tutorials: 01;
angelamaria asked for a tutorial on this icon so I've tried to write it up in a way that hopefully makes sense. c:
We'll be going from
to
This was one of the icons for the icon_talk anonymous icon battle, so the screencap was provided.
The first thing I did when I opened the screencap was panic figure out a way to shift the attention from the busy background to Iron Man.
I didn't want to cut him out completely, because I liked having the city in the background in general, I just wanted to make Tony more eyecatching.
So I started out with with cropping the cap down and duplicating it three times.
I set the first duplicate to Screen at 80% opacity, the second to Soft Light at 100% and hid the third one for now.
This is what you should have so far:
Then I made a new solid Gradient Layer that goes from #ee2e00 to #ffc300 and set it to an angle of 50°.
I picked those colours randomly because they were pretty close to the colours in Iron Man's suit.
I dragged the Gradient Layer underneath the Base Layer.
This is what your layers should look like right now:
Next I cut out Iron Man from his background in the first three layers (Base Layer, Screen Layer, Soft Light Layer). You can use your preferred method of cutting out subjects here, but I recommend using layer masks, since you can just copy your finished Base Layer Mask onto the other two layers.
Don't worry about it being meticulous or clean, in this case it's not very important!
As you can see, my layer mask wasn't exactly a thing of beauty either:
What you have on your canvas right now probably looks pretty terrible. But don't worry, we're going to fix that soon.
This is what you should have so far:
This is the part where the third Base Layer duplicate comes into play. Make it visible and extend the background.
You do that by right-clicking on the Rectangular Marquee Tool and changing it to Single Row Marquee Tool. Then you select a row close to where the screencap ends with that tool and press CTRL + T.
You should be in transformation mode now.
Hover over the rectangle in the middle of the selected row. Your cursor should have changed into two little arrows going upwards and downwards.
Now you just have to hold left click and drag your cursor upwards to extend the background, then approve your changes by clicking the check mark in the upper bar.
This is what your extended background should look like:
Now you set the layer you just extended to 44% opacity.
Voilá, we have the less noticable background we wanted. c:
Now it's time for the colouring.
I wanted the armor to have a more pinkish tint and I also wanted the top part to be a little lighter, so I made a new solid gradient layer that goes from #290a59 to #ff7c00 and set it to screen at an opacity of 28%.
Then I decided that this icon isn't yellow enough by far.
I created a new Curves layer and dragged the blue curve to the following values:
Output: 24
Input: 90
Much better, but now it wasn't red enough.
So I created another Curves adjustment layer and dragged the blue curve to the following values:
Output: 23
Input: 47
and
Output 151
Input: 164
and the green curve to the following values:
Output: 33
Input: 40
Now, your icon should look like this:
I felt the icon was too dark, so I created a Levels adjustment layer and set the middle value to 1,26.
This was the point where I decided that the icon was too saturated for my taste.
I created a Vibrance adjustment layer and set the Vibrance to -100 and the Saturation to +37, thus assuring that only the "important" parts of the icon are saturated.
For now, your icon should look like this:
Of course this made the icon look very washed out, so I created a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer and set the Brightness to +13 and the Contrast to +31.
Now the icon was a little too yellow again, which I fixed with two new adjustment layers.
One Photo Filter (just leave the settings as they are) and one Colour Balance layer set to 40% opacity with the following settings
(I only changed the midtones) brought out the reds again that were washed out before.
I also added another Levels layer, where I changed the left value to 12 to make the shadows darker.
So far your icon should look like this:
Then I decided that I wanted the reds to be a little lighter, but not less saturated.
So I created another Photo Filter adjustments layer and chose the third Cooling Filter.
I set it to an opacity of 27%.
I created a Selective Colouring layer with the following settings next
(I only changed the reds).
That's it! We're done with the colouring part. Your icon should look like this:
I originally wanted to leave it like this, but then I decided that it looks a bit empty.
So figured I'd add some text to make it more interesting.
I chose Complete In Him in size 18 and colour black to write the first part. I then set it to Overlay so that it matches the colours of the icon.
The next two words were placed directly over the Base Layer copy, layerwise, so that they are affected by all the Colouring adjustment layers I created.
I used Levi Brush in size 30 and colour #fce597, which I picked from Iron Man's helmet.
You have to write every word as a seperate layer, otherwise the effect I used doesn't work.
I created a Gradient Overlay in the layer style menu for both words with the following settings
To access the menu, just double click on the text layer and choose Gradient Overlay in the left menu.
Then I created a final Levels layer on top of all the other created layers where I changed the left value to 9.
That's it! You're done.
