still, you

pimpin' ma ho

2013-07-01T13:54:25Z

Come participate, nominate and vote for your favorites at icon making!

CATEGORIES '13 x SCHEDULE x PROMO x NOMINATION POSTS

quarante-quatre

2013-06-30T22:43:36Z

25 icons. Doctor Who, New Girl, Teen Wolf, Orphan Black, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Fringe

[01-06] Doctor Who
[07-13] New Girl
[14-18] Teen Wolf
[19-22] Orpan Black
[23-23] Game of Thrones
[24-24] Star Wars
[25-25] Fringe

01.05
06.10
11.15
16.20
21.25

quarante-trois

2013-04-28T22:34:58Z

33 icons. Teen Wolf, Doctor Who, Once Upon a Time, New Girl, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Community, The Hunger Games, Fringe, Downton Abbey, The Newsroom, The Hour, Suits, Pitch Perfect, Elementary, Pushing Daisies.

Hodge-podge of icons made for magicmachine's Maker Activity #34 and an aborted 20inspirations claim. Hover for fandom!

01.04
05.08
09.12
13.16
17.20
21.24
25.28
29.32
33

quarante deux

2013-03-25T01:55:45Z

28 icons. More Teen Wolf

Apparently I either make too many icons or no icons at all. These were made for a one-icon-per-episode Teen Wolf battle at magicmachine (the reason I went cap-hunting in the first place) but I finished them a few hours too late, oops! :P
I'm also accepting suggestions of other things to icon, what would you like to see? :)

01.06
07.12

13.18
19.24

alts.
25.28

quarante et un

2013-03-21T03:35:08Z

20 icons. For 20inspirations round 23.

I somehow saved an undignified amount of Teen Wolf caps, so you might notice a recurrent theme in the next few batches :s

01.05
06.10
11.15
16.20

quarante

2012-12-13T13:54:14Z

33 icons. A round up of icons made for turbo_rumble and magicmachine. A bit of a messy post that may or may not include Doctor Who, Once Upon a Time, American Horror Story, Community, Parks and Recreation, Being Human (UK), Happy Endings, The Vampire Diaries, Harry Potter, True Blood, Teen Wolf, Lost, The Avengers, The Amazing Spiderman, Fringe, The Hunger Games, and a couple of things I don't know what are oops?

01.05
06.10
11.15
16.20
21.25
26.30
31.33

trente-neuf

2012-11-27T01:21:18Z

6 texture sets 6 packages of 20 textures, available in 200x200 and 100x100 px, inspired by absolutelybatty, softestbullet, halesmoon, scoobyatemysnax, blue_emotion and burntheflaws. Shareable!

download 100x100 | 200x200

absolutelybatty likes light textures with a tiny bit of ~~cat hair~~ grunge and borders

download 100x100 | 200x200

softestbullet prefers soft colored textures with light effects

download 100x100 | 200x200

halesmoon thinks there are never enough grungy textures in the world and I happen to agree

download 100x100 | 200x200

burntheflaws also likes grungyness (she is the flawless one, btw, not the textures, obviously)

download 100x100 | 200x200

blue_emotion likes shiny things that color when set to screen (me too!)

download 100x100 | 200x200

scoobyatemysnax asked for green light textures but I threw in a couple other colors for ~variety

And with this I finish all the texture requests, I think (if not it's because I missed a comment, so please give me a shout). Yaaaay. I hope you're liking and finding them useful, I'd love to see anything you did with them. All textures are now available in 100x100 as well, you can go on the post and choose the 100x100 option (specially for you nonny who had to resize, I'm sorry you had to go through the trouble!). Have fun making lots of icons! :D

trente-huit

2012-11-21T07:05:35Z

25 icons. Haven, for inspired20in20 Round 16 (Simplicity), and Downton Abbey.

[01-20] Haven
[21-25] Downton Abbey

01.05
06.10
11.15
16.20

21.25

trente-sept

2012-11-17T06:48:21Z

4 texture sets 4 packages of 20 200x200 textures, inspired by marcasite, biliki, universaldogma and rocketgirl2. Shareable!

download 200x200px | 100x100px

marcasite likes pink and purple light textures and decorative ones with borders.

download 200x200px | 100x100px

biliki likes them light and bright as well.

download 200x200px | 100x100px

universaldogma can't get enough of grungy.

200x200px | 100x100px

rocketgirl2 left lovely inspirational examples that were a lot of fun to follow!

I really hope you like them! If any of you can use at least one of them I'll be satisfied :) Imgur has been petulant lately so try refreshing or coming back later if the inidvidual images aren't working for you. This post is still open if you want to request, and don't be shy to do it- these are fun and relaxing to make and I don't mind at all.

trente-six

2012-11-15T13:49:29Z

Tell me what sort of textures you like/find useful and I'll make you a pack!

