Icon tut
This tutorial was written for teh_gandu and explains how to make an icon, step by step. I decided to post it here, too because somebody else might find it useful.
This took somewhere around 2 hours to write, so I think it would take about an hour to do. I explained verything that I thought of, hopefully I didn't forget anything.
A few general tips: when a dialog box appears, move it so you can see both the dialog box and your image. Read everything that I wrote for a step, then try it. It's easier to get a view of what's gonna happen and understand things better.
In most pictures you'll see a red arrow pointing at something. That somethign is explained before or after the pic.
When I work with an image and do some coloring stuff to it (which is almost always), I prefer to do it with the full-sized image. The reason for this is that certain effects alter the picture. If it's big, you can resize it and in the smaller version these things aren't visible. It's also easier to work with it this way.
Now, we start with the Lara pic you gave me for the header, because it's too pretty to ignore :) (see it here)
First thing I do with an image is to lightewn it and sharpen it. We lighten it using a screen layer.
Right-click on the background layer and click on duplicate layer. You'll get a dialog box asking for the layer's name. For things to be easier, I suggest you name/rename the layers according to their purpose/effect. I'll name this one Bckgrnd screen (small name so I can se it fully in the list).
Now, we choose the blending mode. This is how your layers look like:
Click to select the blending mode and select Screen from the list.
You'll have this:
The blending mode affects the layer it's applied to. Some blending modes do this in 'relation' to the layers underneath it. You can try blending modes with a picture and some textures, to see how they are(I'll give a few links at the end)
In the pic, you can see an arrow pointed to "Opacity" It's quite clear what it does. I usually leave the opacity to 100% until I have a good idea of what the image will look like and then play with it, on several layers, to see how it affects the pic.
Now, we're on to the sharpening part. Making sure you have the 'bckgrnd Screen' layer selected, go to Filter -> Sharpen -> Sharpen. The quality of this pic is good, so we'll do it only once. We can always come back to this layer and sharpen the image more if we want to. We can have more than one effect applied to a layer.
Duplicate the base layer again (it will appear between the two layers we had previously) and set its blending mode to Overlay. Now drag it to the top and see how the image changes. I like it better the way it was at first, so we'll drag it back on top of the base layer. Rename the layer Bckgrnd overlay (Right click on the layer in the layers list and choose Layer properties)
Now we'll add what is called an 'Adjustment layer'. You can do it by going Layer -> New Adjustment Layer or:
The one we choose is Hue/Saturation. When you click on it, a dialog box appears. Drag the Saturation cursor to the left. You will see the image turning black and white. This is what you should have:
In the Layers list, you can see the auto name the layer has, Hue/Saturation 1 and the black and white little icon. This is how all Hue/Saturation layers are represented.
The blending mode for this layer is Normal. (Normal is the default blending mode for all layers). We'll change it to Screen and notice how the pic has some colors again :) Because the colors aren't that lively, duplicate the layer 'Bckgrnd overlay' layer twice.
This is what we have:
Next step: Flood fill layer. Ctrl+Shift+N to get a new layer on top of the others and you have a dialog box asking for the layer's name. We write Blue - exclusion and hit ok.
Click on the foreground color box and in the Color picker box that appears, type 013460. Then select the paint bucket and fill the newly created layer with this color.
(The colors should look okay for you, this looks like this because of the image size issues)
Now, for the Blue - exclusion layer, set the blending mode to... exclusion :) (Later, you can play around with the different dark blue colors to see how they work with exclusion.) Also, remember that this color wouldn't be the same if one of the previous layers wouldn't be there. To test this, click on the eye that's in front of the Bckgrnd screen layer. This will make it invisible. I think it's pretty obvious :) Turn it visible again by clicking again where the eye icon was, and turn the Hue/Saturaton layer invisible.
I liked the pic better with all of them visible, so we'll go back to that.
Because I think the effect is a bit too strong, I'll lower the opacity to 74%. This is what I have:
Almost everytime I do a blue exclusion layer (which is quite often), I add a Birghtness/Contrast adjustment layer. We're gonna do it now :) Like you added the Hue/Saturation, add the Brightness/Contrast layer(it's right above it on the list).
In the box that appears, I moved the cursors like this:
I also check the Preview box when I have it, so I can see the effect as I modify the values. In most cases, you can also type the values you want.
