB channel here.
input; 107 output: 140
(Yes, I know, my input and output are reversed. I find it annoying as well. If anybody knows how to switch it, please tell me)
It made the entire thing a whole lot lighter, but it didn't loose any colour. I like that.
Now to add a bit more pop or zing to it.
Make a new Hue/Saturation layer. Set the Saturation up to +31. The colours are much brighter right now.
Yeah, I'm not liking that. It is too yellow right now. So we fix that with a new blue fill layer. I used a nice, bright blue, well. Not really bright, but it is a nice colour. I picked 547fee.
Set the layer to Soft Light at 30%
See, the yellow is gone. All our hard work so far, it;s all gone! Plus, I don't like this new purple/red color. So let's get it back to the yellow shall we? I know, I am keep adding layers to basically counter what I just did a few seconds before.
But yeah, yellow. Add another Color Balance layer.
Midtones; -23 , +14 , -33
Shadows; 0 , +2 , +6
Highlights; -2 , +2 , +6
Welcome back yellow...and...greens? Well, if you say so Photoshop.
Right now I am adding a single black fill layer. And I am going to act like a 3 year old and just put big old white blobs on the layer. This will give me high- and lowlights and change the entire icon! Oh no!...
So, first a black fill layer on soft light. It makes the entire icon darker, but we only want it at certain parts. I don't care what parts you want it, at this point I don't really care about where the light already is or where it should be, I just blab around and I decide to make some white blobs on the bottom right. Just grab a big, soft, round brush and dabble away. Put the blobs where you want to light, don't be precise about it, just have a bit of fun.
I decide on the bottom right of the icon, because I like people's necks.
I add some blobs there, also a little strip on the left side to give it a bit more contrast, even though you can't see it in the icon.
Now go to Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur and put in a number... Somewhere between 3 and I don't care. I don't even remember what number I put it on, somewhere between 3 and 5 probably. Just to make the transitions a bit more even.
See, REALLY big difference. And i like the colours! The green is gone and the orange is back! YAY.
And then for the last colouring layer. I add another Hue/Saturation layer.
Hue; -5
Saturation; +5
It make the whole thing a bit more blue again, but just a little bit.
I like it, do you?
Now, I tend to be weird and I paste this thin i n Paint Shop Pro and then I go work in it there, but that is just because I started with Paint Shop Pro and now I'm just stubborn to completely use Photoshop. You can stay in Photoshop if you want though.
I add a new layer, get a soft round brush again and past some light blobs on the things I want highlighted( NO black layer, a transparent layer with white blobs!). Nowhere I only added some on the background, on the wall around Matt's face. I blur this layer(I set the Gaussian blur to around 12) and set this layer on soft light. If you want you can add as many of these layers as you want, I sometimes have about 5, but I will just do with this 1 for now.
Now I duplicate the entire thing(ctrl+shift+e in Photoshop), blur it at a Gaussian blur, strength 3. Set the blendmode to softlight.
it gives a nice glow to the entire thing(Sorry. I was to lazy to save these steps as images).
Go to images - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation and take the saturation on this blurred soft light layer down. I took the Saturation down to about -60. This just takes away the bright colouring, but still gives it a bit of pop.
See? a bit more contrast and a little glow.
Time to size the flipping thing down. Copy merged and paste it in a new canvas(I find this easier, because I tend to press the wrong buttons and this way I still have the icon in a separate canvas)
So scale it down to 100px.
That blurred soft light layer took it's toll on the sharpness of the icon, so duplicate the icon, sharpen it and then just take down the opacity to make it less sharp.
And there's your icon!
Any questions? Comments? Money to spare? Let me know!
I will not give out the .PSD. IT doesn't take to long to actually do this yourself, plus you might learn something.
Some other examples;
