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May. 25th, 2005 05:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cherryBecause I wondered, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
welshwitch prodded, I'm trying my hand at an icon tutorial.
We're going to go from this:
to this: 
.
Now, the larger picture I cropped this from was quite grainy and blurry. Shrinking has helped, but as you can see, it still needs some work.
I applied the sharpen filter until I was satisfied with the detail in hair and clothing -- in this case, twice, but I've had to do it more with other images. This made the skin grainy, as you can see.
To correct this, I took the blur tool at 40% and smoothed out the skin on both of them. When doing this, be careful to avoid blurring the lines of the nose, mouth, eyes, chin, etc. I usually blow it up to 300% and use a smaller brush around features.
Isn't that better?
Now that we have a nice base, the fun begins. I created a new layer of two-tone gradient (yellow-peach to peachy brown) and set it to multiply. On top of this, I added two copies of the base, both set on soft light. This give us:
Don't they look happy? I quite liked the colouration, and almost stopped there.
Now, you have to duplicate the image (image -> duplicate, so that now you're working with two copies). Change the duplicated image to greyscale and say yes when it asks if you want to flatten in. After this, switch back to RBG mode. This gives you a greyscale image upon which you can colour to your heart's content. I then and applied a two-tone gradient on a new layer (pinkish-tan to almost white) on colour mode, which gave a nice, subtle effect.
Then I went back to my original image, the full-colour one, and merged the layers. I selected part of Colleen's face and Brett's jaw, and copied them over to the tone image. Below the colour panel, I created a new layer. I used the rectangular marquee tool to create a border around the coloured panel, then flooded it with black. Using this extra layer allowed me to move the border around until I liked it, so I put it a little off-centre.
I then resized the image to 89x89, and locked all the layers. I created a third canvas, a blank one, to prevent the bottom layer from being reset as the locked background. There is probably another way to do this. I dragged the locked image over to the new canvas to copy it, and set it off-centre.
(Black border is for clarity only.)
This looked pretty symetrical, so I unlocked everything, and used an eraser tool on the black and white layer, making it shorter than the coloured panel, and trimming a bit off Brett's neck.
Now, I wanted to clean it up a bit. I added to the black frame around the coloured panel at the top and bottom, completing the frame.
Next, I unlocked the layer mask on the gradient right over top of the black and white image, and erased it around the image it was supposed to tint. Underneath, I created a new layer. On this, I used the rectangular marquee to create a tall strip and flooded it with dark blue. Beneath this, I created another new layer, and used the rectangular marquee to select a frame around the black and white image. I made it off-centre and flooded it with dark grey. These two steps gave me this:
You could very well quit there, but I decided to use a shapeburst as well. I chose one fromawmp's strokes set. I created a new layer, stamped it on, then duplicated it. I set the top to overlay and the bottom to screen, merged them, and set the resultant at 75% opacity.
Tah-dah!
welshwitch prodded, I'm trying my hand at an icon tutorial. We're going to go from this:
to this: Now, the larger picture I cropped this from was quite grainy and blurry. Shrinking has helped, but as you can see, it still needs some work.
I applied the sharpen filter until I was satisfied with the detail in hair and clothing -- in this case, twice, but I've had to do it more with other images. This made the skin grainy, as you can see.
To correct this, I took the blur tool at 40% and smoothed out the skin on both of them. When doing this, be careful to avoid blurring the lines of the nose, mouth, eyes, chin, etc. I usually blow it up to 300% and use a smaller brush around features.
Isn't that better?
Now that we have a nice base, the fun begins. I created a new layer of two-tone gradient (yellow-peach to peachy brown) and set it to multiply. On top of this, I added two copies of the base, both set on soft light. This give us:
Don't they look happy? I quite liked the colouration, and almost stopped there.
Now, you have to duplicate the image (image -> duplicate, so that now you're working with two copies). Change the duplicated image to greyscale and say yes when it asks if you want to flatten in. After this, switch back to RBG mode. This gives you a greyscale image upon which you can colour to your heart's content. I then and applied a two-tone gradient on a new layer (pinkish-tan to almost white) on colour mode, which gave a nice, subtle effect.
Then I went back to my original image, the full-colour one, and merged the layers. I selected part of Colleen's face and Brett's jaw, and copied them over to the tone image. Below the colour panel, I created a new layer. I used the rectangular marquee tool to create a border around the coloured panel, then flooded it with black. Using this extra layer allowed me to move the border around until I liked it, so I put it a little off-centre.
I then resized the image to 89x89, and locked all the layers. I created a third canvas, a blank one, to prevent the bottom layer from being reset as the locked background. There is probably another way to do this. I dragged the locked image over to the new canvas to copy it, and set it off-centre.
(Black border is for clarity only.)This looked pretty symetrical, so I unlocked everything, and used an eraser tool on the black and white layer, making it shorter than the coloured panel, and trimming a bit off Brett's neck.
Now, I wanted to clean it up a bit. I added to the black frame around the coloured panel at the top and bottom, completing the frame.
Next, I unlocked the layer mask on the gradient right over top of the black and white image, and erased it around the image it was supposed to tint. Underneath, I created a new layer. On this, I used the rectangular marquee to create a tall strip and flooded it with dark blue. Beneath this, I created another new layer, and used the rectangular marquee to select a frame around the black and white image. I made it off-centre and flooded it with dark grey. These two steps gave me this:
You could very well quit there, but I decided to use a shapeburst as well. I chose one from
awmp's strokes set. I created a new layer, stamped it on, then duplicated it. I set the top to overlay and the bottom to screen, merged them, and set the resultant at 75% opacity.Tah-dah!
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-28 06:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-28 07:14 pm (UTC)Also:
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-31 02:01 am (UTC)As for takethehouse, if you want me to take a look at it, drop it to my livejournal account any time.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-31 04:02 am (UTC)And, yeah, I'm probably going to throw the fic by you. I don't remember details from the second movie like where Rusty's hotel was or where Tess and Danny were living, and OMG, Tess, would you fuck Rusty already? It's Rusty, you shouldn't need this much convincing.