» tutorial 002; like a slow fire burn
Okay, so this is only my second time ever writing a tutorial, so please bear with me. This time around I'm going to try to make the layout a little clearer, and as you can see, for once I am being super srs and using proper capitalization and everything. Because that's how thankful I am for actually having had people ask me questions, hehe!
Alright, this first one was requested by the ever fabulous vincibility ♥
» »
A few notes, before we start:
» This was made for the colour palette sidequest at theiconquest. Sooooooo that is why you will see a lot of useless steps in this tutorial as I tried to figure out how to end up with that specified shade of yucky murky blue. Also, along the way you will see many points at which the icon looked infinitely better. Oh well!
» This icon was originally posted here.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used, but you can replace that with saturation.
» Difficulty: Easy.
Here's the original cap of Maggie, episode 1x03 of The Newsroom, courtesy of grande_caps.
»
»
1. The first thing I did was open up a new 100x100 canvas and resize it to 800x800. Then I dragged the cap onto the canvas and used a combination of the smudge tool, clone stamp, and a background fill layer of a similar colour in order to extend the background. At this step I prefer to leave it as large as possible, and once I'm satisfied I resize the whole canvas back down to 100x100. Once it's smaller I can take a better look at what else I need to smudge/clone/etc. Finally, I copy merged the layers (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E) and there was my flattened base.
»
2. New curves adjustment layer, hit "auto" and voila. Then a new vibrance layer, jacked up to +100 (or +35 saturation on a hue/saturation layer, although the results are slightly different).
»
»
3. Two selective colouring layers:
I wanted to really bring out the blues and yellows simultaneously, so the settings on the first layer were:
YELLOWS 0, -2, +100
CYANS -42, +32, -100
And for the second layer:
YELLOWS 0, +100, +100
But her face is getting a little dark and yucky now, so on the layer mask I brushed over her face until it went back to a semi-normal colour.
»
»
4. Texture time! This texture (by ellaangelus is one of my favs, I literally use it in almost every single icon (oops?) on soft light 100%. But her hair gets grainy and washed out and bleh, so on the layer mask I brushed over it until it went back to normal.
»
»
5. Another one of my favs, also by ellaangelus and set to soft light 100%. Again with the washed out hair though! Same deal with the layer mask again.
»
»
6. So now I want the overall icon to get darker and closer to my intended dark blue, but also I want her hair to get a little bit more vibrant. Let's start with the hair by using another selective colouring layer:
YELLOWS -53, +14, +100, -29
GREENS -100, +100, +100
And then a dark green (#576333) colour fill, set to soft light 100%, to darken up the image.
»
7. There are some annoying smudges of colour behind her head, along the shadow, so I took out the smudge tool and quickly just smudged them away. Now that I'm looking at it again I would probably go back and smudge away even more yellow behind her head, but oh well whatever I'll leave it for now lol
»
»
»
8. Okay in case you can't tell by now, I really like ellaangelus' textures. Anyway, I inversed it (CTRL-I), then rotated it 180 degrees (EDIT > TRANSFORM > ROTATE 180) and then finally I set it to screen 65% so there's a bit more lighting, but it doesn't overpower what's already there. Beeeeeeertiful.
»
»
»
9. Time to do some colouring! I took the colour from the palette that I'm supposed to be working towards (#445959) and made three fill layers: multiply 49%, screen 46%, and soft light 44%. Yuck, right? But I've grown to love this technique, which I can't even remember who to credit for anymore (sorry sorry! ㅠ_ㅠ) because you get to go around and play with exactly how you want a specific colour to be expressed in your icon. And it's a great set-up for the rest of your icon, too.
»
»
10. But the fact remains that among other things, it's looking really flat and dark and ridiculously low-contrast right now. So copy merged (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E), gaussian blur (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 2.0), and then up the brightness on that one layer (IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST > +80 BRIGHTNESS). Finally, set it to soft light 100%.
»
»
»
11. Now for some more colouring, to get to that original dark blue! First, a colour balance layer with the following settings, in order to mute the blues a little:
MIDTONES +16, +8, -12
Then a selective colouring layer for the yellows on her hair:
YELLOWS -55, +17, +100
And then since I didn't like what it did to her face, I masked that out.
