tutorial 002; katherine heigl
To preface, results are obviously going to vary depending on your image. This is a guide with specific numbers that I used to work for my icon. What may work for my image may not work for yours. A darker image may require an extra screen or soft light layer, you may have to work cyan into your selective color, etcetera, etcetera ad nauseum.
Please do not copy-cat.
Experimenting is key to becoming a better iconist and fanartist.
Prepare your base.
1. Duplicate your base twice.
2. Set the first duplicate to screen, second to soft light. If the image is too bright, lower the screen layer's fill opacity. (I lowered mine to 64%.)
3. Make a new layer and stamp visible (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E).
4. Paste this
(arisubox). For what I'm doing, I wanted the texture to be darker, so I used Levels (Image >> Adjustment >> Levels).
The black arrow on the left makes the image darker; the white arrow on the right adds light; and the grey arrow in the middle balances the elements; hence the name "Levels".
5. Paste this
(petits_papier) and set it to darken. As you can see, only the colored dots remain. I erased part of the texture for good measure.
6. We now duplicate our prepared base and place it at the top of our layers.
This greatly depends on your image's background and if the object blends well into it or not. My base is fairly clean, with Katherine Heigl standing out surprisingly well against the white; particularly since she's in a similarly colored dress. So I decide to risk it and use the magic wand tool (
), making sure to set the tolerance to a number less than five. (I set it to one.)
I then click on the background with my magic wand tool and hope for a clean outline. If it's not even close, deselect and adjust the tool's tolerance. Now if you are having no luck at all, I'd recommend using magnetic lasso (
- there's a black arrow at the right bottom corner that gives you a menu of lasso tools to choose from). Zoom in on your image and start at an edge to line your image. Glide the tool along, clicking every few times against the outline to "anchor" the line to the image. To get the blinking outline, always go completely around your image and back to the start where you will see a small square and click in it. Your outline will be complete.
Do not worry if the outline is not exactly perfect. When you have carefully outlined your object/person, select inverse (Select >> Inverse) and delete the background. If there's remnants of the background left, zoom in and cautiously erase the edges.
Like I stated a few sentences ago, do not worry if the outline is not perfect. Part of Katherine's bust was missing from mine due to the use of the magic wand tool, but I placed the image on the texture so that you would not know. Placement of the image is very important. Never center an image unless it looks aesthetically pleasing.
7. My cut-out seems a tad bland against my busy background, so I duplicated it and set it to soft light.
8. For decorative purposes, I created a new layer and used the lasso tool to make a jagged outline around Katherine. With the line still blinking, I went into Edit >> Stroke (width: 2 px; location: outside) and made a white two-pixel border around her. I erased at intervals to make it look "dotted". I then set the layer to soft light and duplicated it.
9. Since I didn't feel the icon was complete, I added text.
Voila!
Layers
Icon Tutorial #2 PSD
Other icons made using this technique:
