2012 - first ever tutorial
So I was asked to do this tutorial at the icon_talk ask the maker, I have never done a tut before so I will give it the best I can. I'm not very good with my English, even though that is where I am from, so just bare with me people! :)
Firstly the icon is not going to be exactly the same, because I never saved the psd but hopefully you will get the general idea of how it was made.
so we are going to recreate this icon:
>
Ok here we go, I can't remember exactly what I did so let's just hope this goes well. First let me give you the caps that I used.
capture one, capture two
I start off doing my icons in the exact same way, I resize the images to 500 width, the height will just depend on the cap and will automatically change when you change the width. Then I add some curves, again depending on how light and how dark the cap is you will have to play with that but here are the settings that I used. Then I add a vibrance layer with 60 vibrance, but no saturation. We don't want to much to start with as this could make the cap go LQ, a little tip that Jorgen taught me! Then duplicate the base layer and set it to soft light, play around with the opacity to get what effect you want, I went for around half way.
Right now I have some caps that look like this: capture one, capture two
Now we are going to resize the images and move them onto a smaller canvas, open up a canvas of 100x100, which it the size that we have our icons here on livejournal. Now depending on how big you want your images or what you want to do with them will depend on the size. In this icon I had dean at the top with just his lips, and then sam at the bottom. I am resizing the sam cap the the width of 100 as I am wanting all of him to be on the icon. We want to move the cap to the other canvas you can merge all of the layers together or you can press ctrl, shift, alt and e at the same time and it will copy all the layers into one. Now select the image using the select tool and press ctrl c. Now you will have the layer copied, go to your other canvas and press ctl v to paste it there, you can move it round to where you would like it to go!
The dean cap I will want bigger as I will only be using his lips in the icon so lets resize it to 100 in height rather than width, do the same and paste it under the sam layer, then move it around to where you would like it to go!
Right now this is what I have:
Now we are going to start adding the light textures, I can't remember exactly which ones I added so I am just going to have a play!
First I have added this texture one top and set it to screen, then I used brightness/contrast on that layer to just die down the colour a little bit!
Now I am duplicating the whole icon and setting it to soft light with the opacity of 93% here is what we have so far:
I added a soft layer and put some white brush marks around there faces to lighten them up a bit and set that too 39% opacity.
Now add some more vibrance it's up to you have much depending on how you want you icon to look, I added 50 to it. Now we are going to do a trick I use quick a lot and we are going to flip the canvas, don't know why I do this you can see you icon from different angles and choose which you like better, in this case I must have liked it flipped. So go to image > image rotation > flip canvas horizontal!!
Now we want to do that same thing we did before with getting all the icon into one layer, then go to filter > sharpen > unsharp mask, here are my settings. Ok duplicate the layer and unsharp mask it again, then make the opacity 75%. Then we are done!
I know it is not exactly the same because there must have been another texture that I used in there but at least you get the general idea. You can also add other things to the icon, say other caps, textures or text, have a play you will make some amazing I am sure! I hope this is written efficiently and feel free to ask any questions you would like me to answer! Thank you!
>
other effects that can be achieved on top of this:
or
Hope this helped ~ give me feedback on how to improve etc....
comments are love. <3
thank you.
this was requested by lover_of_narnia, thank you for that, it's nice to know that you wanted a tut of me! So my first one, hope you like it!!!