Finally, another vibrance layer, set to +40 (I knowwww, I was trying to mute the colours, but you can't take away my need for vibrance. This sidequest and I had some serious issues tbh) or a hue/saturation set to +15 for similar but not identical results. If I had used hue/saturation here, I would have masked out the brightness on her face.
»
»
12. Okay, this next step is probably the most complicated thing about this tutorial, and that's... not saying anything at all, really. Haha okay whatever yay match colour tool!
First, I opened up a new 100x100 canvas and filled it with the dark blue I wanted to match, and saved that as a .png file. Then I went and opened up that new .png. Next, I copy merged (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E) and went to the match colour tool (IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > MATCH COLOUR...) and under the drop-down menu for source, I went and found that sample .png from a list of the images I had open.
Under the default settings, it sort of just looks like I slapped it on with a colour overlay. I don't want that, though, so I'll play around with the settings instead. The settings I used were probably:
LUMINANCE 115 (for a bit of brightness)
COLOR INTENSITY 200 (lol I can't help it)
FADE 25 (this is basically the opacity of the colour overlay, if that makes any sense?)
In any case, those settings are fairly close enough to what I actually used.
»
»
»
13. This is really embarrassing, you can't even see any difference in what I just did. Oh well, this is what happened anyway:
Colour balance: MIDTONES +12 +12 -5
Selective colour:
YELLOWS 0, 0, +100
GREENS 0, +100, -100, 0
And then mask out the effect on her face.
Selective colour:
YELLOWS 0, -10, -34
And this time I only want this to reach her face, so I filled the layer mask with black and used a white brush over her face. Her face is still really gross but w/e I gave up at this point and left her looking sickly and green oh well!
»
14. Copy merge, gaussian blur 2.0 again, and this time set it to soft light 25%.
»
»
15. Last steps! Copy merged, sharpen (my preferred method is FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1), and then mask over the parts that are too sharp. Finally, her whole general facial-hair-everything region was still bugging me, so I copy merged again and smudged a tiny area around her sideburns. And then I called it a day and ran away from this stupidly difficult sidequest >:(
So yay! I hope this tutorial was helpful, even if the only thing you learned was that I can't do muted colours to save my life ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Comments would be faaaabulous, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to (please!) hit me up here! :)
Alright, this first one was requested by the ever fabulous vincibility ♥
» »
A few notes, before we start:
» This was made for the colour palette sidequest at theiconquest. Sooooooo that is why you will see a lot of useless steps in this tutorial as I tried to figure out how to end up with that specified shade of yucky murky blue. Also, along the way you will see many points at which the icon looked infinitely better. Oh well!
» This icon was originally posted here.
» Program: Photoshop CS5. Vibrance is used, but you can replace that with saturation.
» Difficulty: Easy.
Here's the original cap of Maggie, episode 1x03 of The Newsroom, courtesy of grande_caps.
»
»
1. The first thing I did was open up a new 100x100 canvas and resize it to 800x800. Then I dragged the cap onto the canvas and used a combination of the smudge tool, clone stamp, and a background fill layer of a similar colour in order to extend the background. At this step I prefer to leave it as large as possible, and once I'm satisfied I resize the whole canvas back down to 100x100. Once it's smaller I can take a better look at what else I need to smudge/clone/etc. Finally, I copy merged the layers (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E) and there was my flattened base.
»
2. New curves adjustment layer, hit "auto" and voila. Then a new vibrance layer, jacked up to +100 (or +35 saturation on a hue/saturation layer, although the results are slightly different).
»
»
3. Two selective colouring layers:
I wanted to really bring out the blues and yellows simultaneously, so the settings on the first layer were:
YELLOWS 0, -2, +100
CYANS -42, +32, -100
And for the second layer:
YELLOWS 0, +100, +100
But her face is getting a little dark and yucky now, so on the layer mask I brushed over her face until it went back to a semi-normal colour.
»
»
4. Texture time! This texture (by ellaangelus is one of my favs, I literally use it in almost every single icon (oops?) on soft light 100%. But her hair gets grainy and washed out and bleh, so on the layer mask I brushed over it until it went back to normal.
»
»
5. Another one of my favs, also by ellaangelus and set to soft light 100%. Again with the washed out hair though! Same deal with the layer mask again.
