031 | Tutorial
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A quick tutorial for deternot who asked about my coloring in this icon. This is not going to be exactly step-by-step because I’m a tad busy at the moment, but I do hope it gets the idea of what I did across! If you have any questions after, don’t hesitate to ask.
First things first - resized my cap, duplicated it, and put that layer on screen at 50%. I probably stuck a bit of a box blur on the screen layer as well. Then I took my brush tool, clone tool, and smudge brush to extend the background upward for a full-size icon.
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Next, I attacked the cap with a shitton of adjustment layers, as is my wont. I’m not going to give you all the details as a) that’s what takes forever in tutorial writing and b) my method or more or less “drag the sliders until shit looks good”, but I used curves, color balance, selective color, photo filter (cyan, 10%), photo filter (warming filter 85, 25%, layer mask over the background), and a gradient map (#232729 → #ccdce6) set to screen, 10%).
base, +curves, +color balance, +selective color, +cyan photo filter, +warming filter, +gradient map
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Then to add a bit of contrast and sharpness, I did a copy-merge, applied the paint daubs filter (1, 1), and set that layer to soft merge, 20%.
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Onward to lighting!
NOTE: all example layers in this section are set on opposite-color backgrounds so you can see them; just imagine the the big white/black areas are transparent.
I applied some gradients, one that’s transparent → black (soft light, 50%) and one that’s the same as the gradient map I used in my coloring (#232729 → #ccdce6, soft light, 30%).
Then I took my brush tools and added some shadows and light. All of these layers are slightly gaussian blurred and then set on soft light at varying opacities.
And a bit of color fix; both these layers were set to color.
So, in order we have
base, +gradient layers, +shadow layers, +light layers, +color layers
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Then to bump up the color and contrast, I added +20 vibrance, copy-merged the layer and set to screen 20%, and did another copy-merge + paint daubs layer set to soft light 30%
base, +vibrance layer, +copy-merge/screen, +c-m soft light
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Most of the pop from this icon came from textures (as always, I am crap at coloring without them). Hover over the texture for the layer mode + opacity + maker
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*the third texture there was resized so the brightest parts were over the middle of the icon, with the dark blues bordering a bit on each side
and then to add some more light I did a copy-merge, box blurred the crap out of the resulting layer, and set it to screen, 20%.
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And some final tweaks!
To sharpen the icon, I did another copy-merge, applied the paint daubs filter, and then faded it 50% (press ctrl+shift+f as soon as you’ve applied the filter). Then I took a blur brush to the oversharp bits.
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I added +50 vibrance (color, 100%). To fix Cas’ coat, I made a new layer and painted over it with a light tan color (color, 20%). Then I duplicated that layer and set it to soft light 45% to add some light. I added even more color with a channel mixer layer (color, 100%) where I adjusted both the red and blue channels so the main color was at +120 and the other two at -10.
base, +vibrance layer, +painted fixes, +channel mixer
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I did another copy-merge + blur + screen 30% for some glow. Then I copy-merged and set the new layer to multiply 50% to intensify the colors and shadows. One final copy-merge set to soft light, 50% to ramp up the contrast and color a bit more; and then a brightness/contrast layer with -5 brightness, +30 contrast to play up the shadows more without changing the color.
base, +copy-merge/screen, +c-m multiply, +c-m soft light, +brightness/contrast
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And there you have it!
Hope that was helpful (and sorry that a lot of these steps are not translatable to other programs/older versions of PS).