tutorial 8 - btvs
As requested.
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Made in Photoshop CS4
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#01 - First off, I took this screencap from the first season of Buffy and cropped it. As you can see, it's quite dark.
#02 - Next thing I do is duplicate the layer by clicking CTRL + J and putting it on Soft Light 100%. I always do this to get some contrast from the beginning, even though it might not seem fitting for your picture, it usually turns out good in the end.
#03 - As I said before, the picture is very dark on its own, and because of that Soft Light layer we made it even darker. But that's no issue. I duplicated the Soft Light layer 5 times and put all 5 of them on Screen to lighten up the picture. Much better, right?
#04 - Next I pressed Shift + CTRL + N (which makes a new layer), picked a white hard brush, 29 px big and placed it somewhere near the tear out of her eye, to lighten that spot up. Afterwards, while that same layer selected, I go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, use Radius 6,0 pixels and re-do that step a couple of times, until the light spot is a lot softer.
#05 - Now, even though the icon's lightened up a lot more, we still need some of that contrast back. So just duplicate the Soft Light layer from the beginning, drag it to the top, and put it on Overlay. Usually when I come to this step it brings way too much contrast to the icon, so sometimes just keeping it on Soft Light works too.
#06 - What can I say? I like my contrast. But still, because it's a bit too much right now, I just go back to the base layer, make a new Fill layer via Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color. There you choose a dark color that lessens the contrast a bit, but doesn't ruin your picture. I chose #4c3535 and put it on Opacity 30%.
#07 - The colors are still a little dull, so let's add a Color Balance layer to the party! My settings were:
Midtones: -10 0 -10
Shadows: +5 0 +3
Highlights: 0 0 -12
I guess the key is basically to just keep a lot of red and yellow, but don't go adding lots of those two in all tones. For example, in midtones I lessened the red and the blue, while in the shadows I lessened the cyan and lessened the yellow. Keep it a bit balanced so you don't get all wonky colors.
#08 - Almost there! Since I can't help but put a Levels layer on almost all of the icons I make, we're doing it here too. I love Levels because they make for contrast and darken the blacks so nicely. My settings were just a simple 2 | 1,00 | 255 in RGB. So actually, in this case it doesn't make that much difference, but I can't help but do it. Forgive me.
#09 - Last step! Because what's an icon without a little sharpening? What I usually do first, is go to the Overlay layer, and put a Gaussian Blur on it (same settings as the one used a couple of steps ago), then immediately after fade it via Edit > Fade Gaussian Blur > and put the setting on 55. Afterwards, with the Overlay layer still selected, go to Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen. I usually do the sharpen twice, but fade the sharpen when used twice.
And it's done! Your layers should now look a bit like this.
If you have any questions, always feel free to ask! :)
From
to
Made in Photoshop CS4
Translatable
#01 - First off, I took this screencap from the first season of Buffy and cropped it. As you can see, it's quite dark.
#02 - Next thing I do is duplicate the layer by clicking CTRL + J and putting it on Soft Light 100%. I always do this to get some contrast from the beginning, even though it might not seem fitting for your picture, it usually turns out good in the end.
#03 - As I said before, the picture is very dark on its own, and because of that Soft Light layer we made it even darker. But that's no issue. I duplicated the Soft Light layer 5 times and put all 5 of them on Screen to lighten up the picture. Much better, right?
#04 - Next I pressed Shift + CTRL + N (which makes a new layer), picked a white hard brush, 29 px big and placed it somewhere near the tear out of her eye, to lighten that spot up. Afterwards, while that same layer selected, I go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, use Radius 6,0 pixels and re-do that step a couple of times, until the light spot is a lot softer.
#05 - Now, even though the icon's lightened up a lot more, we still need some of that contrast back. So just duplicate the Soft Light layer from the beginning, drag it to the top, and put it on Overlay. Usually when I come to this step it brings way too much contrast to the icon, so sometimes just keeping it on Soft Light works too.
#06 - What can I say? I like my contrast. But still, because it's a bit too much right now, I just go back to the base layer, make a new Fill layer via Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color. There you choose a dark color that lessens the contrast a bit, but doesn't ruin your picture. I chose #4c3535 and put it on Opacity 30%.
#07 - The colors are still a little dull, so let's add a Color Balance layer to the party! My settings were:
Midtones: -10 0 -10
Shadows: +5 0 +3
Highlights: 0 0 -12
I guess the key is basically to just keep a lot of red and yellow, but don't go adding lots of those two in all tones. For example, in midtones I lessened the red and the blue, while in the shadows I lessened the cyan and lessened the yellow. Keep it a bit balanced so you don't get all wonky colors.
#08 - Almost there! Since I can't help but put a Levels layer on almost all of the icons I make, we're doing it here too. I love Levels because they make for contrast and darken the blacks so nicely. My settings were just a simple 2 | 1,00 | 255 in RGB. So actually, in this case it doesn't make that much difference, but I can't help but do it. Forgive me.
#09 - Last step! Because what's an icon without a little sharpening? What I usually do first, is go to the Overlay layer, and put a Gaussian Blur on it (same settings as the one used a couple of steps ago), then immediately after fade it via Edit > Fade Gaussian Blur > and put the setting on 55. Afterwards, with the Overlay layer still selected, go to Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen. I usually do the sharpen twice, but fade the sharpen when used twice.
And it's done! Your layers should now look a bit like this.
If you have any questions, always feel free to ask! :)