Tutorial 1 - The Master and his Wife
From this: 
to this:
This is a PS CS tutorial (I use CS3) using levels and selective coloring, so it's not translatable, sorry. As requested by marcal_92.
Rules:
- Please do feel free to comment and show me any results you get!!
- Please don't make an icon just like this following the tut and claim it as your own.
Thank you! <3
Since I don't usually save .psds, I tried to recreate it as close as I could to the existing icon. The light at the top is a little different, a tiny bit less red, and I think it might be ever so slightly lighter, but other than that I think the coloring is pretty damn close. I hope you all like it! :D
Normally, I tend to work with the full-sized cap or picture, and then make it small, but you can choose to do whichever. For the purposes of this tutorial, I've made the pics small for space's sake. Also, the cap's already a little blurry, but once you make it smaller, it should sharpen the picture enough, and if not, you can always sharpen it a bit - I like that it's a bit soft, really. I also make sure that the picture is on Layer 1, not Background, so Copy-Paste - Function-A, Function-V for us Mac users, Ctrl for everyone else, I believe. ;)
1. Okay, so first, I started with this cap, courtesy of the fantastic Galleries at Space and Time. Then I put it on a new layer.
2. Personally, I tend to soften the skin a little with the blur tool, but with this cap, because of the motion and the distance, there's not really much softening that you need to do. So I just used the blur tool at around 22% on her skin a little and on his, just to soften any artifacts.
3. Now I'll choose to crop it to size - I wanted to give the impression of some room in front of them as well as a good amount of negative space above them. So I crop the picture to the width I want. Make sure to crop to the same height as width, even if the height is more than the cap height - again, make sure you have it on a layer!
4. Okay, so now it's gonna be wide enough, but it's an odd shape, and I want more space above them. You could smear the ceiling up, but I really like the light reflection going on, so I'm going to paste another copy of the picture (F-A), and then flip it upside down (Edit -> Transform -> Flip Vertical). Now, I put that layer under the first layer and move it until the two 'ceiling' edges are just over each other. Now merge these two layers (Layer -> Merge Down). You might have a little line where the two were joined - usually I just blur that away.
5. Normally, I like mirroring, but there's not enough of them up there to really be pretty - just the tops of their heads. So I usually use the clone tool (right above the eraser tool) to copy the surrounding color - you can also just use the smudge tool.
6. Now that we've got a sort of dull 'base', we can begin to fiddle with color. Personally, I have a bunch of coloring steps that I've fooled around with in the past saved as Actions, and I often just go through those until I find a base coloring that I start to like and then fool around with it. If you want info on actions, there's a link to an Action tutorial in my Tutorial List.
ANYWAYS. Yes. Base. We want to lighten this up. I like using levels or curves, but first we copy-paste a few layers and set them as screen at 35% and soft-light at 91% - fiddle with them until you get something a little brighter and more contrasted than the base that's right for your icon.
7. Then I added a levels layer (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Levels) just to brighten the whole thing:
RGB: 7 / 1.16 / 214
This will definitely depend on your base - I try to look for the peaks where the light and dark colors tend to collect, and then I watch the pic as I fiddle with the controls.
8. To bring out a little of the color in her lips, the wall and her coat for the upper layers to pick up on, we'll put in a hue/saturation layer (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Hue/Saturation):
Master: +19
Red: +3
9. So now we throw on the first of the selective color layers (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Selective Color). Keep in mind that they're probably not going to look great separately, because I put one or two on and then play with them a lot, so I get the color more with everything all together than from the layers put on one at a time. This one brings a lot of those orange/peaches out for later.
Reds: -100 / 0 / +100 / 0
Yellows: -100 / 0 / +100 / 0
Neutrals: +19 / +11 / -9 / +6
10. And the next selective color layer:
Reds: -11 / +11 / -2 / -4
Yellows: -46 / -1 / -25 / 0
Whites: +25 / -16 / +20 / +14
Neutrals: +91 / -1 / -24 / -35
Blacks: 0 / 0 / 0 / +11
11. Now, this icon in and of itself is very lovely, and if you wanted, you could leave it here. But I really wanted that peach that's inherently in the wall behind them and in her suit. So I dropped in a fill layer to sort of bring that out, setting it to Darken and played with the levels.
Layer -> Fill Layer -> Solid Color -> Darken @ 25% -> ff5a00
12. I kind of wanted to add a little contrast. (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Brighten/Contrast)
Contrast: +33
And done!! If it's not colorful enough for you still, you could add another Saturation layer. But I like it like this. I hope you do, too! :D
to this:
This is a PS CS tutorial (I use CS3) using levels and selective coloring, so it's not translatable, sorry. As requested by marcal_92.
