tutorial one. rodney mckay panel icon.
How to make this:
This icon was originally made for a cap challenge at stargate_still. The caps I was using were these: one, two, and three. I believe they were by tehshroom.
Very first: Open a file that's 100x100 and has a white background.
1. Crop and resize the caps (for this icon, I selected the area I wanted, dragged it to the 100x100 image, and went to edit->scale and dragged it to a size I felt was good) to fit in your icon and lay them out in whatever way you think looks best. With this icon, I tried to get everything balanced but slightly off center, and to frame Rodney's head with the two smaller Rodneys. Just drag your pictures around until you think it looks alright. Sharpen the images.
2. On each of your image layers, add a layer mask. Mask out the parts of each image which overlap with the others. (If you don't know how to use a layer mask: if you go onto your layers palette there's a little square with a circle in it. Click on that. When you paint on it in black, it will become clear as if you'd erased it. In white your current layer is still visible. Greys have differing levels of transparency. If this is still too confusing, you can erase instead.) FOr this icon, I used the rectangle tool simply because I was looking for straight lines and it was a quick way to cover it all. I left a 2 px space between each image.
3. Now make a new Adjustment Layer, a black and white gradient map. Since Adjustment Layers automatically come with masking layers, select it and mask one image entirely out, and use a middle-of-the-run grey to mask another out (see second image example for what it would look like). This makes one of your images b&w, one full color, and one half-saturated color.
4. Using the rectangle tool, make white borders on the icon.
5. Write something on the icon. Because this icon is of Rodney McKay and I'm terribly uncreative at picking text, I chose his name. I used Verdana at 8pts but with the height increased to 140%. Here is a picture of my settings on the text palette, with the key ones and the button you click to get the palette circled.
6. As you can see, there's a large space in the bottom-right corner that needs to be filled. Because I was too lazy to look for a brush, I typed an "R" with ChopinScript at 48 pts with the height at 120%, and then dragged it into the corner so the swirls and loops filled the space.
7. Borders. I need borders now. I took this texture by gender and resized it to a teeny-tiny size, then put it on my icon twice, once at the top and once at the bottom. Then I sharpened those layers.
8. Make a new layer and then press ctrl+alt+shift+E. This stamps the visible image onto the new layer. At the moment, the icon is too dark. Set the blend mode to screen.
9. Time to muck with the colors a bit. Making new layers, I filled them with:
#FA3235 on soft light
#4AF1FA on soft light
#BBD3D7 on color burn
#9BF2BF on color burn at 40% opacity
If you have Firefox and that nifty in-browser eyedropper tool, this might be more useful.
10. Because of the color changes, the blacks became sort of greenish-blue and the text was hard to read. Duplicate the screen layer, drag it to the top, and put it on the normal blend mode. Mask out (or erase) the center image and the right image so that the ones with the pretty colors show through.
11. The rightmost Rodney is looking a little dark. Using the rectangle tool, drag a white rectangle to cover just that image. Set it on soft light at 60%.
12. By this time I was feeling that the border on the bottom was a little too much. Using the line tool, I made a two-pixel-wide white line along the bottom of the image (but not over the swirls).
And that's it.
As always, remember that if you're using different pictures things will turn out differently. Just play around with it and you'll probably end up with something good.
If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them.
This icon was originally made for a cap challenge at stargate_still. The caps I was using were these: one, two, and three. I believe they were by tehshroom.
Very first: Open a file that's 100x100 and has a white background.
1. Crop and resize the caps (for this icon, I selected the area I wanted, dragged it to the 100x100 image, and went to edit->scale and dragged it to a size I felt was good) to fit in your icon and lay them out in whatever way you think looks best. With this icon, I tried to get everything balanced but slightly off center, and to frame Rodney's head with the two smaller Rodneys. Just drag your pictures around until you think it looks alright. Sharpen the images.
2. On each of your image layers, add a layer mask. Mask out the parts of each image which overlap with the others. (If you don't know how to use a layer mask: if you go onto your layers palette there's a little square with a circle in it. Click on that. When you paint on it in black, it will become clear as if you'd erased it. In white your current layer is still visible. Greys have differing levels of transparency. If this is still too confusing, you can erase instead.) FOr this icon, I used the rectangle tool simply because I was looking for straight lines and it was a quick way to cover it all. I left a 2 px space between each image.
3. Now make a new Adjustment Layer, a black and white gradient map. Since Adjustment Layers automatically come with masking layers, select it and mask one image entirely out, and use a middle-of-the-run grey to mask another out (see second image example for what it would look like). This makes one of your images b&w, one full color, and one half-saturated color.
4. Using the rectangle tool, make white borders on the icon.
5. Write something on the icon. Because this icon is of Rodney McKay and I'm terribly uncreative at picking text, I chose his name. I used Verdana at 8pts but with the height increased to 140%. Here is a picture of my settings on the text palette, with the key ones and the button you click to get the palette circled.
6. As you can see, there's a large space in the bottom-right corner that needs to be filled. Because I was too lazy to look for a brush, I typed an "R" with ChopinScript at 48 pts with the height at 120%, and then dragged it into the corner so the swirls and loops filled the space.
7. Borders. I need borders now. I took this texture by gender and resized it to a teeny-tiny size, then put it on my icon twice, once at the top and once at the bottom. Then I sharpened those layers.
8. Make a new layer and then press ctrl+alt+shift+E. This stamps the visible image onto the new layer. At the moment, the icon is too dark. Set the blend mode to screen.
9. Time to muck with the colors a bit. Making new layers, I filled them with:
#FA3235 on soft light
#4AF1FA on soft light
#BBD3D7 on color burn
#9BF2BF on color burn at 40% opacity
If you have Firefox and that nifty in-browser eyedropper tool, this might be more useful.
10. Because of the color changes, the blacks became sort of greenish-blue and the text was hard to read. Duplicate the screen layer, drag it to the top, and put it on the normal blend mode. Mask out (or erase) the center image and the right image so that the ones with the pretty colors show through.
11. The rightmost Rodney is looking a little dark. Using the rectangle tool, drag a white rectangle to cover just that image. Set it on soft light at 60%.
12. By this time I was feeling that the border on the bottom was a little too much. Using the line tool, I made a two-pixel-wide white line along the bottom of the image (but not over the swirls).
And that's it.
As always, remember that if you're using different pictures things will turn out differently. Just play around with it and you'll probably end up with something good.
If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them.