Hello! I've been sort of a failboat at Photoshop (at everything, if I'm to be completely honest) lately, because RL has been trampling me up really bad (job and finals and huge papers at college, mostly). So how about some textures to make up for it? :)

The new pack in this post has mostly light textures because they're my favorite~ but I can make them grungy/painty/composition-y/borders/decorative/however you like. Leave a comment with the sort of thing you like (examples if you feel like it) and your favorite size and I'll do the rest.

download .zip

200x200 because I usually work in this size, but if you don't... try thinking of each 200x200 texture as 4 different 100x100 textures!

And some older textures I somehow forgot to share here!

download .zip

download .zip

trente-cinq

2012-11-03T08:36:52Z

25 icons. for ch #30 at trope_overdosed. White Collar, The Newsroom, Homeland, New Girl, The Hunger Games, Doctor Who, The Vampire Diaries, Community, Sherlock (BBC), Downton Abbey, Pushing daisies, Teen Wolf, Parks and Recreation, Fringe, Avengers, Misfits, The Good Wife, Once upon a time, Star Wars. About one of each.

[01-01] White Collar
[02-03] Homeland
[04-05] The Newsroom
[06-06] The Hunger Games
[07-07] New Girl
[08-09] Doctor Who
[10-10] The Vampire Diaries
[11-12] Community
[13-13] Sherlock (BBC)
[14-14] Downton Abbey
[15-15] Pushing Daisies
[16-16] Teen Wolf
[17-17] Parks and Recreation
[18-19] Fringe
[20-20] The Avengers
[21-21] Misfits
[22-22] The Vampire Diaries
[23-23] The Good Wife
[24-24] Once upon a time
[25-25] Star Wars

01.05
06.10
11.15
16.20

Sharp Dressed Man | Riding into the sunset | Above the Ruins | Real is Brown | Yellow lightning, Blue blightning
Paint it Black | Plot Sensitive items | Pan up to the Sky ending | Bittersweet Ending | The Future is Noir
Heterosexual Life Partners | Gaussian Girl | Femme Fatale | Gorgeous Period Dress | Epilogue Letter
Action Survivor | Tastes Like Diabetes | Iris Out | Camera Screw | Action Girl

Alts
21.25

tutorial #07

2012-10-19T04:26:25Z

FINALLY I got around to writing the coloring tutorial I promised at Ask the Maker 3.0. There's a lot of rambling and it's disgustingly image heavy and full of annoying faux-witty commentary, but I do hope you can get something useful out of it. Also please open this in the default comment window or it's going to look disgusting. :|

Featuring Curves, Levels, Selective Coloring, Vibrance, Variations, and other nifty things to lay down the base of you coloring.

For a sucessful coloring, you only need one thing: Knowing yer tools. Getting to know your tools can be a long - and also fun - process, but it's what gives you the power to do anything you want with whatever program you have.

I use Photoshop CS4, and because of this, this is going to be a somewhat specific tutorial (but I'll try to lave some tips along the way for non-PS users, so stay tuned~). Next guide shall be more translatable!

There are many many comprehensive guides about many many tools around, lots of them much better than mine, but this is my ~way of doing it (a messy one too). Bear in mind that I say all of this with no technical knowledge whatsoever; whatever I say comes uniquely from playing around in (various versions of) Photoshop since I was thirteen or so. Still, I hope it can be somewhat useful to you!

The basics of manipulating colors is at least knowing the color wheel. I assume many of you are familiar with it, but I'll insist on talking about it because I'll refer to it many times during this guide.

This is the wheel, according to your 4th grade science teacher.

Whenever you use a tool to correct or enhance color, what you'll do is either add the complimentary color (opposite color on the wheel) or the same/adjacent color. So if you have a red icon you want to be less red, you add blue; if you want more red, add red, if you want a less overwhelming red, you add either orange or pink.

Depending on the brightness of the color you use, that can also shift the light in the icon, instead of using specific tools (such as curves or brightness/contrast). When you want to brighten up a dark icon, try using a light color on soft light. Light Yellow, Green and Blue are usually good for these purposes. Play around with the mechanics of colors and you may come to interesting results!

FINE CECE, that's elementary physics that I ALREADY KNOW. The problem is how to add or subtract those colors.

This is where our tools come to play! You can do that through many many different ways, and I'll go through some of them here. Let's have a hardass start with...

Curves
THE FEAREDDDD CURVES ADJUSTMENT LAYER. Firstly you'll meet and greet the Curves window and know what does what. The diagonal line in the middle is what you're going to tweak. I won't get into technicalities because, well, I don't know them :P, and would rather dive into the practical aspects of it.

The bottom point (little square on the end of the line), as well as the black arrow in the gradient along the horizontal axis, controls the shadows (dark parts of the image), and the top point controls the highlights (light parts of the image).

Lemme grab a cap so we have visuals, cropped and resized to 200x200px. Forgive me the bland croppings, but we're focusing on coloring here!

The place in the line where the bottom point/black arrow determines the darkest part of the image. So if you slide it to the right, Photoshop will understand that is the darkest point in your cap and it'll sort of "shrink" the light and dark amount proportionally. The same thing works backwards, regarding the highlights.

Tl: dr: Black arrow to the right, shadows become darker. White arrow to the left, highlights befome lighter.

You can also create new points along the line to edit midtones (basically the "middle" colors, not too light nor too dark), which usually means a harsher effect because it shifts the entire curve. Creating more points means more control over your curve (and some cray effects if you're up to it). S shapes are pretty intersting, contrast-wise!

That's basically it for contrast and light. But BOOM BOOM REVELATION you can also use it for coloring! This is where things start to get interesting. Drop down menu, pick the other channels and let's play with them too~

They work a bit like the main RGB layer, except not. Instead of adjusting only shadows and highlights, the little arrows will also adjust colors. Let's take the Red layer as example. The vertical axis is Red and the horizontal is it's complimentary, Cyan (remember the color wheel!). If you move the black arrow to the right, the shadows will become... Cyaner AND darker. If you move it upside, the shadows become Redder AND lighter. You can also move both points at the same time! And create a point in the curve for a smoothier effect.

Same thing works for the other channels! Green is for Magenta and Green, and we'll play with it next. Notice that if you use the White arrow, you're coloring the highlights. So if you bring it all the way down, the highlights will become darker and more Magenta. If you slide it to the right, they become lighter and greener. And then you go crazy and try different points because you can.

Blue/Yellow Channel is my FAVORITE because COOL EFFECTS.

You can also adjust more than one channel in the same adjustment layer, of course.

I normally use curves on the beginning of the icon, to adjust general contrast and make it more uniform. Then I lower the opacity of the layer and use a blurred screen layer on top of it, so the light is softer. Finished icon with an accompanying .psd, using curves to lay down the coloring groundwork.

Tips!
1) Curves are used by me on the "beginning" of the icon, to deal with contrast and light troubles.
1) Use one layer for contrast/light and another for coloring, this way you don't have to start from scratch if you're unsatisified with the coloring.
2) Use curves for color correction! If you think your coloring looks too red, add a bit of blue using the appropriate channel, and so on.
3) Feeling lazy? Hit Auto.

Levels
Next up, levels! They're much the same as curves regarding to how they work with cmplimentary colors, except that it's a slider instead of a curve. I use it more for contrast than anything else, so I'll focus on that. They're great for B&W graphics as well.

Next up, who's that girlllll it's Jess

The white slider controls highlights, the black slider controls shadows, the middle slider controls midtones. If you slide the white arrow to the left, the image becomes lighter, if you slide the black to the right, the image becomes darker. If you slide the middle arrow closer to the black arrow, the "light" range grows and the image becomes lighter, if closer to the white arrow, the midtones becomes darker.

Sliding the highlights arrow to the left, we instantly get a brighter image. Easy as pie! And I'm not sure why this expression exists since pie's aren't easy to make at all. Anyway, I thought it was a bit too red, though, so I fiddled a bit with the red and blue channels.

Went on making the icon, and came to a point where I was satisfied with the coloring but not with the contrast. So I whip up a new Levels layer and slide the shadows arrow to the right, and the midtones a bit to the left. BAM great contrast!

> >

Levels is specially awesome for Black and White icons as well! Alicia and Will rolling in the hay as a base

> > >

Tips:
1) I use Levels at any moment necessary mostly to adjust contrast: sometimes when you pile up layers of coloring, it becomes washed out or too light. To fix this I use a combo of the "Increase contrast" and "Darker" presets to fix contrast, adjusting opacity and fine tuning as necessary.
2) The "Darker" preset is also great to fix washed out icons! Works best after a solid color screen or lighten layer.
3) Feeling lazy? Hit Auto [2] :P I'm lazy a lot of the time.

Selective Color
The infamous Selective Color! Used wisely, selective color can up your game like nothing else. I definitely abuse it. Different from the other tools, it has 9 channels: Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues, Magentas, Whites, Neutrals and Blacks. Each channel has four sliders, Cyans, Magentas, Yellows (notice how they're the complimentaries of Red, Green and Blue, the channels present in other tools) and Neutrals. And what each slider does is increase or decrease the amount of each color in theat color channel.

Like, if you increase the amount of cyan in the Red channel, the reds will become less red and more cyan. Neutral sliders darken or highlight the color of the channel, so if you decrease the "neutrals" in red, the reds will become lighter (not pink, more like less saturated and whiter).

Here I've modified only the Red channel, leaving all the others to default.

> > >

Neutrals has the biggest impact on the overall icon, since it changes the midtones. Here I've changed only the Neutrals channel.

> >
>

Now changing Red, Yellow and Neutrals
>
This is ugly tho so don't do it. It works on another images, I SWEAR.

Keep in mind that it's not a matter of exact values and numbers, but more of sliding sliders around until you get what you want. So go ahead and have lots of fun with it!

Of course, selective colors work only with the colors already existing in an image, so in more colorful bases the effect can be quite different, since there are more colors to change

> +
> + +
+ +
> + + +

> + + +

There's not much to be "taught" (not that I could teach anything to ANYONE I'm the worst teacher you could possibly have and also the dumbest, but bear with me) about selective color, you only get the hang of it by experimenting.

Tips:
1) Selective color is the middle-game of an icon for me, what comes out of it will more or less define the coloring direction. Adjust Neutrals first and then the rest.
2) The channels I use most are Reds, Yellows and Neutrals. Usually because Vibrance tends to make the yellows and reds cray cray, so I use this tool to tone them down. Yellows and Reds are also good for skin colors.
3) Up the Blacks for a vintage-y oir painty effect!
4) Lower the Neutrals for a ~faded look
5) Adjusting Cyans in the Neutrals makes for deeper shadows.

Variations

You probably know about this already but let's do it because it's fun! Again, it can be used for color correction or for coloring in general. I use it usually already when finishing up the icon, for slight changes in coloring or to fix parts I don't like. And some other times just for the sake of it.

First you need to clone stamp the image and use variations on the image that comes out, since it's not an adjustment layers like the others. Variations has sort of an "Auto" function that works wonders and makes your job easier. But you can also go rogue and go around clicking until you're satisfied. The function "adds" color to the icon, and to make it do what you want it to do you must know the color wheel above. It also has a slider where you can adjust from "Fine" to "Coarse", which is basically the amount of color being changed, and goes from 1 to 7. Hover to know what was added each time!

| | |
| | |

> |

> >

Tips
1) CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK

Vibrance
Vibrance, probably more infamous than selective coloring. What it does is up the saturation progressively from the darker parts of the image, whereas hue/saturation works in the image as a whole. You can use it either to build up and "thicken", turn deeper, the colors in an image, in the beginning stages of an icon, or to add a pop of color to an otherwise dull icon.

First let's used a base with only a blurred screen and soft light layer. Hover for settings!

> >

> | |

Now using it directly on the base, to build color before anything else

> > >
> >

AND THIS IS WHY WE LOVE VIBRANCE, LADIES AND GENTS.

1) It works best with colorful and well contrasted images. Monochrome-y images don't do so well and you'll need to fix it with other methods first until it's ready for vibrance (I'm looking at you, Game of Thrones)
2) Try it on different layer modes than Normal, like Color or Luminosity. The Color layer changes only the color, but not the luminance (contrast) of the image. It results in a saturated but not dark image. On Luminosity, the image becomes usually darker, but unsaturated. I'll talk more about layer modes later.
3) LOWER the Vibrance for muted coloring!

Other Fun Tools
Brightness/Contrast - To well, fix the brightness and contrast?
>

Auto Tone/Contrast/Color - Auto functions! They're fabulous and specially good for a quick fix or when you have no idea where to go with the icon or you're trying something different and go off the rails. You can find them on the "Image" Menu.

Auto Tone fixes contrast as well as color, and it has different results depending on which stage of the icon you're in.
> >
> >

Auto Contrast fixes contrast (O RLY) and auto Color fixes color (NO WAI MS OBVIOUS)

> | |

Photo Filters
They slightly alter the tone of an image to make it warmer, cooler, more cyan or magenta and all. It's a pretty straightforward tool that relies more on experimentation than explanation.

So many tools bring the inevitable question: HOW DO I KNOW WHICH ONE TO USE?
... uhm

...

I don't.

NO GUYS I REALLY DON'T! There's no set rule for anything. Sometimes I'm in the mood for one, sometimes the other, sometimes I want an specific result and do everything until I achieve it. Try all of them until you like what you see.

Because this is getting way too big, I'm splitting into parts! Next up: Fun with filters, layer blending modes, layer blobs, textures, gradients and gradient maps! Part 2 is much more fun, believe me. While you wait, check those tuts by people who are better at this than me (seriously they're so much better you're gonna regret wasting your time on my guide)

Colouring: ways to make it happen by raiindust
How to Channel Mixer by raiindust
Tips and Tricks by endearest
Selective Coloring: what is it and how does it work? by going_x_crazy
Tutorial: Belle & Donna by ofthesea
Tutorials #11 and #12 by justmyb0nes
Andrew Garfield tutorial by tle_lovie69
Ask the Maker III: part one by imaginary_lives
Beginner's Guide do Color Balance by cardcaptur (I was going to talk about color balance as well but it would become too repetitive: the basics are the same and you just need to move sliders around to get the feel of it. Setting it to Color brings great results!)

Any new questions/suggestions/complaints/typos/broken links you might have about this section, hit me with a comment and I'll do my best to clarify it for you! I'm always open and welcome them :)

trente-quatre

2012-10-16T05:01:30Z

27 icons. Downton Abbey, Suits, misc (Leverage, Happy Endings, The Good Wife, Community, Fringe, Star Wars, Teen Wolf, Doctor Who, The Amazing Spider-man)

01.05
06.10
11.15
16.20
21.25
26.27

A round up of nuts and bolts I had laying around, mostly from magicmachine activities. 01-10 are for the Color Palette sidequest at theiconquest

tutorial #06

2012-07-23T21:54:00Z

Time for an icon-specific tutorial! It's been a while since I made this icon, and I don't have the original file saved, so the end result might not be exactly the same. But I assure you my ~process hasn't changed much since then, and I'll do my best and can only hope to be helpful somehow. Enjoy! :D

From >> To
>>

When I first saw this scene, I knew it would make a pretty icon. I mena, just LOOK at all the colors! To the untrained eye (not that mine is all that trained, but bear with me) it's just your usual dark, muddy cap, but if you squint you can see lots of pretty: the green on the right wall behind Alt!Liv, the red in her hair, the pink in her lips, the blue wall to her right. And because I'm one of those people, I wanted to bring out ALL THE COLORS. At least I think that was my set purpose when I started working. This is to say that my own work wasn't that huge to begin with, and the cap made most of the work by itself.

I'm sure there was a lot more involved on the first time I made this icon (more variations to put blue in the shadows and take out reds, things like that), but that's because my trail of thought is a little off the rails while iconning. I change my mind a hundred times about what looks best, there are lots of unnecessary layers everywhere, so this is "cleaner" in comparison to what the original psd must've looked like (also, I've got the worst memory). But the less steps to the same results the better, amirite?

Don't really remember at which point I did this originally, but let's start by cropping and resizing. Did you know you can use the crop tool AND be able to move the image around the canvas? Just duplicate your bacground layer (the image), and upon cropping, be sure to check the "Hide" (and not the "Delete") option on your toolbar near the top of the screen. Anyway, blah cropping because I'm way more interested in the colors here, and resized to 200x200px.

Duplicated that layer, set to Screen and lowered the opacity a bit because the light was too harsh on her face.

Duplicated that layer again, and Gaussian blurred it for a more diffuse glow. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set around 20px radius. Set to screen and lower the opacity a bit.

>

Duplicate the base layer again, set on top of everything to "Soft Light". Lowered the opacity a bit (to around 70%) because the shadows were too dark, hiding the blue wall I'll want to bring out later. You can almost see the embryo of the icon now.

Now the actual coloring! New Vibrance layer, set it to +100, Normal blending mode.

Another Vibrance layer, set it to +100. It looks a bit too harsh if set to Normal, so I set it to Color.

>

I don't like how the red seeps into the border pixels, and, I don't know, how weird the vibrancy looks, so I fiddle with the order of my layers and the Soft Light copy of the base layer ends up on top of everything. I find that putting all the coloring layers UNDER a soft light layer copy of the base softens them a bit and the results are usually better than if the coloring layers are on top of everything else, in my humble opinion.

Now the shadows are WAY too dark, so I use a...

dark blue exclusion layer

I CLEARLY HAVE NO SHAME, it's such a 2006 technique. But I like how it adjusts the skin tones and brings blue in shadows, so deal with it. So, I pick a random tone of dark blue and use a Fill Layer set to Exclusion, adjusting the color until I'm satisfied. Ended up with #021027. Then fiddled a bit with opacity and order of layers, and the fill layer ended up between the two Vibrance layers, set to an opacity of around 70%.

> >

Nice, but it's still dark and flat, so let's adjust the lighting and bring out the colors I like. Still below the above mentioned base copy set to soft light, create a new transparent layer, get your Brush, and create a white light blob in the top right cornet, where the light is coming from (black is transparent). The gaussian blur it a bit until it's less of a circle and more of a soft light source (Here I used radius 43px). Leave it on Normal.

>

Now let's lighten up the background! Create a new transparent layer under the soft light layer and the white blob layer. Pick the lighter color on your background, paint light blobs in the areas you want to lighten (I used a 70% opacity brush here), set them to Screen layer mode.

>

Her hair also needs some attention. For an specific color you want to saturate, the trick is to not use the exact same color as the background, but a lighter and more saturated version. Color pick a couple of other colors from the background and blob them as well, or the coloring will look too flat. Set it to soft light. Like the following:
>
> > >

At this point I think I'm happy with my "base" coloring, so I'll just pump them up.

Close stamp everything (Shift+ctrl+alt+e) and set that to soft light.

I really like the lighter parts here, but I'm not into how dark the shadows look. So I'll create a new transparent layer under the stamped soft light layer, pick a dark blue color, paint over the dark parts, and set it to Screen. Still too dark, so I'll adjust the hue/saturation/lightness of that specific layer to a lighter color. With the layer selected, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Hue -12, Saturation +19, Lightness +17.

> > >

Probably at this point I thought the icon needed more contrast, and randomly decided I wanted a painty-er feeling. Two birds, one stone, and because I'm a noob, I'll do it through painty textures. I have absolutely NO idea which one I sued originally, but it looks like I used one, so I'll try that again.
I took this monster of a texture, by tinebrella, and pasted it on top of my icon, set to soft light. The paint strokes aren't too apparent, though, so I sharpen (Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen) it once. And still not to my tastes, so I resize it using the free transform tool until I'm somewhat happy with the size of my strokes, moving it around for better lightening. And sharpen it again.

>

However, I'm not happy at how the texture messed up my coloring, so I fiddle with its Hue/Sat again. Settings Hue -21, Sat -66 and Lightness +8 make me happy. Notice how the texture loses all color, and we're left with mostly texture and light. Put it under the stamped soft light layer.

>

More colors! New layer, Vibrance +100. Too strong, so I move that layer under the BASE soft light layer (NOT the stamped one).

>

Okay, this is good, I think, but I guess I wanted more light and color, specially on her hair. Create a new transparent layer, pick a light color of her hair and choose a lighter, yellow-ier version, and paint over the light parts of the image with a soft brush. Set it to Soft Light.

>
> >

But that messed up my contrast, and I'll bring it back with Levels. New Levels Adjustment layer, use the "Increase contrast" present and adjust the sliders until you're happy. Left slider is for shadows, right slider is for highlights, middle slider is for midtones. But that made her face too light, so I pick a color from the shadows of the icon (dark blue, I think) and paint over the darker parts of her face with a soft brush in a new transparent layer. Set that layer to soft light.

> > >

At this point I compared with the original, and I think there were a couple of different colors on the background, which I think might've been put there by misplaced light blobs? So I add blobs to bring those colors. The background on the right side is more green than blue, and darker, so I add a yellower and darker hue (which turns out to be burnt orange) to achieve that color. The left side is a bit lighter, but if I add out straight blue it'll become more pink, so I pick a color of the green wall.

>

Now let's resize this babe. Clone stamp (I always clone stamp before resizing, results are smoother!). Pretty close, amirite?

|
this version | original

But the colors are duller. Duplicate the close stamped layer, Gaussian Blur it (radius 5,8px), and set to soft light. Lower the opacity (60%) and mask the shadows because it's too dark there, imho. Another vibrancy layer (Vibrancy +72, 72% opacity) to make them pop a bit.
> > >

I'm not sure why- probably a light blob I used at some point, or a variations layer- but on the original icon, the left side of her face looks pink-er. If you want that, create a new transparent layer under the blurred soft light layer and paint it purple with a soft brush, setting that layer to soft light and lowering opacity as needed. Hair hair looks lighter too, so I'll paint over the hair with a saturated yellow and orange, and set it to soft light.
> > > >

the colors still don't look quite right- shadows are lighter and highlights are yellower. You know what that means. Pick a blue fromt he shadows, lighten it up a bit and set it to exclusion, under the blurred soft light layer and the color blobs. Opacity around 25%.
>

I'M STILL NOT SATISFIED, so I create a new Levels layer under the blurred soft light layer and set it to Increase contrast 1, but move the middle slider to the left, to get brighter midtones. The shadows look uglier, though, so I mask them away, and lower the opacity to around 55%.

> >

... okay, it's not the same, but similar enough.

If you feel like it, sharpen it a bit. Clone stamp, go to Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen, and lower the opacity of that layer (30% only), masking away parts that look oversharpened, like her face. Sensitive parts, like the face you can use High Pass: Clone stamp again, go to Filter > Other > High Pass, use it at 0,4 radius. Set it to Soft Light at 32% opacity. Clone stamp everything, and Save for Web (as PNG-24.). I always save for web everything, and that's supposed to make a difference in color profiling, but to be honest I have no idea what difference that is.

> > >

Et voilà. :)

| |

Apologies about how anticlimatic this tutorial is, hahaha. That's honestly all that I really do, enhance coloring with the brush tool and using a couple of textures. Sorry I couldn't make a closer match, but that's probably due to blobs placed in different places and higher (or lower) opacity levels for a couple of layers.

I'm still (and always!) open to questions, so if you need clarification on anything, just leave a comment :)

trente-trois

2012-07-19T05:34:01Z

12 .psds Colorings and a couple of recently made icons (PSCS4). Donut worry, actual tutorials will come later.

Because you had the patience of reading all of this, have some .psds to try it out

tutorial #05

2012-07-19T05:01:46Z

At first, when lovely rocketgirl2 asked about my composition, I wondered for a bit if she had commented on the wrong thread. I'm not usually very forward in that department, so this guide might be really boringggg to you. But then, well, challenge accepted! Let's ramble about complex!

There are many ways to make an icon look complex, without really being all that complex at all (oops). Since this won't be a coloring guide, I'll skip the how-to of image coloring and show you only compositions. Also I cheated and used some old icons as examples. BUT MOVING ALONG.

To compose an icon, you basically look for elements that go together in caps and textures.

OKAY CECE BUT HOW DO I KNOW WHAT GOES TOGETHER WITH WHAT?

Not sure, actually! Gut feeling? Consult a tarot reader? Guess? Try lots of them and see what sticks? I usually go for one of the following combos:

- Negative space + negative space. Reminding you that you can get negative space out of basically any cap. Go here for a tut on subject extraction!.

There's also this cool multiple-vertical-composition works best with movement/action caps. You can either do it with a single cap, or with multiple caps if you're feeling particuarly ~daring. Mind the hair porn!
or

- Negative space + close crop. Negative space + anything, really, Neg. space is so failsafe for complexity it's almost a cop-out.

- Silhouettes! Cut them out or enjoy a cap with naturally harsh contrast. Put something inside. PROFIT.

- Color + other color. Color a cap with one predominant color, other cap with another predominant color (or the same cap with two different colors, your choice), and arrange them prettily on the canvas.

- Stock, images or symbols related to your show/character/etc. Like these

- Use the texture as a "paint-by-numbers" guide, include an image in every little block!
>

- When all else fails, stop using all else. I mean, include some text. Text is awesome and makes things look more complex then they actually are.

If you picked good caps, arranging them on the canvas is no big deal. Fiddle until you're satisfied and ta-da.

- For blending, specifically, it's also a good idea to find caps with the same or similar contrast and lighting (coloring is easier to change, but coloring and contrast is really important!)

- Usually I do the composition (if there's one) in a larger canvas (200x200 px or 400x400px) and resize later, it blends better that way in my experience.

- Tip picked from vetica: you know those picspams you love to make? Picking a bunch of caps from your favorite show and coloring and then just staring at the pretty? Use them to icon!

- CHEAT SHEET: When I feel an icon is looking boring, I clone stamp, duplicate, move it around the canvas and use textures on top of everything. Results in icons like these:

Insta!complex!

- Profiles/caps of people looking to the side/looking down are incredible versatile. So are outdoorsy caps and silhouettes!

- You don't have to fill every inch of the icon (mostly because icons barely have an inch) to make it complex.

- TEXTURES EVERYWHERE. Textures bring a sense of cohesion to a multiple-image composition. Blank white space textures, "divided" textures & light textures are great for making an icon "come together". Set them to screen, erase parts you don't like. Examples:

my favorite image to use on icons in the history of ever

As you see, no complex funky texture use or complex blending (like manips) or complex anything on my part, because uhm I'm not good at those. Even so, I hope you enjoyed this tiny guide and it was helpful to you in any way. Further questions and comments and tips are lovely and welcome. My thread at ask the maker is still open if you wish for something more detailed!

