Icon Tutorial
Apr. 20th, 2014 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ascendant_angelThis is forskieswideopen who gave me such a nice comment about my use of textures in icons that I decided to write a tutorial.
Today we will be making this:
icon.
Start by preparing you base as normal. I like to crop my icon first then brighten using an exposure layer, bump up the saturation and vibrancy, colour using a colour balance layer then tweak this with a selective colour layer if necessary. Finally I sharpen my my base by duplicating it running a high pass filter (set low), then setting that to overlay before flattening my base to finish. This is all personal preference there are many ways to prepare a base and they all give similar results.
My base looks like this:
Now the fun part! Pick a texture, a good tip is to pick one with colours that match your base image. I chose this one:
by ![[deviantart.com profile]](http://i.deviantart.net/icons/favicon.png)
angel_elf_icons at deviant art because it matched the blue in her outfit, then I flipped it upside down because I wanted the darker part at the bottom.
Next drag your icon base over your texture (or drag your texture over your icon base before moving it down, setting it as a new background) and erase the icon bases background, resize your image positioning in the middle. I like to work at view size 200% for this bit so I can see clearly but again that's personal preference.
Now my icon looks like this:
next I took another texture byangel_elf_icons 
and set it over the top set to screen 100%.
My icon now looks like this:
which is nice, but I wanted my background just a little darker so I duplicated the last texture dragged it to just over the first layer (your1st texture) and set it to multiply at 35% opacity.
My icon now looks like this:
its a subtitle effect but looks better especially on the top left hand corner.
Now however the effect on her face is too strong so I take a basic brush set to 0% hardness, and 11% opacity and erase the top texture off her face.
My icon now looks like this:
again its a subtle effect. Now you could stop here but I wasn't happy with the colouring I wanted some pink/purple undertones to warm it up a bit. Again there are many ways to do this, I made sure my top layer was selected then went to image adjustments > variations > more red.
Now my icon looks like this: which I was happy with so we're done!
I'm new to tutorials so please let me know what you think, and if anything wasn't clear.
skieswideopen who gave me such a nice comment about my use of textures in icons that I decided to write a tutorial. Today we will be making this:
icon.Start by preparing you base as normal. I like to crop my icon first then brighten using an exposure layer, bump up the saturation and vibrancy, colour using a colour balance layer then tweak this with a selective colour layer if necessary. Finally I sharpen my my base by duplicating it running a high pass filter (set low), then setting that to overlay before flattening my base to finish. This is all personal preference there are many ways to prepare a base and they all give similar results.
My base looks like this:
Now the fun part! Pick a texture, a good tip is to pick one with colours that match your base image. I chose this one:
by angel_elf_icons at deviant art because it matched the blue in her outfit, then I flipped it upside down because I wanted the darker part at the bottom. Next drag your icon base over your texture (or drag your texture over your icon base before moving it down, setting it as a new background) and erase the icon bases background, resize your image positioning in the middle. I like to work at view size 200% for this bit so I can see clearly but again that's personal preference.
Now my icon looks like this:
next I took another texture byangel_elf_icons and set it over the top set to screen 100%.My icon now looks like this:
which is nice, but I wanted my background just a little darker so I duplicated the last texture dragged it to just over the first layer (your1st texture) and set it to multiply at 35% opacity. My icon now looks like this:
its a subtitle effect but looks better especially on the top left hand corner. Now however the effect on her face is too strong so I take a basic brush set to 0% hardness, and 11% opacity and erase the top texture off her face.
My icon now looks like this:
again its a subtle effect. Now you could stop here but I wasn't happy with the colouring I wanted some pink/purple undertones to warm it up a bit. Again there are many ways to do this, I made sure my top layer was selected then went to image adjustments > variations > more red. Now my icon looks like this:
which I was happy with so we're done! I'm new to tutorials so please let me know what you think, and if anything wasn't clear.
