Coloring and Stuff...
Sky asked about the little talk/thought bubbles so I thought I would hit up a tutorial. Fun times.
This tutorial will work best if you have blue colors in your icon. I say that b/c the selective coloring will be all up in the blues and stuff. So keep that in mind if you try this.
Start with this:
I want him to be that size so I have room for the talk bubble, but I have to figure out how to fill in that space to make it 100x100.
So what I do, is there is a little bit of the wall color above the picture in the background. So I duplicate the image and move the bottom layer up just a little bit. I do that a few times, then I merge all those and repeat until I fill in all the space. This really only works if there is nothing on the wall, or straight lines. So you just extend the picture up, I got this:
But it's still not 100x100, so I duplicate the base once again and move the bottom layer to the right:
But you can still see the black line, so I just use one of the soft round brushes and erase the edge of the top layer to get it to blend. You might have to duplicate and erase a few times, use the smudge or whatever to get rid of the corner of his shoulder that creep up when you start erasing the top layer. I got this:
so after all that you get this:
to this:
after, I used the blur tool set to "lighten" just to get rid of the darker lines to his right:
Ok, so the image is 100x100
Merge all your layers if you haven't already and duplicate it again, set it to screen if the image is dark, play around w/ the % or whatever, I kept this one at 100%:
Then you want to sharpen it, So go back to your base and duplicate the base. Got to "Filter > Other > High Pass" (Mine is under the "other" category, but yours might be under a different one) I usually do it something between one and two. Depending on the image or whatever, so the layer under the screened layer is grey and weird looking like this:
then set that layer to "soft light"
With that middle layer, you can duplicate it if you want the image sharper, or take down the % of the layer if it's too sharp or whatever.
Now, select the top layer so your adjustment layers effect all the layers.
Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation. Raise the Master Saturation until the colors look all bright and crispy, but the skin will usually take on a totally weird tone like so:
Now, to fix his skin, select the "red" saturation and lower it a lot, until the skin looks less gross, do the same with the yellow if necessary:
I think his hair is taking on this weird green tone, but that can be fixed under selective coloring.
Ok, so to make the blue's really blue, under BLUE and/or CYAN you need to raise Blue, Magenta, and black while lowering the yellow.
If you need to fix skin tone, mess with YELLOW and RED, and this gets tricky if the person is wearing anything that is yellow or red. (That's where the raise the saturation thing comes in, and don't be afraid to just....erase the face part of layer if you can't get the skin tone right.) I messed with the reds and yellows just a bit to get his skin the color I wanted it. Just a small tweek.
To take the green out of his hair, I raised the black just a tiny bit under YELLOW, GREEN and Black.
so after I messed around with selective coloring, mine went from this:
to:
Ok, so this is when I start doing random stuff until it's bright, but contrasty and still colorful. So the first thing is I add a fill layer. I usually do Blue b/c I like when people have pale fucking skin against dark hair, but whatever. So I usually start with a random dark color:
Set it to color burn:
Bring the % WAY down, like something b/t 10 and 20. I put this at about 17%:
this is the fun part, basically what I do at this point, is I just double click on the color burn layer so I can see my color wheel again, and I just start moving it all around until I see a color that makes the icon pop the way I want it to. I ended up landing on blue, but other colors are fine:
=
=
=
I ended up with this color:
(7F7DC4) set to 17% and got this:
So after the color burn, it pretty much goes from this:
to this:
If you want to make it even brighter, then the way to do that is, do a new fill layer and go into the greys. Set it to overlay. Then double click on the layer so you get the color wheel back, and just move it around until you get the brightness you want. I usually put it at 100%, then drop it down to 0 just to see the difference, then I move it back to 100 and lower it. It helps so you can see the actual effect you have on the image. WOO!
So, I ended up with this grey:
(9D9B9D) This is under the pink color. If you move the slider around from blue, to pink, to red to orange, you will also see slight variations. But you want it to be the middle tone of grey, depending on the image.
set to Overlay at about 85%, I got this:
So after the overlay it goes from this:
to this
I'm happy with that. So now you can add flourishes. I have this font called "talkies" and I found it here:
http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=501&page=5&nb_ppp=50
it's under the "Dingbats" catagory, probably under "Shapes" but you could do a search for it, the font is called "Talkies"
If you can't get it, I made a little template:
Those are the letters "D" "d" "C" and "c"
So what I do is I type in the talk/thought bubble that I want, Add a layer and fill it in with white, set it under the font layer, then erase around the talk bubble so it has a white background. There might be an easier way to do it, but I have yet to figure that out. I don't see any sort of "background" thing on the font options, but I also didn't look that hard. Once I get that squared away, then I link or merge the font layer and the white layer together, to get this:
and this guy is kinda an idiot, so I just put some dots instead of any real thoughts:
But if you want to add a picture, then I just add the picture, shrink it down screen it if it needs to be brightened up (Also, be sure to just select the layer of the picture you just added and to make adjustments, do it under "adjustment" not "adjustment layer" it being a smaller picture, messing with the contrast, saturation and maybe levels should get the tiny picture looking fine) erase around the corners with a soft brush and bam:
p.s. - the last few steps, show up much better depending on your computer. The computer I made it on has much higher resolution and brighter colors than the one I'm on right now.