Now, as you can see, the image is stronger, the dark colors are more visible.
Add a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) and in the Color picker, type this value: acb72f. This is some strange mustard-y green and flood fill your new layer. Set the belnding mode to Color Burn and lower the opacity to about 31%. We'll probably modify it later, but it's okay for now.
Another new layer, the color for this one's flood fill being 9acffd. The blending mode is, again, Color Burn.
This is what I have:
Now, a few words about colors. Colors are a combination of red, green, and blue. The ones we're working with, anyway. The short for this combination is RGB and you'l often find something like RGB #ffffff. That's white :) Now after the # sign, you'll see six characters. They are in the hexadecimal numeration base, where you have the numbers from 0-9 and the letters from a-f. Sometimes, people write the letter with capitals. It's the same either way, and the program transforms them to lowercase anyway, so I don't see the reason why they do it.
The colors I told you to use are usually found using the color picker. After some time of using it, you'll know what kind of colors do what in a certain blending mode. I have a few favourite colors, the blue exclusion one being one of them, I know the hexa code without looking for it. (I should admit to not knowing my cell phone number at this point *g*)
The next step is a curves layer. a lot of people run from it as if it's soem sort of dangerous thing. I love it for the simple reason that it's easy to use (for me anyway) nd the results are quite spectacular.
So... Select it from the list of adjustment layers. You'll have this dialog box:
In the channels list, select 'Red'. You can see in that list the three colors I told you about. Each image being a combination of the three, you can modify them individually. I selected red here because it's the stronger of the colors in our picture and I want to modify that.
You'll see a line on the diagonal of the grided square. If you click with your mouse on it, you can drag it down or up. If you let go of the mouse, you'll see a little square appear on it. It acts like a divider, giving you two part of the line. This square acts like an anchor. We won't have more points for this mage, so don't worry about those things.
The two axes (bottom and left) correspond to the Input and Output boxes you see under the grid. Put your mouse on the center of the grid, and click. You'll see the little square appear. Now drag it a bit towards the lower right corner of the grid. You'll see the image turn a green-osh shade. You can see the values I have and the way my image looks like:
If you want, you can keep your settings or fill in the Input and output boxes with mine.
We're done with the coloring for this pic :) I happen to like it as it is. If you want, you can play with the opacity of certain layers, see ow they chnage the pic. The layers we have are:
Now it's time for the cropping. There are two ways to do thi: Using the cropping tool or selecting the area and then going to Image -> Crop. I prefer the second one.
Using the Rectangle selection tool, I selected a part of the picture. To make sure it was square, hold Shift pressed while you make the selection. You can always more the square around on your picture, to see if you'd like another part of it more. There was a lot of talk about the cropping technique on some icon comms, and the general advice is to go for some more different cropping. If you have someone's head, don't put it in the middle of your icon like it's an ID photo. When you've decided, go to Image -> Crop and enjoy your new image :) If you don't like the result, Undo (Ctrl+Z) and do it again :)
You will notice you layers structure is the same, the only change is in your image size and content. Now we'll resize the image to make it 100x100 pixels.Go to Image -> Image size and in the width and height boxes write 100. Check that the unit is set to pixels and that you have Constrain Proportions checked. In this case, wehn you enter both vaues manually and you know the originl was a square, it's okay either way. But later, you might want to have a header that's 500px wide, so you'll modify just that dimension.
Now, we merge all the layers (Layer -> Merge visible or Ctrl+Shift+E) and save the image. Icons are usually saved as .png, to keep the quality of the image. If you choose png, you're asked about a dubious saving option. I always leave that as it is.
This is where I was supposed to say great job, we're all done. However, I have a few links for you :)
You'll find three big lists of tuts here: http://weapon_icons.livejournal.com/
Two of them are for icons and another one for larger graphics.
The PS icon tuts are: http://community.livejournal.com/weapon_icons/31940.html#cutid1
and the larger graphics: http://community.livejournal.com/weapon_icons/29128.html#cutid1
A list off-LJ resources I compiled a long time ago: http://community.livejournal.com/lemon_craze/13349.html#cutid1 From these, I strongly recommend Hybrid Genesis, the second one from the top. It's a wonderful site, with the best bushes and textures I've seen.
