V Tutorial

[enchantedteacup]

Requested by roslinforever.

How to go from
to

(Created in Photoshop CS3. Translatable, I think; uses Curves and Color Balance. No selective color. Tutorial is image-heavy.)

First, I cropped and resized my base:



I then duplicated the resized base and set it to Screen, 100% opacity.



However, I wanted to keep the background dark the way it was in the base, so that it wouldn't get too washed out when I start platering light textures all over it later. So I applied a layer mask, using a black brush to paint over the parts I didn't want:


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To create a bit more contrast, I duplicated the base, dragged it up to the top, and set it to Soft Light, 50% opacity.



I merged down all the layers (Ctrl + Shift + E) and sharpened (Filter >> Sharpen >> Sharpen).



To brighten up all the colors, I used a Curves layer.






RGB - Input: 127, Output: 135
Red - Input: 126, Output: 135
Green - Input: 124, Output: 130
Blue - Input: 127, Output: 131



I wanted to make the coloring warmer, so I created a Color balance layer:

Midtones: +20 +15 +14
Highlights: +26 +21 +17
Shadows: +20 +17 +12
Make sure "Preserve Luminosity" is checked.



I merged down all the layers (Ctrl + Shift + E) again. Then I used the Rectangular Marquee Tool, grabbed a portion of the top of the base, and extended it upwards.


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I still wanted the coloring to be warmer, so I again opened up a Color balance layer:

Midtones: +30 +28 +8
Highlights: +20 +17 +14
Shadows: +28 +23 +21
Make sure "Preserve Luminosity" is checked.



To brighten it up one more time, I duplicated that Color balance layer.



This next step makes only a little bit of difference, so you can skip it if you want. I just wanted to create a little bit more contrast, so I pasted the following texture and set it to Soft Light, 20% opacity


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Now the icon looks very stripey, which is okay, but all the browns and grays in the background building make the icon very dry. So I took the following texture and flipped it horizontally:


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I pasted it and set it to Screen, 100% opacity.



I wanted to make it bright and yellow on the left side too, but since there's less free space on the left, I took the same texture, blurred it using Gaussion blur (Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur), and nudged it a little bit to the left:


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I pasted it and set it to Screen, 70% opacity. I used Gaussian blur and a lower opacity so it wouldn't look too uniform on both the left and the right side.



Then I took the following texture and rotated it:


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And pasted it, setting it to Screen, 100& opacity.



Now it's very yellow, and I wanted to add a touch of another color. So I took the following texture, cut out the pink side on the right, flipped it, pasted it onto the icon, and blurred it using Gaussian blur:


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I set the layer to Soft light, 100%.



The background's light textures seemed a bit too separate, and I wanted the icon to look more cohesive. So this time, I took the same texture, cut out the left side, flipped it, pasted it onto the icon over his shoulder, and blurred it using Gaussian blur:


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I set the layer to Screen, 100%.



Finally, I wanted to add a bit more texture and color to the icon. So I took the following texture and pasted it onto the icon, setting it to Soft light, 100% opacity.


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I erased part of the texture from the left shoulder because the other shoulder's almost hidden by the texture, and I didn't want the textures to take over:


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I took the same texture, flipped it, and pasted it onto the icon, setting it to Soft light, 100% opacity:


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As a last touch, I added a Levels layer:


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And that's all!

I hope this was helpful! Please let me know if there are any mistakes or problems, thank you! :D

Original icon can be found here. Please feel free to join/watch my icon community.