First Tut

[sundancingstar]

I’ll show you how to get from
to this icon of Don and Megan: 


It’s my first tutorial but I hope you’ll understand. It’s made with PS CS 2, I think it will not be translateable, sorry.

Step1
Crop your image to 100x100 or whatever you want. If you image is very dark, duplicate it and set the layer to screen. If it’s still too dark, repeat this. Your image has not to be very light. Mine looks like this now (I didn’t do anything with it)


Step 2
Create a new elective color layer (Layer->New Adjustment Layer->Selective Color). Use this settings:

Reds
Cyan: -100
Magenta: +25
Yellow: +25

Yellows
Cyan: -100
Yellow: +100
Black: -100

Greens
Cyan: +100
Magenta: +100
Yellow: +100
Black: +100

Cyan
Cyan: +100
Magenta: +100
Yellow: +100
Black: +100

Blues
Cyan: +100
Magenta: +100
Yellow: +100
Black: +100

Whites
Cyan: +100
Magenta: -100
Yellow: -100
Black: +20
(if your picture is very light, leave this out)

Neutrals
Cyan: +15
Magenta: +2
Yellow: -12
Black: +7

Blacks
Black: +100

This was the only selective color layer -yippie- Set it on normal 100%

My result looks like this now


Step 3
Now we create a new Curves Layer (Layer->New Adjustment Layer->Curves) Take this settings, just click on the line, the first numbers is for input, the second for output, if there are more sets of numbers, you have to click twice.

RGB (75|101) (180|198)
Green (173|169)
Blue (141|111)

Set the Layer on normal 100%.

My icon looks like this right now


Step 4
Make a new Hue/Saturation Layer (Layer->New Adjustment Layer->Hue/Saturation)
Just set the Saturation to +25 up to +40 (see what looks best) and leave the other settings alone.


Step 5
We’re almost done now. Just one last layer, this time Color Balance (Layer->New Adjustment Layer->Color Balance)
Midtones |-100|-34|-16|
Shadows |-19|-27|-16|
Highlights |+13|+4|+34|

Check that Preserve Luminosity is activated.

Step 6
You don’t have to do this step but I like to. Duplicate your first layer and sharpen it once. (Filters->Sharpen->Sharpen or Sharpen edges) If it’s too much, you can play a little with the opacity.
We’re done! My final result:


Hope this tutorial could help! I’d love to see your icons made with this tut!

Other icons made with the same technique