This tutorial will work best if you have blue colors in your icon. I say that b/c the selective coloring will be all up in the blues and stuff. So keep that in mind if you try this.
Start with this:
I want him to be that size so I have room for the talk bubble, but I have to figure out how to fill in that space to make it 100x100.
So what I do, is there is a little bit of the wall color above the picture in the background. So I duplicate the image and move the bottom layer up just a little bit. I do that a few times, then I merge all those and repeat until I fill in all the space. This really only works if there is nothing on the wall, or straight lines. So you just extend the picture up, I got this:
But it's still not 100x100, so I duplicate the base once again and move the bottom layer to the right:
But you can still see the black line, so I just use one of the soft round brushes and erase the edge of the top layer to get it to blend. You might have to duplicate and erase a few times, use the smudge or whatever to get rid of the corner of his shoulder that creep up when you start erasing the top layer. I got this:
so after all that you get this:
to this:
after, I used the blur tool set to "lighten" just to get rid of the darker lines to his right:
Ok, so the image is 100x100
Merge all your layers if you haven't already and duplicate it again, set it to screen if the image is dark, play around w/ the % or whatever, I kept this one at 100%:
Then you want to sharpen it, So go back to your base and duplicate the base. Got to "Filter > Other > High Pass" (Mine is under the "other" category, but yours might be under a different one) I usually do it something between one and two. Depending on the image or whatever, so the layer under the screened layer is grey and weird looking like this:
then set that layer to "soft light"
With that middle layer, you can duplicate it if you want the image sharper, or take down the % of the layer if it's too sharp or whatever.
Now, select the top layer so your adjustment layers effect all the layers.
Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation. Raise the Master Saturation until the colors look all bright and crispy, but the skin will usually take on a totally weird tone like so:
Now, to fix his skin, select the "red" saturation and lower it a lot, until the skin looks less gross, do the same with the yellow if necessary:
I think his hair is taking on this weird green tone, but that can be fixed under selective coloring.
Ok, so to make the blue's really blue, under BLUE and/or CYAN you need to raise Blue, Magenta, and black while lowering the yellow.
If you need to fix skin tone, mess with YELLOW and RED, and this gets tricky if the person is wearing anything that is yellow or red. (That's where the raise the saturation thing comes in, and don't be afraid to just....erase the face part of layer if you can't get the skin tone right.) I messed with the reds and yellows just a bit to get his skin the color I wanted it. Just a small tweek.
To take the green out of his hair, I raised the black just a tiny bit under YELLOW, GREEN and Black.
so after I messed around with selective coloring, mine went from this:
to:
Ok, so this is when I start doing random stuff until it's bright, but contrasty and still colorful. So the first thing is I add a fill layer. I usually do Blue b/c I like when people have pale fucking skin against dark hair, but whatever. So I usually start with a random dark color:
Set it to color burn:
Bring the % WAY down, like something b/t 10 and 20. I put this at about 17%:
this is the fun part, basically what I do at this point, is I just double click on the color burn layer so I can see my color wheel again, and I just start moving it all around until I see a color that makes the icon pop the way I want it to. I ended up landing on blue, but other colors are fine:
=
=
=
I ended up with this color:
(7F7DC4) set to 17% and got this:
So after the color burn, it pretty much goes from this:
to this:
If you want to make it even brighter, then the way to do that is, do a new fill layer and go into the greys. Set it to overlay. Then double click on the layer so you get the color wheel back, and just move it around until you get the brightness you want. I usually put it at 100%, then drop it down to 0 just to see the difference, then I move it back to 100 and lower it. It helps so you can see the actual effect you have on the image. WOO!
So, I ended up with this grey:
(9D9B9D) This is under the pink color. If you move the slider around from blue, to pink, to red to orange, you will also see slight variations. But you want it to be the middle tone of grey, depending on the image.
set to Overlay at about 85%, I got this:
So after the overlay it goes from this:
to this
I'm happy with that. So now you can add flourishes. I have this font called "talkies" and I found it here:
http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=501&page=5&nb_ppp=50
it's under the "Dingbats" catagory, probably under "Shapes" but you could do a search for it, the font is called "Talkies"
If you can't get it, I made a little template:
Those are the letters "D" "d" "C" and "c"
So what I do is I type in the talk/thought bubble that I want, Add a layer and fill it in with white, set it under the font layer, then erase around the talk bubble so it has a white background. There might be an easier way to do it, but I have yet to figure that out. I don't see any sort of "background" thing on the font options, but I also didn't look that hard. Once I get that squared away, then I link or merge the font layer and the white layer together, to get this:
and this guy is kinda an idiot, so I just put some dots instead of any real thoughts:
But if you want to add a picture, then I just add the picture, shrink it down screen it if it needs to be brightened up (Also, be sure to just select the layer of the picture you just added and to make adjustments, do it under "adjustment" not "adjustment layer" it being a smaller picture, messing with the contrast, saturation and maybe levels should get the tiny picture looking fine) erase around the corners with a soft brush and bam:
p.s. - the last few steps, show up much better depending on your computer. The computer I made it on has much higher resolution and brighter colors than the one I'm on right now.