Tutorial #8 (re-post)

[goodbyebird]

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Started off with the cap, cropping out Moira and pasting her onto a blank 200x200 canvas, twice. I left the first one alone, and then resized Moira and placed her whee I wanted her. I then made a mask and removed parts around her head, so the resized image blended nicely in with the background color of the first cap. I copy+merged all layers.

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I used a soft round brush and painted a white blob in the upped right corner of her face to brighten it a bit, gaussian blurred it and set it to soft light 75%.

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I added a new layer and painted it with a light beige color, set it to overlay 13% to add a bit more color.

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Painted two blobs over her hair to give it some highlights, but instead of white I used a light pale color (#d3d1b8) so her hair wouldn't look too washed out.

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Added a black&white gradient fill, and set it to overlay 40%, at 96,34 degrees. Gradients are excellent for shifting the lighting in an icon.



For extra brightening and contrast, copy+merge all the layers twice, set the first to screen 47%, the second soft light 47%.

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Copy+merged once again, and sharpened it using either smart sharpen or filter gallery/paint daubs, brush size and sharpness both set to 1 (I only ever use this if working on a 200x200 canvas or bigger). Lowered the opacity of the layer until I got the sharpness I wanted, and then added a vibrancy layer +22.

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Selective coloring layer, yellow:
cyan -22
magneta -18
yellow +27



Copy+merged and gaussian blurred the crap out of it. Set it to soft light 48%. This gives us better contrast and coloring, plus gives us a nice glow to boot.

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Add a texture by happy_harper13, set to screen 78%.

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I wanted to get rid of a bit more red, so selective coloring it is!
reds:
cyan +4
magneta -9
yellow +6

And that's it :)




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Most of this icon was made in a 400x400 canvas, as I knew I wanted to paint some colors in there. I resized it until I got the crop I wanted, and added a color fill layer on top set to screen 11%.

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To bring out the colors I made a couple of layers, used the eyedropped tool to pick out colors already there and then adjusting it to a lighter/brighter version and painted over the wall and bedding, set to soft light 100%. The second layer I added the same color yellow from the wall at the bottom with a large soft brush, and set to soft light 100%.

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Copy+merged and set that layer to screen 100%. Copy+merged again, set to soft light 100%. Popped a vibrancy layer on top, +65. Colorsssss *_*

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Moira's hair looked a bit too dark later on in the process, so I jumped back and made a new layer here with a a white blob in the upper right corner, gaussian blurred and set it to screen 9%.

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To avoid the white glare of Moira's blouse and to lighten Thea's face, add a texture by mm3butterfly, set to soft light 43%.

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Copy+merge, gaussian blurred and set to soft light 47%.

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Copy+merge and sharpen it to your liking. With detailed icons like these, I find the result is much better when you do the sharpening at a larger size and then resize to icon size after. You can get it much crisper and clearer without having to deal with the icky jagged edges. Adjust opacity of the layer until it looks right, and if a certain bit looks oversharpened you can always erase/mask that bit out.



The final step is to add a bit more brightness to the icon, and one of my favorite methods is to make a color balance layer, and add some yellow to the highlights.