Next tut will be a brushes/textures one :)
This took somewhere around 2 hours to write, so I think it would take about an hour to do. I explained verything that I thought of, hopefully I didn't forget anything.
A few general tips: when a dialog box appears, move it so you can see both the dialog box and your image. Read everything that I wrote for a step, then try it. It's easier to get a view of what's gonna happen and understand things better.
In most pictures you'll see a red arrow pointing at something. That somethign is explained before or after the pic.
When I work with an image and do some coloring stuff to it (which is almost always), I prefer to do it with the full-sized image. The reason for this is that certain effects alter the picture. If it's big, you can resize it and in the smaller version these things aren't visible. It's also easier to work with it this way.
Now, we start with the Lara pic you gave me for the header, because it's too pretty to ignore :) (see it here)
First thing I do with an image is to lightewn it and sharpen it. We lighten it using a screen layer.
Right-click on the background layer and click on duplicate layer. You'll get a dialog box asking for the layer's name. For things to be easier, I suggest you name/rename the layers according to their purpose/effect. I'll name this one Bckgrnd screen (small name so I can se it fully in the list).
Now, we choose the blending mode. This is how your layers look like:
Click to select the blending mode and select Screen from the list.
You'll have this:
The blending mode affects the layer it's applied to. Some blending modes do this in 'relation' to the layers underneath it. You can try blending modes with a picture and some textures, to see how they are(I'll give a few links at the end)
In the pic, you can see an arrow pointed to "Opacity" It's quite clear what it does. I usually leave the opacity to 100% until I have a good idea of what the image will look like and then play with it, on several layers, to see how it affects the pic.
Now, we're on to the sharpening part. Making sure you have the 'bckgrnd Screen' layer selected, go to Filter -> Sharpen -> Sharpen. The quality of this pic is good, so we'll do it only once. We can always come back to this layer and sharpen the image more if we want to. We can have more than one effect applied to a layer.
Duplicate the base layer again (it will appear between the two layers we had previously) and set its blending mode to Overlay. Now drag it to the top and see how the image changes. I like it better the way it was at first, so we'll drag it back on top of the base layer. Rename the layer Bckgrnd overlay (Right click on the layer in the layers list and choose Layer properties)
Now we'll add what is called an 'Adjustment layer'. You can do it by going Layer -> New Adjustment Layer or:
The one we choose is Hue/Saturation. When you click on it, a dialog box appears. Drag the Saturation cursor to the left. You will see the image turning black and white. This is what you should have:
In the Layers list, you can see the auto name the layer has, Hue/Saturation 1 and the black and white little icon. This is how all Hue/Saturation layers are represented.
The blending mode for this layer is Normal. (Normal is the default blending mode for all layers). We'll change it to Screen and notice how the pic has some colors again :) Because the colors aren't that lively, duplicate the layer 'Bckgrnd overlay' layer twice.
This is what we have:
Next step: Flood fill layer. Ctrl+Shift+N to get a new layer on top of the others and you have a dialog box asking for the layer's name. We write Blue - exclusion and hit ok.
Click on the foreground color box and in the Color picker box that appears, type 013460. Then select the paint bucket and fill the newly created layer with this color.
(The colors should look okay for you, this looks like this because of the image size issues)
Now, for the Blue - exclusion layer, set the blending mode to... exclusion :) (Later, you can play around with the different dark blue colors to see how they work with exclusion.) Also, remember that this color wouldn't be the same if one of the previous layers wouldn't be there. To test this, click on the eye that's in front of the Bckgrnd screen layer. This will make it invisible. I think it's pretty obvious :) Turn it visible again by clicking again where the eye icon was, and turn the Hue/Saturaton layer invisible.
I liked the pic better with all of them visible, so we'll go back to that.
Because I think the effect is a bit too strong, I'll lower the opacity to 74%. This is what I have:
Almost everytime I do a blue exclusion layer (which is quite often), I add a Birghtness/Contrast adjustment layer. We're gonna do it now :) Like you added the Hue/Saturation, add the Brightness/Contrast layer(it's right above it on the list).
In the box that appears, I moved the cursors like this:
I also check the Preview box when I have it, so I can see the effect as I modify the values. In most cases, you can also type the values you want.
