2 tuts | olivia from fringe & katniss from the hunger games
original image
made with photoshop cs5
requested by: vapor for icon_talk
This icon is going to be a complete recreation as I don't have the psd saved for it. Hopefully, I can get it kind of close. Apologies if it's not. :3
Step One --
I cropped the image of Olivia and then sharpened and applied the Topaz Clean filter, I believe with just some adjustments on the Crisp Style channel. I faded the sharpening and the Topaz to @ 21% opacity.
Step Two --
I added two curves adjustment layers; one for brightening and one for contrast.
curves 01 & curves 02
Step Three --
I created a blank layer and with a large (30 px in size, I believe) soft brush in white at @ 60% opacity, I added some light blobs around Olivia's face and her hair. I applied a Gaussian Blur to the light blobs. It needed more light so I duplicated this step twice more. I set the last layer of light blobs to Soft Light to retain some contrast that was lost.
Step Four --
I applied a black and white gradient map and set it to Soft Light @ 20-30%. But that washed it out a little too much, so for color I added two turqouise color fills set to Soft Light and Screen and then a green color fill set to Normal at @ 5-10% opacity. I picked these colors at random from the image itself, really no rhyme or reason to it. :)
Step Five --
Next came a Color Balance adjustment layer (with the layer mode set to Color) as I really wanted a cooler muted coloring for the image.
- MIDTONES
* CYAN-RED; -5
* MAGENTA-GREEN; -2
* YELLOW-BLUE; +16
Next came a brown/red fill layer set to Screen @ 60-70% opacity for a little reddish color.
Step Six --
I wanted more contrast so I added another black and white gradient map, this one set to Soft Light at 100% opacity. I copy-merged everything onto one layer and applied the High Pass filter (0.6 radius) and set the layer to Soft Light at @ 30%.
Step Seven --
Lastly, I added the text "it's time to change fate":
- TEXT SETTINGS
* FONT; Ignite the Light
* SIZE; 36pt
* LEADING & KERNING; both at default settings
* TRACKING; -10
* VERTICAL & HORIZONTAL SCALE; both at 90%
* BASELINE SHIFT; 0pt
* COLOR; white
* ANTI-ALIAS; crisp
Normally, I don't like to put text right over a subject's face, but it seemed to work quite well with this icon so I left it. I adjusted the positioning of the text using the Warp Text feature in Photoshop. I applied the Rise style to the text layer (don't rasterize the text or it won't work!) and adjusted the horizontal bend to +10. The Rise style with horizontal bend gives a slight slant upwards to the text and in certain cases, looks better than transforming or rotating the text. This largely depends on the font of course! You can't use Bold for your font because the warping won't work. The warping in and of itself applies a slight bold to the text anyway. If you want to bold your text, I recommend setting your font to the Strong anti-alias setting. Again, this doesn't work for every font!
After fiddling with the text and getting it the way I wanted, I rasterized and applied slight blurring and sharpening adjustments and called it good!
End result (or as close as I could get it):
Feel free to ask questions in the comments if any clarifications are needed. :)
original image
made with photoshop cs5
requested by: vapor for icon_talk
This icon I actually have a psd for, so it should be pretty close to the original in terms of the coloring. However, it may not be exact, so bear with me. :)
Step One --
I cropped the image of Katniss down to icon size by pasting the full size cap into a 100x100 and moving it around until I got the desired result.
Step Two --
I applied a Vibrance adjustment layer for a quick shot of color to the image as it was pretty bland and muted.
- VIBRANCE
* VIBRANCE; +100
* SATURATION; 0
Step Three --
I noticed there was a lot of muted blues and greens to the image that I really wanted to bring out. Using my color picker tool, I selected some of the colors from the image itself and applied three gradient maps using these colors. The first gradient map was cornflower blue (foreground color) to pale green (background color) and was set to Soft Light @ 100% opacity. The second gradient map was a dark grey (foreground color) to pale green (background color) and was set to Soft Light @ around 20-30%. I duplicated the second gradient map and lowered the opacity to @ 20%.
Step Four --
I added this grungy brown texture (not sure who it's by, sorry!) and set it to Screen and then duplicated the texture and set it to Soft Light.
Step Five --
I copy-merged everything onto a new layer and set it to Screen for a little more brightening. I duplicated, sharpened and added Topaz clean.
At this point, I could call the icon a finished product, but at the last minute I decided to change it up a little. This part is not on my psd for some reason, so bear with me. :3
Step Six --
I copy-merged everything onto a new layer and removed the background by adding a layer mask and using a combination of the polygonal lasso tool and a small eraser brush. I then rotated the icon 90 degrees counter-clockwise and used free-transform (CTRL + T) to shrink the cut-out and create more negative space. I then and added a texture that I downloaded from Deviant Art (I don't remember the maker at the moment) rotated it 90 degrees counter-clockwise and set it to Multiply. I copy-merged everything again and sharpened lowering the opacity to around 5-10% because it got a little yucky looking.
And here is the finished icon:
And that's it! Hopefully these tuts have helped in some small way. :)
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