Icon Recipe #2 -- How I Use Selective Color
The bulk of this tutorial has inadvertently become "How I Use Selective Color (Hopefully for Good Rather than Neon-Colored Evil)" and I apologize upfront to GIMP and PSP users. I understand that those programs do not offer the selective color option but I have no idea how to replicate the effect in those programs as I've never used them.
avidrosette asked how I made the icon I'm using on this post. It was rather embarrassingly simple, I hate to admit. No textures. No brushes. Nothing fancy. It seems my fate that people only ask about the simplest of icons with the fewest cool "tricks." This possibly says something about misplaced pride over learning new and complex tricks (*g*) but which I'm determined to take as meaning one cannot overestimate the importance of good source material.
I started with a luscious, hi-res promo photo. It's hard to go wrong when you've gotten your hands on a gorgeous pic. Besides, who can mess up when starting with Kandyse McClure's beauty?
How I went
from:
to:
Most of these steps will sound very, very familiar if you've read any other tutorial I've written.
(credits/resource links are at the end of the tutorial)
1. Crop the image to 100x100 @ 100 ppi.
I cropped this picture probably at least a dozen times before settling on this one. I turned several crops into icons for the IBARW post, but this is the most dramatic crop.
2. Prepare the base.
I described in somewhat agonizing detail how I get clarity in icons in a previous post so I won't bore you with those details again. You'll notice precious little difference from Step #1; that's the value of an excellent source pic. :)
3. Duplicate base and set to 100% soft light.
Commonly, I include a screened copy of the base between the base and the soft light duplicate but this was a promo photo so the lighting didn't need to be increased. However, I thought the photo lacked contrast and soft light layers increase contrast.
4. Gradient Map, Soft Light 100% -- between the base and the soft light duplicate layer.
+
=
Again, this is familiar, no? I chose a light, neutral gradient because the preceding step made the image too dark but I liked the colors.
5. Add a light, peachy solid color layer (#ffede4), Multiply 26% -- above the gradient map layer and below the duplicated base set to soft light.
+
=
The image had lost a lot of the warmth in her skin tones and I wanted to subtly warm the photo. I chose a light color to avoid darkening the photo; that's very easy to do with something like multiply. Also? The more saturated the color, the better the selective color layer works.
6. Selective Color, Normal 100%
OK, here's where I admit my ignorance of formal selective color theory. I'm no expert; I just play with it. If you find a salient discussion, I'd love a link. My approach is to start with the big changes and then refine. The order I use is:
- start with the neutrals and balance those so that I find them attractive,
- tweak the other colors to do any of a number of things (warm them, cool them, de-emphasize them, emphasize them, etc.), and
- finally I play with the black and white settings.
I'm assuming that you're familiar with selective color so I'm not going to discuss the basics. However, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask; I'll do my best to answer anything I know. I'm giving you the final numbers I ended up with but, as anyone who has ever tried to use a tutorial's numbers like a recipe has discovered, this particular set will not produce the same results on any picture but this one. I'm going to concentrate, instead, on why I did what did and hope that the ideas are useful.
In this case, I wanted to continue warming the image to represent Dualla's heat and passion. (Also? warm skin tones are more appealing than cool ones.)
Here's how I did the selective color, step by step:
6a. NEUTRALS = -13, 0, +10, +18
I increased the red and yellow to warm it up. Increasing the black in neutrals often increases the contrast, which added a touch of drama. After the neutrals, the reds and yellows have the most dramatic effect so I deal with those next.
6b. REDS = -31, +4, +16, +21
On the red, I increased red, very slightly upped the magenta (a little goes a loooong way), added yellow to keep it from going sunburnt, and darkened the reds to make them more prominent.
6c. YELLOWS = -34, +8, +39, +37
I did essentially the same thing with the yellows that I'd done with the reds: I added red, a bit of magenta, and yellow to warm them up before darkening them to make them more prominent.
6d. Finish off the other colors.
GREENS = +42, -100, 0, 0
CYANS = +73, 0, -100, +40
BLUES = 0, 0, -100, 0
MAGENTAS = 0, +100, 0, 0
Messing with these colors is probably superfluous since there really isn't much green/cyan/blue/magenta in the image; I'm not certain that it makes any discernible difference. However, when I was cropping I noticed the actress's gorgeous, hazel eyes and I wanted to make them pop.
To emphasize the green, I adjusted the greens and cyans. In the greens, I added cyan and removed all magenta. In the cyans, I added a lot of cyan, removed all yellow, and darkened them. I wanted intensity of "pure" color so for the blues and magentas, I removed the opposing colors. All yellow was removed from the blues and all green was removed from the magenta.
To repeat, this step could almost certainly be skipped because the effect is so small. But once I start playing, I tend to tweak each color regardless of need.
6e. Adjust the whites and blacks.
WHITES = +14, 0, -27, 0
BLACKS = 0, 0, 0, +8
Americans prefer our whites to be slightly bluish rather than yellowish; in fact, we tend to perceive a very slightly bluish white to be "whiter" than pure white. This explains those blue bits in American powdered laundry detergent. It's a perception that I normally play to by adjusting the whites a tiny bit, making them cooler by increasing the cyan and decreasing the yellow. I normally do this very sparingly.
In this case, I exaggerated the effect because I liked the contrast between the warmth of her skin and the cool of the highlights. The blacks I barely touched, other than to darken them just a hair. With the whites becoming more prominent, I wanted to keep the piece from looking overlightened.
7. Redden her lips using a new selective color layer, Normal 100%.
REDS = -18, +26, 0, +43
I like the intimacy of the crop but between the actress's neutral lipstick and the crop, we've lost sight of how nicely shaped her lips are. I added a new selective coloring layer, masked off everything but her lips. All I had to adjust here were the reds. I reddened them a bit but most of the magic comes from adding a heavy dose of magenta and darkening them.
Emphasizing lips is highly variable, because every photo is going to be individual and it's easy to make the lips look awful. They not only have to be colored, but they have to look good with the skin tone and it's easy to become garish. Not so different, actually, from the daunting task of picking out a good lipstick in real life.
I tend to darken first, add magenta, and then add red. That seems to better produce "normal" looking lipstick shades -- but every photo is different. Less is usually more.
8. One last selective coloring layer, Normal 100%.
BLACKS = 0, 0, 0, +11
I wanted a tiny bit more contrast in the final product so I darkened the blacks a smidge. That's a trick I like to use because it not only increases contrast but tends to make details appear a tiny bit more in focus.
...And, that's it! The reasoning behind selective coloring got a bit long but the icon itself is really quite simple. elfcat255, I know I still owe you the "How I Use Textures" post and I've been working on it. I find myself kind of saying "what tinamishi and sanami276 said" and pointing. :) I'm a bit intimidated. I've started it and have thought of a couple of tricks I use that aren't mentioned there but I don't have a whole lot that's new to add to their quite excellent posts.
~~**~~
Resource Credits/Links:
a. The original image is a studio promo photo I snagged from a picspam hosted by sage_theory in her LJ in honor of IBARW.
b.
by oxoniensis and available in her skin tones gradient set.
avidrosette asked how I made the icon I'm using on this post. It was rather embarrassingly simple, I hate to admit. No textures. No brushes. Nothing fancy. It seems my fate that people only ask about the simplest of icons with the fewest cool "tricks." This possibly says something about misplaced pride over learning new and complex tricks (*g*) but which I'm determined to take as meaning one cannot overestimate the importance of good source material.
I started with a luscious, hi-res promo photo. It's hard to go wrong when you've gotten your hands on a gorgeous pic. Besides, who can mess up when starting with Kandyse McClure's beauty?
How I went
from:
to:
Most of these steps will sound very, very familiar if you've read any other tutorial I've written.
(credits/resource links are at the end of the tutorial)
1. Crop the image to 100x100 @ 100 ppi.
I cropped this picture probably at least a dozen times before settling on this one. I turned several crops into icons for the IBARW post, but this is the most dramatic crop.
2. Prepare the base.
I described in somewhat agonizing detail how I get clarity in icons in a previous post so I won't bore you with those details again. You'll notice precious little difference from Step #1; that's the value of an excellent source pic. :)
3. Duplicate base and set to 100% soft light.
Commonly, I include a screened copy of the base between the base and the soft light duplicate but this was a promo photo so the lighting didn't need to be increased. However, I thought the photo lacked contrast and soft light layers increase contrast.
4. Gradient Map, Soft Light 100% -- between the base and the soft light duplicate layer.
+
=
Again, this is familiar, no? I chose a light, neutral gradient because the preceding step made the image too dark but I liked the colors.
5. Add a light, peachy solid color layer (#ffede4), Multiply 26% -- above the gradient map layer and below the duplicated base set to soft light.
+
=
The image had lost a lot of the warmth in her skin tones and I wanted to subtly warm the photo. I chose a light color to avoid darkening the photo; that's very easy to do with something like multiply. Also? The more saturated the color, the better the selective color layer works.
6. Selective Color, Normal 100%
OK, here's where I admit my ignorance of formal selective color theory. I'm no expert; I just play with it. If you find a salient discussion, I'd love a link. My approach is to start with the big changes and then refine. The order I use is:
- start with the neutrals and balance those so that I find them attractive,
- tweak the other colors to do any of a number of things (warm them, cool them, de-emphasize them, emphasize them, etc.), and
- finally I play with the black and white settings.
