Tutorial #6 (re-post)
Jun. 5th, 2024 05:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goodbyebird posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
spankulertWritten for the PSD/tut exchange smallbatchicons.
→ 
Found a cap of my boy Stiles hugging is dear ol' pa, because number one: Stilinski Feels are important, k? And number two: I love me a partially concealed face + hands. LOOK AT THAT PAW. THAT IS A MAN'S PAW goddamn. If this cap had hair!porn I honestly don't know what I'd do with myself. I probably would have had the irresistible urge to icon it all over again instead of writing this tut, that's what.
Ahem. OK, so maybe I'll ramble a bit? Here it is though, pasted onto a 100x100 canvas so I can drag it about, use the free transform tool and see what crop works.
Next I copied the layer and used curves to swap the blues for some nice red and earthy tones. I don't have the settings since I used it directly on the cap, but betting it was the red channel. I also stared at his fist some more before figuring out that it didn't quite work for his face and dragged the cap left. This is why pasting the entire cap onto the canvas is so useful; if something doesn't click, you can easily make adjustments.
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Still staring at that hand tho. And wanting other people to stare at that hand. Painted two white blobs over his hand and gaussian blurred them a bit (ignore the black background) set to soft light 12.
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Added a color fill layer with a nice yellow, #fff200, set it to color 14%.
A simple curves layer to brighten things up a bit, and bring out some highlights.
Next us is a texture by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
innocent_lexys, set to soft light 58%. This gives the lighting of the icon a bit more direction, plus lends a nice shade to the Sheriff's jacket.
→ 
And then another texture, set to screen. Sorry I don't know the maker, please tell me if you do. These kinds of textures are great if there are parts of your icon that doesn't do much, like here we have Stiles' and John's hair which is pretty much just a black space of nothing; perfect canvas for some grunge.
→ 
Copy the curves adjusted base and set it to soft light 23% to get some contrast back in.
Add a levels layer, 2 | 1 | 229
Vibrancy layer, +51.
The coloring wasn't quite clicking for me, so I slapped on a texture bynavras_rheya, set to overlay 33%. Now I have some lovely reds and browns.
→ 
I just wanted the shadows deepened slightly, so made a selective coloring layer and set it to +5 on the blacks in grey. This especially helps bring out Stiles' eyes. Masked away the part covering John's jacket in the bottom right.
And that's it! I did make this icon a good while back, so it could very well be I used smart sharpen on one of my soft light layers, but the cap seemed pretty crisp to begin with. Ask if anything's too confusing :)
smallbatchicons. → Found a cap of my boy Stiles hugging is dear ol' pa, because number one: Stilinski Feels are important, k? And number two: I love me a partially concealed face + hands. LOOK AT THAT PAW. THAT IS A MAN'S PAW goddamn. If this cap had hair!porn I honestly don't know what I'd do with myself. I probably would have had the irresistible urge to icon it all over again instead of writing this tut, that's what.
Ahem. OK, so maybe I'll ramble a bit? Here it is though, pasted onto a 100x100 canvas so I can drag it about, use the free transform tool and see what crop works.
Next I copied the layer and used curves to swap the blues for some nice red and earthy tones. I don't have the settings since I used it directly on the cap, but betting it was the red channel. I also stared at his fist some more before figuring out that it didn't quite work for his face and dragged the cap left. This is why pasting the entire cap onto the canvas is so useful; if something doesn't click, you can easily make adjustments.
→ Still staring at that hand tho. And wanting other people to stare at that hand. Painted two white blobs over his hand and gaussian blurred them a bit (ignore the black background) set to soft light 12.
→ Added a color fill layer with a nice yellow, #fff200, set it to color 14%.
A simple curves layer to brighten things up a bit, and bring out some highlights.
Next us is a texture by
innocent_lexys, set to soft light 58%. This gives the lighting of the icon a bit more direction, plus lends a nice shade to the Sheriff's jacket. → And then another texture, set to screen. Sorry I don't know the maker, please tell me if you do. These kinds of textures are great if there are parts of your icon that doesn't do much, like here we have Stiles' and John's hair which is pretty much just a black space of nothing; perfect canvas for some grunge.
→ Copy the curves adjusted base and set it to soft light 23% to get some contrast back in.
Add a levels layer, 2 | 1 | 229
Vibrancy layer, +51.
The coloring wasn't quite clicking for me, so I slapped on a texture by
navras_rheya, set to overlay 33%. Now I have some lovely reds and browns. → I just wanted the shadows deepened slightly, so made a selective coloring layer and set it to +5 on the blacks in grey. This especially helps bring out Stiles' eyes. Masked away the part covering John's jacket in the bottom right.
And that's it! I did make this icon a good while back, so it could very well be I used smart sharpen on one of my soft light layers, but the cap seemed pretty crisp to begin with. Ask if anything's too confusing :)