This is your result:
I hope this tutorial was somewhat helpful. c: If you have any questions, feel free to ask me!
We'll be going from
to
This was one of the icons for the icon_talk anonymous icon battle, so the screencap was provided.
The first thing I did when I opened the screencap was panic figure out a way to shift the attention from the busy background to Iron Man.
I didn't want to cut him out completely, because I liked having the city in the background in general, I just wanted to make Tony more eyecatching.
So I started out with with cropping the cap down and duplicating it three times.
I set the first duplicate to Screen at 80% opacity, the second to Soft Light at 100% and hid the third one for now.
This is what you should have so far:
Then I made a new solid Gradient Layer that goes from #ee2e00 to #ffc300 and set it to an angle of 50°.
I picked those colours randomly because they were pretty close to the colours in Iron Man's suit.
I dragged the Gradient Layer underneath the Base Layer.
This is what your layers should look like right now:
Next I cut out Iron Man from his background in the first three layers (Base Layer, Screen Layer, Soft Light Layer). You can use your preferred method of cutting out subjects here, but I recommend using layer masks, since you can just copy your finished Base Layer Mask onto the other two layers.
Don't worry about it being meticulous or clean, in this case it's not very important!
As you can see, my layer mask wasn't exactly a thing of beauty either:
What you have on your canvas right now probably looks pretty terrible. But don't worry, we're going to fix that soon.
This is what you should have so far:
This is the part where the third Base Layer duplicate comes into play. Make it visible and extend the background.
You do that by right-clicking on the Rectangular Marquee Tool and changing it to Single Row Marquee Tool. Then you select a row close to where the screencap ends with that tool and press CTRL + T.
You should be in transformation mode now.
Hover over the rectangle in the middle of the selected row. Your cursor should have changed into two little arrows going upwards and downwards.
Now you just have to hold left click and drag your cursor upwards to extend the background, then approve your changes by clicking the check mark in the upper bar.
This is what your extended background should look like:
Now you set the layer you just extended to 44% opacity.
Voilá, we have the less noticable background we wanted. c:
Now it's time for the colouring.
I wanted the armor to have a more pinkish tint and I also wanted the top part to be a little lighter, so I made a new solid gradient layer that goes from #290a59 to #ff7c00 and set it to screen at an opacity of 28%.
Then I decided that this icon isn't yellow enough by far.
I created a new Curves layer and dragged the blue curve to the following values:
Output: 24
Input: 90
Much better, but now it wasn't red enough.
So I created another Curves adjustment layer and dragged the blue curve to the following values:
Output: 23
Input: 47
and
Output 151
Input: 164
and the green curve to the following values:
Output: 33
Input: 40
Now, your icon should look like this:
I felt the icon was too dark, so I created a Levels adjustment layer and set the middle value to 1,26.
This was the point where I decided that the icon was too saturated for my taste.
I created a Vibrance adjustment layer and set the Vibrance to -100 and the Saturation to +37, thus assuring that only the "important" parts of the icon are saturated.
For now, your icon should look like this:
Of course this made the icon look very washed out, so I created a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer and set the Brightness to +13 and the Contrast to +31.
Now the icon was a little too yellow again, which I fixed with two new adjustment layers.
One Photo Filter (just leave the settings as they are) and one Colour Balance layer set to 40% opacity with the following settings
(I only changed the midtones) brought out the reds again that were washed out before.
I also added another Levels layer, where I changed the left value to 12 to make the shadows darker.
So far your icon should look like this:
Then I decided that I wanted the reds to be a little lighter, but not less saturated.
So I created another Photo Filter adjustments layer and chose the third Cooling Filter.
I set it to an opacity of 27%.
I created a Selective Colouring layer with the following settings next
(I only changed the reds).
That's it! We're done with the colouring part. Your icon should look like this:
I originally wanted to leave it like this, but then I decided that it looks a bit empty.
So figured I'd add some text to make it more interesting.
I chose Complete In Him in size 18 and colour black to write the first part. I then set it to Overlay so that it matches the colours of the icon.
The next two words were placed directly over the Base Layer copy, layerwise, so that they are affected by all the Colouring adjustment layers I created.
I used Levi Brush in size 30 and colour #fce597, which I picked from Iron Man's helmet.
You have to write every word as a seperate layer, otherwise the effect I used doesn't work.
I created a Gradient Overlay in the layer style menu for both words with the following settings
To access the menu, just double click on the text layer and choose Gradient Overlay in the left menu.
Then I created a final Levels layer on top of all the other created layers where I changed the left value to 9.
That's it! You're done.
This is your result:
I hope this tutorial was somewhat helpful. c: If you have any questions, feel free to ask me!