Yeah you make me merry, make me very very happy. But you obviously, you didn't want to stick around.
Cropping
The way I approach cropping is the same way I approach taking a photograph. Ever take a photography class? Remember the rule of thirds? No? That’s ok. Rule of thirds is a basic rule of thumb that says photographs (AND ICONS!) are far more interesting to the eye when the subject isn’t smack dab in the center. Sometimes, it’s perfectly fine to center the icon. Centering a person’s face can add impact, but doing it over and over again gets boring really fast. So, more often than not you’ll get a much more interesting effect by moving your subject even just a hair to the side. Let me illustrate:
If you place an imaginary tic-tac-toe grid over your screencap or picture, you can see what I’m talking about. Let me use this little birdie from a recently posted icon as our example.
The original photograph I got straight from the web is visually interesting as is. The photographer did an amazing job of off-centering the bird to create depth. It’s the perfect example of rule of thirds in action. Now let’s see it with our tic-tac-toe grid.
You can see what I’m talking about now, right? Here’s another birdie I made an icon of, but the original photograph had him centered.
It’s such a pretty photograph, but I wanted more interest by putting him off to the side like so:
If you look at the majority of my icons, you can see I LOVE cropping subjects off to the side. However, I have found a difficulty applying rule of thirds when it comes to the landscapes for my country icons. Often times you have several areas you can focus on- mountains, grass, flowers, rocks, etc. What I do with landscapes is take a glance at the photograph and see where my eye is immediately drawn to. There’s my focus! You can always crop a picture several times and then pick which you like best. (This would be why I have a TON of different icons of the same cap when people are involved. I.E. see any of my Ellen Page icons.)
Another photography rule of thumb I’d like to bring your attention to is called “leading lines”. It’s just like it sounds. Leading lines are basically lines created by roads, fences, fields, etc. that lead the eye further into the photograph. I LOVE leading lines and shapes in photographs.
Examples:
Another technique that’s on the same page is “S-curves”. Just how it sounds- the various objects create a curvy figure like an “S”. Simple, right? It really is.
Examples:
Cropping according to these techniques with landscapes really help in creating a visually interesting icon. But what about people, you say? Alright, alright.
Cropping People
When I have High Definition caps (or photographs) of people, I like to focus on parts- lips, eyes, hands, jewelry, etc. As you can see here, I have several icons of the same picture of Miss Page.
I’m naturally drawn to details instead of the overall face, so I tend to make several icons focusing on different parts of the person that my eye is drawn to. (Ellen’s brown eyes and lips more specifically.) Because of this fact, I usually colour caps of people first and then crop my several variations afterwards. Still keep in mind the rule of thirds, but usually with shots of people, you don’t have leading lines and s-curves to add interest.
I really don’t have much else to say about cropping other than break outside the “center-of-the-icon” box. Focus on the unexpected, on parts instead of the whole, etc. Just experiment and be creative. =D
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First off, I don’t have Photoshop CS. I had a trial version, but it expired long ago. However, I’ve gotten used to working with Photoshop Elements despite the fact it lacks a ton of cool features. Thus, this tutorial involves zero selective colouring, colour balance, etc. so it should be pretty compatible with all versions. If not? =( I’m sorry, I tried.
Secondly, when I started making icons, I followed another tutorial that my technique is originally based on. For the life of me, I can’t find that tutorial anymore. I’ll keep looking and if I find it, I’ll add a link here.
COLOURING
I’ve been colouring this way for about 8 months now and I’ve noticed just a few things about it.
1.) It doesn’t work for all caps/pictures. For some reason, certain pictures come out looking absolutely horrid and I can’t figure out why. I don’t come across many that do look horrible, so this is just a warning I guess.
2.) You must have clear, clean, High Definition caps/pictures. They don’t have to be gigantic, but they do have to be of good quality. I use a sharpening technique, and bad quality + sharpening = horrendous results.
3.) Just a forewarning: sometimes in the beginning steps, the icon looks hopeless. Don’t give up! I’ve found that if I keep pushing through the steps, the end product is almost always satisfactory. Some I have had to scrap because by the last two steps, the icon still looked bad, but it’s worth the extra effort of going through the steps and seeing how it looks in the end rather than deleting it and never knowing. Be positive! =D
Alright, let’s get started.
For this tutorial, I’m going to be iconing the lovely Ellen Page because I adore her and I found some new pictures last night. We’ll be using this photograph:
Step 1:
Crop your picture (or in my case when iconing a person, don’t crop).
Since I’m iconing Ellen, I won’t be cropping right now. I’ll skip this step and move on to the next.
Step 2:
Duplicate your background and set it to “Screen”. Depending on your cap, you may need to lower the opacity or even duplicate the screen layer. For this picture, I need to lower the opacity because Ellen’s way too pale. I’ve got it knocked down to 35%.
Step 3:
Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation.
Under “Master”, go to Saturation. I tend to type in 23 here, but depending on your icon, you may need to up the saturation or lower it. Upping the saturation brings out more colour but it can sometimes make the picture look ridiculous. Play around with the number until you get something you like and hit “OK.”
I put Ellen on +43 saturation.
So now Ellen looks like this:
Step 4:
Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels
There’s no exact numbering on this step. On the drop down menu, go to Red, Green, and then Blue and move the three input arrows around until you get the colouring you like. I have a habit of moving the far left arrow up a lot and the middle and right arrow down just a smidge. By moving the arrows to the right, you take away that particular colour (red, green, or blue) whereas moving them to the left increases that colour.
Step 5:
Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast
Here’s another step you play around with. I always put brightness at a negative number and contrast at a positive. But, since I’m obsessive and weird about numbers, I make them the exact same number and it’s usually by 5’s (5, 10, 15, 20). I know, I’m weird. That was established long ago.
For Ellen I have brightness: -5, contrast: +5.
Step 6:
Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Colour
Make this layer an orange colour. I use f89117. Set to Soft Light, opacity 16%. It doesn’t have to be 16%. Again, this is a weird number thing for me. Sometimes I increase the opacity if it looks good. At such a low opacity, this layer adds more to skin tones.
Step 7:
Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Colour
Now fill this layer with a dark blue. I use 0d0929. Set to Exclusion. Usually I lower the opacity to a 75 or 80, but lately I’ve been leaving it at 100% to give the icon a more “cloudy” look? I don’t know how to describe it. For Ellen, I’m lowering it to 90%.
Step 8:
Duplicate your background layer again and drag it all the way to the top of our layers. Set to Soft Light, 25%. I just about never change this number.
Step 9:
Hit shift+alt+ctrl+E. This basically takes all the layers, squishes them together, and puts them in a nice new layer. Set it to Soft Light, 44%.
Step 10:
Our final step. Hit shift+alt+ctrl+E again. Go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Depending on the quality of your original picture, your numbers may be different. The highest I set them to is Amount: 50, Radius: 5.0. I never go higher than that. But, this is a bit too grainy on Ellen so I’m going to lower Amount to 40 and Radius to 4.0. I tend to keep these two numbers close together. Ex. 50-5.0, 40-4.0, 30-3.0, etc.
Unsharp mask can do wonders to an icon, but if you have a low quality cap, it’s going to look horrible. So keep quality in mind.
Since I didn’t crop before, I’m going to crop and then Unsharp mask.
TADAAA!! Here’s Ellen before:
And after:
And here’s some icons:
It might seem like a lot of steps, but really it’s not. If you’d like, you can add light textures and text. I’m not very good with either of those so I usually leave my icons as is.
Examples of other icons I use this technique on:
Hope this helped someone! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I’ve never done a tutorial before so sorry if it’s long-winded or unclear. =\