I'm assuming that you're familiar with selective color so I'm not going to discuss the basics. However, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask; I'll do my best to answer anything I know. I'm giving you the final numbers I ended up with but, as anyone who has ever tried to use a tutorial's numbers like a recipe has discovered, this particular set will not produce the same results on any picture but this one. I'm going to concentrate, instead, on why I did what did and hope that the ideas are useful.
In this case, I wanted to continue warming the image to represent Dualla's heat and passion. (Also? warm skin tones are more appealing than cool ones.)
Here's how I did the selective color, step by step:
6a. NEUTRALS = -13, 0, +10, +18
I increased the red and yellow to warm it up. Increasing the black in neutrals often increases the contrast, which added a touch of drama. After the neutrals, the reds and yellows have the most dramatic effect so I deal with those next.
6b. REDS = -31, +4, +16, +21
On the red, I increased red, very slightly upped the magenta (a little goes a loooong way), added yellow to keep it from going sunburnt, and darkened the reds to make them more prominent.
6c. YELLOWS = -34, +8, +39, +37
I did essentially the same thing with the yellows that I'd done with the reds: I added red, a bit of magenta, and yellow to warm them up before darkening them to make them more prominent.
6d. Finish off the other colors.
GREENS = +42, -100, 0, 0
CYANS = +73, 0, -100, +40
BLUES = 0, 0, -100, 0
MAGENTAS = 0, +100, 0, 0
Messing with these colors is probably superfluous since there really isn't much green/cyan/blue/magenta in the image; I'm not certain that it makes any discernible difference. However, when I was cropping I noticed the actress's gorgeous, hazel eyes and I wanted to make them pop.
To emphasize the green, I adjusted the greens and cyans. In the greens, I added cyan and removed all magenta. In the cyans, I added a lot of cyan, removed all yellow, and darkened them. I wanted intensity of "pure" color so for the blues and magentas, I removed the opposing colors. All yellow was removed from the blues and all green was removed from the magenta.
To repeat, this step could almost certainly be skipped because the effect is so small. But once I start playing, I tend to tweak each color regardless of need.
6e. Adjust the whites and blacks.
WHITES = +14, 0, -27, 0
BLACKS = 0, 0, 0, +8
Americans prefer our whites to be slightly bluish rather than yellowish; in fact, we tend to perceive a very slightly bluish white to be "whiter" than pure white. This explains those blue bits in American powdered laundry detergent. It's a perception that I normally play to by adjusting the whites a tiny bit, making them cooler by increasing the cyan and decreasing the yellow. I normally do this very sparingly.
In this case, I exaggerated the effect because I liked the contrast between the warmth of her skin and the cool of the highlights. The blacks I barely touched, other than to darken them just a hair. With the whites becoming more prominent, I wanted to keep the piece from looking overlightened.
7. Redden her lips using a new selective color layer, Normal 100%.
REDS = -18, +26, 0, +43
I like the intimacy of the crop but between the actress's neutral lipstick and the crop, we've lost sight of how nicely shaped her lips are. I added a new selective coloring layer, masked off everything but her lips. All I had to adjust here were the reds. I reddened them a bit but most of the magic comes from adding a heavy dose of magenta and darkening them.
Emphasizing lips is highly variable, because every photo is going to be individual and it's easy to make the lips look awful. They not only have to be colored, but they have to look good with the skin tone and it's easy to become garish. Not so different, actually, from the daunting task of picking out a good lipstick in real life.
I tend to darken first, add magenta, and then add red. That seems to better produce "normal" looking lipstick shades -- but every photo is different. Less is usually more.
8. One last selective coloring layer, Normal 100%.
BLACKS = 0, 0, 0, +11
I wanted a tiny bit more contrast in the final product so I darkened the blacks a smidge. That's a trick I like to use because it not only increases contrast but tends to make details appear a tiny bit more in focus.
...And, that's it! The reasoning behind selective coloring got a bit long but the icon itself is really quite simple. elfcat255, I know I still owe you the "How I Use Textures" post and I've been working on it. I find myself kind of saying "what tinamishi and sanami276 said" and pointing. :) I'm a bit intimidated. I've started it and have thought of a couple of tricks I use that aren't mentioned there but I don't have a whole lot that's new to add to their quite excellent posts.
~~**~~
Resource Credits/Links:
a. The original image is a studio promo photo I snagged from a picspam hosted by sage_theory in her LJ in honor of IBARW.
b.
by oxoniensis and available in her skin tones gradient set.