»
»
6. So now I want the overall icon to get darker and closer to my intended dark blue, but also I want her hair to get a little bit more vibrant. Let's start with the hair by using another selective colouring layer:
YELLOWS -53, +14, +100, -29
GREENS -100, +100, +100
And then a dark green (#576333) colour fill, set to soft light 100%, to darken up the image.
»
7. There are some annoying smudges of colour behind her head, along the shadow, so I took out the smudge tool and quickly just smudged them away. Now that I'm looking at it again I would probably go back and smudge away even more yellow behind her head, but oh well whatever I'll leave it for now lol
»
»
»
8. Okay in case you can't tell by now, I really like ellaangelus' textures. Anyway, I inversed it (CTRL-I), then rotated it 180 degrees (EDIT > TRANSFORM > ROTATE 180) and then finally I set it to screen 65% so there's a bit more lighting, but it doesn't overpower what's already there. Beeeeeeertiful.
»
»
»
9. Time to do some colouring! I took the colour from the palette that I'm supposed to be working towards (#445959) and made three fill layers: multiply 49%, screen 46%, and soft light 44%. Yuck, right? But I've grown to love this technique, which I can't even remember who to credit for anymore (sorry sorry! ㅠ_ㅠ) because you get to go around and play with exactly how you want a specific colour to be expressed in your icon. And it's a great set-up for the rest of your icon, too.
»
»
10. But the fact remains that among other things, it's looking really flat and dark and ridiculously low-contrast right now. So copy merged (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E), gaussian blur (FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR > 2.0), and then up the brightness on that one layer (IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST > +80 BRIGHTNESS). Finally, set it to soft light 100%.
»
»
»
11. Now for some more colouring, to get to that original dark blue! First, a colour balance layer with the following settings, in order to mute the blues a little:
MIDTONES +16, +8, -12
Then a selective colouring layer for the yellows on her hair:
YELLOWS -55, +17, +100
And then since I didn't like what it did to her face, I masked that out.
Finally, another vibrance layer, set to +40 (I knowwww, I was trying to mute the colours, but you can't take away my need for vibrance. This sidequest and I had some serious issues tbh) or a hue/saturation set to +15 for similar but not identical results. If I had used hue/saturation here, I would have masked out the brightness on her face.
»
»
12. Okay, this next step is probably the most complicated thing about this tutorial, and that's... not saying anything at all, really. Haha okay whatever yay match colour tool!
First, I opened up a new 100x100 canvas and filled it with the dark blue I wanted to match, and saved that as a .png file. Then I went and opened up that new .png. Next, I copy merged (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E) and went to the match colour tool (IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > MATCH COLOUR...) and under the drop-down menu for source, I went and found that sample .png from a list of the images I had open.
Under the default settings, it sort of just looks like I slapped it on with a colour overlay. I don't want that, though, so I'll play around with the settings instead. The settings I used were probably:
LUMINANCE 115 (for a bit of brightness)
COLOR INTENSITY 200 (lol I can't help it)
FADE 25 (this is basically the opacity of the colour overlay, if that makes any sense?)
In any case, those settings are fairly close enough to what I actually used.
»
»
»
13. This is really embarrassing, you can't even see any difference in what I just did. Oh well, this is what happened anyway:
Colour balance: MIDTONES +12 +12 -5
Selective colour:
YELLOWS 0, 0, +100
GREENS 0, +100, -100, 0
And then mask out the effect on her face.
Selective colour:
YELLOWS 0, -10, -34
And this time I only want this to reach her face, so I filled the layer mask with black and used a white brush over her face. Her face is still really gross but w/e I gave up at this point and left her looking sickly and green oh well!
»
14. Copy merge, gaussian blur 2.0 again, and this time set it to soft light 25%.
»
»
15. Last steps! Copy merged, sharpen (my preferred method is FILTER > ARTISTIC > PAINT DAUBS > 1, 1), and then mask over the parts that are too sharp. Finally, her whole general facial-hair-everything region was still bugging me, so I copy merged again and smudged a tiny area around her sideburns. And then I called it a day and ran away from this stupidly difficult sidequest >:(
So yay! I hope this tutorial was helpful, even if the only thing you learned was that I can't do muted colours to save my life ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Comments would be faaaabulous, and if you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to (please!) hit me up here! :)