icon tutorial: 001 feat. alona tal
•icon tutorial 001: pinkish/brownish coloring
»so, i've been browsing a lot of icon help communities, coloring_help etc etc over the months. thereby noticed that, of course, there's a whole lot of requests for specific types of coloring. so i thought i'd share a couple of tutorials every once in a while, for specific types. this is a lighter, more pinkish style!
coloring 001: feat. alona tal
»
program/translatable: icon+brush done in photoshop cs4 extended, haven't tried it in other programs. requires a program where you have access to doing curves and color balance layers.
.psd: if requested! :)
difficulty: 7 steps on, i'd say easy-medium level. there are quite a lot of detail quirking in the coloring, but i wouldn't say it's hard, per se.
»crop your base the way you want it. tip: i find myself working quite a lot, not with simply resizing an image and cropping using the crop tool. instead, make a new base image (ctrl + N) at about size 200*200 / 150*150. you could use a 300*300 too, but i find it easiest working with a 200*200 sized. the reason for this is that it's, in my opinion, easier to move the image around first, instead of cropping and having to do that a lot, unless you get it right on the first try. i'm not much for cropping anymore to be honest, i much rather do it this way. then resize down to 100*100, of course. it's here it might become a little tricky. you have to be sure it's looking the way you want it to when it's resized. so you might have to change the settings around a bit. either way, iconing and coloring's all about experimenting, yeah?
»duplicate your base, and set it to screen at 100% on both opacity and fill (if you have both). the reason we're doing this is to up the brightness, since we're working with a pretty dark base. alternatively you could use a curve layer here, if you prefer working with them. that also gives you the opportunity working with color depth and saturation. your choice entirely! i largely prefer using screen this early in stages though, and use it in the majority of my icons.
»do a color fill, using the color: #f3d6d6, which is a light pink shade. put the layer on soft light, opacity 100% and fill 80%. if you only have opacity, then put it to 80% instead. this layer'll help with upping the brightness even further, and give us the base for the pinkish coloring the finished result'll have. it also smoothens the flash lightning on alona's cheeks out quite a bit, which is good since in my opinion, it looks better without the glow bouncing in the skin. if you've used curves here, chances are it looks a bit different, so take it easy with this layer then. start with a low opacity, and up it until you like it. the color isn't supposed to take over, merely increase. also be careful with brightness, it won't look very good if it's too bright.
»next up is a curve layer. settings being: input: 56 & output: 54. this layer doesn't do much, it gives slightly more color to alona's hair, and a little more to her cheeks. it isn't meant to do that much either, truthfully. i wanted to accentuate the blonde in her hair slightly. i'll say here that if you did curves and saturated the icon in step 2, be careful here too. too much saturation wasn't meant for this icon. well, i didn't intend to have it very saturated anyway. so yeah, for this coloring, be careful with saturation.
»you'll probably notice at this stage that the icon has taken on a largely yellowish tone, which this step takes care of. next up is a color balance layer. here are the settings:
midtones: -10, -10 & +6
highlights: +1, -6 & -1
shadows: +8, -2 & -9
the color balancing (true to its name) balances out the yellow tone, and replaces it with a more pinkish one, it also looks slightly darker than before. it's also this tone we'll want. be careful when working with a tool like color balance, too much of one setting can easily make the coloring looking more ugly than nice. it's small settings (most of the time) you'll want to work with here.
»next step is one i love working with. it's an excellent tool that i think all icon makers should at least know of. i've always wondered how the elite makers managed to get that soft glow effect in their icons. and while they might certainly work with other tools (such as the diffuse glow filter, amongst others), here are two ways to get that: this step, and brushes. seriously, do experiment with brushes, because they are excellent tools for any icon maker. to the step though!
for this step, we'll be working with a copy merged layer, which you'll manage to get with ctrl + shift + alt + E. this merges all the layers into one copy and puts it on top. instead of simply copying your base and dragging it to top. no glow yet though. to get that, you'll want to go up to filters»blur»gaussian blur, and put the radius to 6,0 pixels. put the layer on soft light, and play around with fill/opacity. this particular layer in this icon is put on 100% for both opacity and fill. see? the colors are deeper and more saturated, plus, we've managed to acheive that glow effect we wanted.
