tutorial ✩ a bandit in red
Hey guys! Ask the maker is on again (?) on icon_talk and akilah92 asked about the coloring of this icon of mine, so here is a quick (well, sort of...) tutorial/guide/whatever you call a post where I try to explain something. I just hope you can understand; if there is any problem just let me know and I'll try and be more precise.
Okay, so. Since the focus of this icon and thereof of this tutorial is the coloring I'll try and concentrate on that. First of all though, let me tell you that this icon was heavily inspired by this beauty by daynawashere:
So, let's begin.
01) I took this cap and cut it. For once I already had in mind that I wanted my icon to be a (mostly) solid red color, therefore I added a dark red (#300505) new fill layer > solid color and using the masks I hid it on my subject, so that the red can be seen only on the background.
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02) I wanted to turn everything red (and a little bit yellow) so I duplicated the color fill layer and set it to soft light, 100% opacity and again used the mask to erase the red from every part that I wanted to keep yellow, from the mask and a little from the outline.
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03) Not red enough! I added a new solid color fill layer, this time with a more bright red (#8e3333) and again set it on soft light, 100% opacity. Once again I hid the red from the yellow parts and from the mask, then blurred a little the mask so that there wasn't such a hard line between the yellow parts and the red ones.
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04) I keep changing my mind, so I decided that that yellow was too yellow. I added a new adjustment layer > selective color and used these settings:
I know. For all the good this passage did, I could have left the previous layer on the yellow parts. This is what happens when you have no idea of what the hell you're doing. Heh.
05) Next I added another not-so-useful layer of selective coloring and adjusted the yellows like this:
06) Okay, so this is when I started adding textures (and making adjustments on the textures). First I added this one by raiindust and set it on screen, leaving it at 100% opacity and using masks once again I lowered the opacity of the right half of the texture.
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It was, you know... too pink. So I added a yellowish-orange spalsh on the left, then set it on soft light and created a clipping mask (?) so that it applied only on the texture layer.
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Always with clipping masks, I added a new fill layer filled with a brownish orange (#903d1e) and set it on soft light, 50% opacity.
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Clipping masks again, this time with a selective coloring layer set like this:
07) The right part (the "lighter" one) looked empty to me, so I took this texture (once again by raiindust) and desaturated it. I cut it so that it covered only the right part of the icon, inverted the colors so that the white part was black and set it on soft light, 50% opacity.
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Then I once again added the same texture, desaturated it and set it on soft light, 70% opacity and erased it from the right part of the icon. I wanted to idk "equalize" the icon? It was too dark on one side and too light on the other, and I didn't like it.
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08) Next I added the text and, since it looked kind of dull on my screen, I added some vibrance with these settings (vividezza = vibrance; saturazione = saturation):
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aaaaaand a black and white gradient layer set on soft light, 100% opacity to give some depth.
09) I wanted to darken it a little bit, so I added a gradient map (#38302b to #cebca5) and set it on soft light, 100% opacity, then added a solid white layer set on soft light, 50% opacity and 50% fill to lighten it up again. Yup.
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10) Lastly, I added a new solid fill layer with a salmon orange (#df8f71) set on soft light, 50% opacity to add both light and vibrance.
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So yeah, basically this icon is a matter of layers set on soft light and luck.