Up next: watch Cece fail at recreating an icon made by herself. And something else that might interest you. :)

meep

2012-07-18T19:28:08Z

Ask The Maker || My Thread

I'm welcoming questions at icon_talk's Ask the Maker! Quality of the answer is not guaranteed :P

trente-deux

2012-07-13T04:23:52Z

36 icons. Requests (Once Upon a Time, Teen Wolf, Jake Gyllenhaal), Random (Community, Avengers, Fringe, The Hunger Games, Doctor Who, Harry Potter)

01.06
07.12

13.18

19.22

23.28
29.34

trente-et-un

2012-06-18T12:23:33Z

20 icons. Fringe S3 for fringe20in20

10 THEMES

End	Beginning	Best Episode	Worst Episode	Favorite Screencap


Change	Color Splash	Silence	Sepia	Fringe20in20

5 CATEGORY - **BRUSHES**

Category #1	Category #2	Category #3	Category #4	Category #5

5 ARTIST'S CHOICE

Artist's Choice #1	Artist's Choice #2	Artist's Choice #3	Artist's Choice #4	Artist's Choice #5

trente

2012-06-10T00:30:08Z

50 icons + 2 wallpapers Avengers, Fringe (icons + wallpapers), True Blood (wallpaper), New Girl, Doctor Who, misc OUAT, Good Wife, The Vampire Diaries and Game of Thrones

I'm still working on requests, so don't worry if the fandom you asked for isn't here. There's more to come!

If you feel like you've seen some of these icons before, it's... because you have. All the Doctor Who icons and a couple others were made for a battles and activities at magicmachine. :)

01-09 - New Girl
10-18 - Fringe
19-28 - Avengers
29-45 - Doctor Who
46-46 - The Vampire Diaries
47-47 - The Good Wife
48-49 - Once Upon a Time
50-50 - Game of Thrones

01.05
06.09

10.14
15.18

19.23
24.28

29.33
34.38
39.43
44.45

46.50

click for bigger! Both are 1366x768 but resizable at will/request :)

comments are BANANAS!
credit isn't a must, but if you wish credit mm3butterfly
please do not repost, hotlink or edit, and thank you for stopping by :D

flash requests!

2012-05-21T12:20:48Z

FLASH REQUESTS

Hello! I'm at work right now but feel like making something when I get home today. So REQUEST AWAY!

I'm up for: Interest icons of any fandom, wallpapers, textures, questions you might have about my icon-making.

I'd love to try iconning different things than I usually do, so don't be afraid to ask for something you haven't seen around here :)

No cap, but I'll close the post as soon as I get home! Hope there's someone interested and you like the eventual results :)

vingt-neuf

2012-05-20T03:51:34Z

25 icons. Doctor Who, Fringe, Game of Thrones, New Girl, Once Upon a Time, Raising Hope, The Good Wife, The Hunger Games

[01-03] Doctor Who
[04-12] Fringe
[13-14] Game of Thrones
[15-16] New Girl
[17-19] Once Upon a Time
[20-20] Raising Hope
[21-23] The Good Wife
[24-25] The Hunger Games

01.05
06.10
11.15
16.20
21.25

thank you for stopping by! ♥
comments are banana-nana-nanas :D
credit is not needed, but if you must, use encorevous :)

vingt-huit

2012-05-01T20:40:19Z

vingt-sept

2012-04-04T14:30:29Z

25 icons. Awkward, The Amazing-Spider Man, Black Swan, Doctor Who, Firefly, Fringe, The Hunger Games, Leverage, Lost, Once Upon a Time, Parks and Recreation, Sherlock

[01] The Amazing Spider-man
[02] Awkward
[03] Black Swan
[04-07] Doctor Who
[08] Firefly
[09-11] Fringe
[12-16] The Hunger Games
[17-18] Leverage
[19-20] Lost
[21] Once Upon a Time
[22] Parks and Recreation
[23-25] Sherlock (BBC)

01.05
06.10
11.15
16.20
21.25

vingt-six

2012-03-22T02:40:26Z

35 icons. Awkward, Beauty and the Beast, Black Swan, Community, Downton Abbey, Doctor WHo, Fringe, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter. Leverage, Parks and Recreation, Suburgatory, The Hunger Games, The Vampire Diaries. 2 wallpapers. Doctor Who.

Some of the icons and the wallpapers were made for the last couple of activities at magicmachine, so you might have seen them before.

[01-02] Awkward
[03] Beauty and the Beast
[04] Black Swan
[05] Community
[06] Downton Abbey
[07-13] Doctor Who
[14-18] Fringe
[20-22] Game of Thrones
[23-24] Harry Potter
[25] Leverage
[26-31] Parks and Recreation
[32] Suburgatory
[33] The Hunger Games
[34-35] The Vampire Diaries
[01-02] wallpapers: Doctor Who

01.05
06.10
11.15
16.20
21.25
26.30
31.35

Wallpapers. Both 1440x900 but easily resizable :)

bigger

bigger

End	Beginning	Best Episode	Worst Episode	Favorite Screencap


Change	Color Splash	Silence	Sepia	Fringe20in20