Harry Potter Icon Tutorial for Photoshop CS2
Tutorial for PS CS2, probably translatable
This icon was from a challenge at the LIMS at gof_stills. The challenge was to use this (first one) set of textures by envious_forms, so that's who made the texture.
For this icon, I chose this texture.
Thought it was a bit bland, so I brightened it up with a Curves Adjustment Layer. (I never show the curves settings, just try and find something that works with whatever you're using - giving the settings is useless frankly, since it'll have a different effect for each picture)
And now, it's too bright. Duplicated the base, dragged it to the top and set it to Colour Burn 56%
I liked the effect of the texture, but I didn't like the colours, so a B/W Gradient Map Adjustment Layer is needed.
Now for the Harry picture. I think I got it from the Leaky Cauldron.
(resized for viewing pleasure, it's absolutely massive actually)
My idea for this icon was for there to be no colour except for some red (get to that later). So, I added another B/W Gradient Map Adjustment Layer to the image, and merged them together.
Then I cropped it down, sharpened it a bit, and pasted it into the texture thing.
Since the background was showing through and it was a bit too dark for my tastes, I decided to up the brightness/contrast. Now for this, I went Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast, since using an adjustment layer would change the whole image, not just the Harry layer which is what I want.
I still thought the area on the left was sort of empty, so I went back the original Harry image, resized it down til it was very small, and rotated it counter-clockwise (all using the transform tool).
Next I pasted it into the icon sharpened it once, and set it to Screen 100%.
I thought it should be faded a little bit at the end where it runs into Harry's face, so I applied a Layer Mask and using a grungy brush (I don't remember who... I think rhinestone_life maybe) went over it til I was happy.
Now since as I mentioned in the previous tutorial, I like the trendy box over eyes technique, I wanted to use it here, so I made a selecting with the Polygonal Lasso Tool and filled it in with a dark red (#a70000).
For a little bit of extra grungey-ness, I used another smallish grungy brush with a medium grey colour over the background.
Not that noticable, but I like it.
If it helps, comment!
DO NOT COPY EXACTLY.