Gossip Girl Tutorial
Requested by word_never_said.
How to go from
to
(original cap)
(Created in Photoshop 7. Translatable, I think; uses Curves and Color Balance. No selective color. Tutorial is image-heavy.)
First, I cropped and resized my base:
It's rather dark, so I duplicated the base twice, setting the first duplicated layer to Screen, 100% opacity and the second to Screen, 50% opacity.
Now it's lighter, but also washed out. So I duplicated my last screen layer and set it to Soft Light, 100% opacity.
Next, I brightened it up a little bit with a Curves layer.
RGB - Input: 124, Output: 133
Red - Input: 124, Output: 134
Green - Input: 126, Output: 132
Blue - Input: 124, Output: 135
At 100%, the layer seemed to diminish some of the coloring/shadows, so I set it down to 45% opacity.
To enhance the colors, I used a Color Balance layer.
Midtones: +15 +8 +8
Highlights: +12 +7 +3
Shadows: -12 -5 -3
Make sure "Preserve Luminosity" is checked.
Now, the coloring part was pretty much done, so I began working on the background. I thought the yellow background was really drab, so I merged everything down into one layer (Ctrl+Shift+E) and then duplicated that layer, setting it to Color Burn, 40% opacity. Now the background yellow is darker, but it's also turned Blair dark red, which is really quite hideous:
To fix that, I used a layer mask. Click the square with the circle inside it as shown:
Then use a black brush to remove the parts of the color burn layer that we don't want, over Blair's skin, hair, and clothes. Just for reference, my layer mask ended up looking like this:
Now the icon looks like this:
To extend the background and get rid of the big block of white occupying the top half of the icon, I carefully smudged the yellow upwards in vertical strokes until it filled up the white space.
Then I merged all the layers again (Ctrl+Shift+E) and sharpened.
Now, to keep the icon from being too plain, I added some white splotches.
To create a bit more contrast, I merged everything down (Ctrl+Shift+E) and duplicated the layer, setting it to Soft Light, 25% opacity.
Then, to add the final touches to the icon, I took the following texture, desaturated and rotated it:
--->
And then pasted it and set it to Color Burn, 100% opacity. Again, I used a layer mask to get rid of the parts I didn't want.
--->
I duplicated this last color burn layer and set it to Color Burn, 20% opacity for just a bit more vividness.
And that's it!
I hope this was helpful! Please let me know if there are any mistakes or problems, thank you! :D
Original icon can be found here. Please feel free to join/watch my icon community.
Cross-posted to icon_tutorial.
♣ enchantedteacup
How to go from
to
(original cap)
(Created in Photoshop 7. Translatable, I think; uses Curves and Color Balance. No selective color. Tutorial is image-heavy.)
First, I cropped and resized my base:
It's rather dark, so I duplicated the base twice, setting the first duplicated layer to Screen, 100% opacity and the second to Screen, 50% opacity.
Now it's lighter, but also washed out. So I duplicated my last screen layer and set it to Soft Light, 100% opacity.
Next, I brightened it up a little bit with a Curves layer.
RGB - Input: 124, Output: 133
Red - Input: 124, Output: 134
Green - Input: 126, Output: 132
Blue - Input: 124, Output: 135
At 100%, the layer seemed to diminish some of the coloring/shadows, so I set it down to 45% opacity.
To enhance the colors, I used a Color Balance layer.
Midtones: +15 +8 +8
Highlights: +12 +7 +3
Shadows: -12 -5 -3
Make sure "Preserve Luminosity" is checked.
Now, the coloring part was pretty much done, so I began working on the background. I thought the yellow background was really drab, so I merged everything down into one layer (Ctrl+Shift+E) and then duplicated that layer, setting it to Color Burn, 40% opacity. Now the background yellow is darker, but it's also turned Blair dark red, which is really quite hideous:
To fix that, I used a layer mask. Click the square with the circle inside it as shown:
Then use a black brush to remove the parts of the color burn layer that we don't want, over Blair's skin, hair, and clothes. Just for reference, my layer mask ended up looking like this:
Now the icon looks like this:
To extend the background and get rid of the big block of white occupying the top half of the icon, I carefully smudged the yellow upwards in vertical strokes until it filled up the white space.
Then I merged all the layers again (Ctrl+Shift+E) and sharpened.
Now, to keep the icon from being too plain, I added some white splotches.
To create a bit more contrast, I merged everything down (Ctrl+Shift+E) and duplicated the layer, setting it to Soft Light, 25% opacity.
Then, to add the final touches to the icon, I took the following texture, desaturated and rotated it:
--->
And then pasted it and set it to Color Burn, 100% opacity. Again, I used a layer mask to get rid of the parts I didn't want.
--->
I duplicated this last color burn layer and set it to Color Burn, 20% opacity for just a bit more vividness.
And that's it!
I hope this was helpful! Please let me know if there are any mistakes or problems, thank you! :D
Original icon can be found here. Please feel free to join/watch my icon community.
Cross-posted to icon_tutorial.
♣ enchantedteacup