Tutorial 22: Soldier Blue
An icon tutorial for one of my favourite animes. ♥
Requested by inutaka_karuki.
How to go from
to
with Photoshop. Uses Color Balance and texture dropping, so it should be translatable.
1. Prepare your base! Blue from the Toward The Terra anime will keep me company today. :D
2. It's too dark, arrgh... fix that with a Screen, 100% duplicate of your base! It works especially good with this one because it also increases the shinies. Depending on your image you might need to lower the opacity or take a Soft Light duplicate instead.
2. See this incredible difference. <3 However, as pretty as it already is, it still lacks some color. Because of the image's strong color contrasts I decided to work with textures first instead of the usual adj. layers. So take this one by bambinainnero on Multiply, 100%.
3. Nice, but it could be a bit warmer. Take this one by tove_91 and set it to Soft Light, 100%.
4. Better, but it's gotten too bright now. Darken it a bit (it might look like going a step back again, but we need it for the further coloring) with a Darken, 69% duplicate of your base. Play around with the opacity if needed.
5. For more colors and shinies take the texture by bambinainnero again and set it to Overlay, 60% this time. SEE WHY WE HAD TO DARKEN IT FIRST? xD
6. I was almost tempted to leave it like that. xD;
But let's bring out the colors a bit more with a Color Balance... adj. layer like this:
Midtones: -38 -30 3
Then open a Hue/Saturation... adj. layer and set the master saturation to +20.
7. I'm pretty satisfied already, but why not making the space looking even more like space? Take
this texture (by ?) on Screen, 100% (again you might have to lower the opacity) for this.
If you want to add some text, now is the perfect time for it because it'll be under the following light textures then. I decided to go for some tiny text:
8. For some additional lights (you can never have enough of them, LOL) take this one by sanami276 and this lens texture by gravira, which I flipped horizontally. Set both to Screen, 100% and erase parts you don't like.
9. As a final step, I took a big soft brush (~45px), brushed with #ffffff along the border on a new layer and set that layer to Screen, 77% for some atmosphere (I've been doing that a lot lately), and that's it!
Questions? Just ask! :D
Other examples:
Be creative and experiment however you want, and I'd love to see your results! I'm curious what you come up with. :D
Like what you see? Friend soleil_icons for future updates. More tutorials are here, and these will be coming next.
Requested by inutaka_karuki.
How to go from
to
with Photoshop. Uses Color Balance and texture dropping, so it should be translatable.
1. Prepare your base! Blue from the Toward The Terra anime will keep me company today. :D
2. It's too dark, arrgh... fix that with a Screen, 100% duplicate of your base! It works especially good with this one because it also increases the shinies. Depending on your image you might need to lower the opacity or take a Soft Light duplicate instead.
2. See this incredible difference. <3 However, as pretty as it already is, it still lacks some color. Because of the image's strong color contrasts I decided to work with textures first instead of the usual adj. layers. So take this one by bambinainnero on Multiply, 100%.
3. Nice, but it could be a bit warmer. Take this one by tove_91 and set it to Soft Light, 100%.
4. Better, but it's gotten too bright now. Darken it a bit (it might look like going a step back again, but we need it for the further coloring) with a Darken, 69% duplicate of your base. Play around with the opacity if needed.
5. For more colors and shinies take the texture by bambinainnero again and set it to Overlay, 60% this time. SEE WHY WE HAD TO DARKEN IT FIRST? xD
6. I was almost tempted to leave it like that. xD;
But let's bring out the colors a bit more with a Color Balance... adj. layer like this:
Midtones: -38 -30 3
Then open a Hue/Saturation... adj. layer and set the master saturation to +20.
7. I'm pretty satisfied already, but why not making the space looking even more like space? Take
this texture (by ?) on Screen, 100% (again you might have to lower the opacity) for this.
If you want to add some text, now is the perfect time for it because it'll be under the following light textures then. I decided to go for some tiny text:
8. For some additional lights (you can never have enough of them, LOL) take this one by sanami276 and this lens texture by gravira, which I flipped horizontally. Set both to Screen, 100% and erase parts you don't like.
9. As a final step, I took a big soft brush (~45px), brushed with #ffffff along the border on a new layer and set that layer to Screen, 77% for some atmosphere (I've been doing that a lot lately), and that's it!
Questions? Just ask! :D
Other examples:
Be creative and experiment however you want, and I'd love to see your results! I'm curious what you come up with. :D
Like what you see? Friend soleil_icons for future updates. More tutorials are here, and these will be coming next.