Rules:
- Please do feel free to comment and show me any results you get!!
- Please don't make an icon just like this following the tut and claim it as your own.
Thank you! <3
Since I don't usually save .psds, I tried to recreate it as close as I could to the existing icon. The light at the top is a little different, a tiny bit less red, and I think it might be ever so slightly lighter, but other than that I think the coloring is pretty damn close. I hope you all like it! :D
Normally, I tend to work with the full-sized cap or picture, and then make it small, but you can choose to do whichever. For the purposes of this tutorial, I've made the pics small for space's sake. Also, the cap's already a little blurry, but once you make it smaller, it should sharpen the picture enough, and if not, you can always sharpen it a bit - I like that it's a bit soft, really. I also make sure that the picture is on Layer 1, not Background, so Copy-Paste - Function-A, Function-V for us Mac users, Ctrl for everyone else, I believe. ;)
1. Okay, so first, I started with this cap, courtesy of the fantastic Galleries at Space and Time. Then I put it on a new layer.
2. Personally, I tend to soften the skin a little with the blur tool, but with this cap, because of the motion and the distance, there's not really much softening that you need to do. So I just used the blur tool at around 22% on her skin a little and on his, just to soften any artifacts.
3. Now I'll choose to crop it to size - I wanted to give the impression of some room in front of them as well as a good amount of negative space above them. So I crop the picture to the width I want. Make sure to crop to the same height as width, even if the height is more than the cap height - again, make sure you have it on a layer!
4. Okay, so now it's gonna be wide enough, but it's an odd shape, and I want more space above them. You could smear the ceiling up, but I really like the light reflection going on, so I'm going to paste another copy of the picture (F-A), and then flip it upside down (Edit -> Transform -> Flip Vertical). Now, I put that layer under the first layer and move it until the two 'ceiling' edges are just over each other. Now merge these two layers (Layer -> Merge Down). You might have a little line where the two were joined - usually I just blur that away.
5. Normally, I like mirroring, but there's not enough of them up there to really be pretty - just the tops of their heads. So I usually use the clone tool (right above the eraser tool) to copy the surrounding color - you can also just use the smudge tool.
6. Now that we've got a sort of dull 'base', we can begin to fiddle with color. Personally, I have a bunch of coloring steps that I've fooled around with in the past saved as Actions, and I often just go through those until I find a base coloring that I start to like and then fool around with it. If you want info on actions, there's a link to an Action tutorial in my Tutorial List.
ANYWAYS. Yes. Base. We want to lighten this up. I like using levels or curves, but first we copy-paste a few layers and set them as screen at 35% and soft-light at 91% - fiddle with them until you get something a little brighter and more contrasted than the base that's right for your icon.
7. Then I added a levels layer (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Levels) just to brighten the whole thing:
RGB: 7 / 1.16 / 214
This will definitely depend on your base - I try to look for the peaks where the light and dark colors tend to collect, and then I watch the pic as I fiddle with the controls.
8. To bring out a little of the color in her lips, the wall and her coat for the upper layers to pick up on, we'll put in a hue/saturation layer (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Hue/Saturation):
Master: +19
Red: +3
9. So now we throw on the first of the selective color layers (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Selective Color). Keep in mind that they're probably not going to look great separately, because I put one or two on and then play with them a lot, so I get the color more with everything all together than from the layers put on one at a time. This one brings a lot of those orange/peaches out for later.
Reds: -100 / 0 / +100 / 0
Yellows: -100 / 0 / +100 / 0
Neutrals: +19 / +11 / -9 / +6
10. And the next selective color layer:
Reds: -11 / +11 / -2 / -4
Yellows: -46 / -1 / -25 / 0
Whites: +25 / -16 / +20 / +14
Neutrals: +91 / -1 / -24 / -35
Blacks: 0 / 0 / 0 / +11
11. Now, this icon in and of itself is very lovely, and if you wanted, you could leave it here. But I really wanted that peach that's inherently in the wall behind them and in her suit. So I dropped in a fill layer to sort of bring that out, setting it to Darken and played with the levels.
Layer -> Fill Layer -> Solid Color -> Darken @ 25% -> ff5a00
12. I kind of wanted to add a little contrast. (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Brighten/Contrast)
Contrast: +33
And done!! If it's not colorful enough for you still, you could add another Saturation layer. But I like it like this. I hope you do, too! :D