Now, as you can see, the image is stronger, the dark colors are more visible.
Add a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) and in the Color picker, type this value: acb72f. This is some strange mustard-y green and flood fill your new layer. Set the belnding mode to Color Burn and lower the opacity to about 31%. We'll probably modify it later, but it's okay for now.
Another new layer, the color for this one's flood fill being 9acffd. The blending mode is, again, Color Burn.
This is what I have:
Now, a few words about colors. Colors are a combination of red, green, and blue. The ones we're working with, anyway. The short for this combination is RGB and you'l often find something like RGB #ffffff. That's white :) Now after the # sign, you'll see six characters. They are in the hexadecimal numeration base, where you have the numbers from 0-9 and the letters from a-f. Sometimes, people write the letter with capitals. It's the same either way, and the program transforms them to lowercase anyway, so I don't see the reason why they do it.
The colors I told you to use are usually found using the color picker. After some time of using it, you'll know what kind of colors do what in a certain blending mode. I have a few favourite colors, the blue exclusion one being one of them, I know the hexa code without looking for it. (I should admit to not knowing my cell phone number at this point *g*)
The next step is a curves layer. a lot of people run from it as if it's soem sort of dangerous thing. I love it for the simple reason that it's easy to use (for me anyway) nd the results are quite spectacular.
So... Select it from the list of adjustment layers. You'll have this dialog box:
In the channels list, select 'Red'. You can see in that list the three colors I told you about. Each image being a combination of the three, you can modify them individually. I selected red here because it's the stronger of the colors in our picture and I want to modify that.
You'll see a line on the diagonal of the grided square. If you click with your mouse on it, you can drag it down or up. If you let go of the mouse, you'll see a little square appear on it. It acts like a divider, giving you two part of the line. This square acts like an anchor. We won't have more points for this mage, so don't worry about those things.
The two axes (bottom and left) correspond to the Input and Output boxes you see under the grid. Put your mouse on the center of the grid, and click. You'll see the little square appear. Now drag it a bit towards the lower right corner of the grid. You'll see the image turn a green-osh shade. You can see the values I have and the way my image looks like:
If you want, you can keep your settings or fill in the Input and output boxes with mine.
We're done with the coloring for this pic :) I happen to like it as it is. If you want, you can play with the opacity of certain layers, see ow they chnage the pic. The layers we have are:
Now it's time for the cropping. There are two ways to do thi: Using the cropping tool or selecting the area and then going to Image -> Crop. I prefer the second one.
Using the Rectangle selection tool, I selected a part of the picture. To make sure it was square, hold Shift pressed while you make the selection. You can always more the square around on your picture, to see if you'd like another part of it more. There was a lot of talk about the cropping technique on some icon comms, and the general advice is to go for some more different cropping. If you have someone's head, don't put it in the middle of your icon like it's an ID photo. When you've decided, go to Image -> Crop and enjoy your new image :) If you don't like the result, Undo (Ctrl+Z) and do it again :)
You will notice you layers structure is the same, the only change is in your image size and content. Now we'll resize the image to make it 100x100 pixels.Go to Image -> Image size and in the width and height boxes write 100. Check that the unit is set to pixels and that you have Constrain Proportions checked. In this case, wehn you enter both vaues manually and you know the originl was a square, it's okay either way. But later, you might want to have a header that's 500px wide, so you'll modify just that dimension.
Now, we merge all the layers (Layer -> Merge visible or Ctrl+Shift+E) and save the image. Icons are usually saved as .png, to keep the quality of the image. If you choose png, you're asked about a dubious saving option. I always leave that as it is.
This is where I was supposed to say great job, we're all done. However, I have a few links for you :)
You'll find three big lists of tuts here: http://weapon_icons.livejournal.com/
Two of them are for icons and another one for larger graphics.
The PS icon tuts are: http://community.livejournal.com/weapon_icons/31940.html#cutid1
and the larger graphics: http://community.livejournal.com/weapon_icons/29128.html#cutid1
A list off-LJ resources I compiled a long time ago: http://community.livejournal.com/lemon_craze/13349.html#cutid1 From these, I strongly recommend Hybrid Genesis, the second one from the top. It's a wonderful site, with the best bushes and textures I've seen.
Next tut will be a brushes/textures one :)