»last step! here we arrive at brushes. an extra note here is that really, try experimenting with brushes and textures. they're both lovely and excellent tools, and quite fun working with. especially if you're working with negative space icons, i think you should try working with textures. the brush used in this icon, however, is the one commonly called white blobs. true to its name, it's a black base, with a white blob on. depending on what you want, you'll want to play around with shape, size and opacity on your blob. this one's made by me, used for this icon specifically since, more often than not, different icons require different brushes. it makes it look better than using just one brush on all of your icons.
take this, and put it over your icon. play around with position, one might look better than the other one does. here i've put it slightly to the right, so that the center of the white blob covers alona's mouth and chin. then put the settings to screen, fill 25%/opacity 25% if you don't have both. the screening here makes the icon look brighter, instead of if we would've used soft light, which would've accentuated the white part, and deepened the black parts and made the icon darker instead. using the brush, like said, makes the icon look a bit brighter, and the blob gives off a soft glow that's a nice last piece of the puzzle, so to speak.
basically, all done!
»so, i've been browsing a lot of icon help communities, coloring_help etc etc over the months. thereby noticed that, of course, there's a whole lot of requests for specific types of coloring. so i thought i'd share a couple of tutorials every once in a while, for specific types. this is a lighter, more pinkish style!
coloring 001: feat. alona tal
program/translatable: icon+brush done in photoshop cs4 extended, haven't tried it in other programs. requires a program where you have access to doing curves and color balance layers.
.psd: if requested! :)
difficulty: 7 steps on, i'd say easy-medium level. there are quite a lot of detail quirking in the coloring, but i wouldn't say it's hard, per se.
»crop your base the way you want it. tip: i find myself working quite a lot, not with simply resizing an image and cropping using the crop tool. instead, make a new base image (ctrl + N) at about size 200*200 / 150*150. you could use a 300*300 too, but i find it easiest working with a 200*200 sized. the reason for this is that it's, in my opinion, easier to move the image around first, instead of cropping and having to do that a lot, unless you get it right on the first try. i'm not much for cropping anymore to be honest, i much rather do it this way. then resize down to 100*100, of course. it's here it might become a little tricky. you have to be sure it's looking the way you want it to when it's resized. so you might have to change the settings around a bit. either way, iconing and coloring's all about experimenting, yeah?
»duplicate your base, and set it to screen at 100% on both opacity and fill (if you have both). the reason we're doing this is to up the brightness, since we're working with a pretty dark base. alternatively you could use a curve layer here, if you prefer working with them. that also gives you the opportunity working with color depth and saturation. your choice entirely! i largely prefer using screen this early in stages though, and use it in the majority of my icons.
»do a color fill, using the color: #f3d6d6, which is a light pink shade. put the layer on soft light, opacity 100% and fill 80%. if you only have opacity, then put it to 80% instead. this layer'll help with upping the brightness even further, and give us the base for the pinkish coloring the finished result'll have. it also smoothens the flash lightning on alona's cheeks out quite a bit, which is good since in my opinion, it looks better without the glow bouncing in the skin. if you've used curves here, chances are it looks a bit different, so take it easy with this layer then. start with a low opacity, and up it until you like it. the color isn't supposed to take over, merely increase. also be careful with brightness, it won't look very good if it's too bright.
»next up is a curve layer. settings being: input: 56 & output: 54. this layer doesn't do much, it gives slightly more color to alona's hair, and a little more to her cheeks. it isn't meant to do that much either, truthfully. i wanted to accentuate the blonde in her hair slightly. i'll say here that if you did curves and saturated the icon in step 2, be careful here too. too much saturation wasn't meant for this icon. well, i didn't intend to have it very saturated anyway. so yeah, for this coloring, be careful with saturation.
»you'll probably notice at this stage that the icon has taken on a largely yellowish tone, which this step takes care of. next up is a color balance layer. here are the settings:
midtones: -10, -10 & +6
highlights: +1, -6 & -1
shadows: +8, -2 & -9
the color balancing (true to its name) balances out the yellow tone, and replaces it with a more pinkish one, it also looks slightly darker than before. it's also this tone we'll want. be careful when working with a tool like color balance, too much of one setting can easily make the coloring looking more ugly than nice. it's small settings (most of the time) you'll want to work with here.
»next step is one i love working with. it's an excellent tool that i think all icon makers should at least know of. i've always wondered how the elite makers managed to get that soft glow effect in their icons. and while they might certainly work with other tools (such as the diffuse glow filter, amongst others), here are two ways to get that: this step, and brushes. seriously, do experiment with brushes, because they are excellent tools for any icon maker. to the step though!
for this step, we'll be working with a copy merged layer, which you'll manage to get with ctrl + shift + alt + E. this merges all the layers into one copy and puts it on top. instead of simply copying your base and dragging it to top. no glow yet though. to get that, you'll want to go up to filters»blur»gaussian blur, and put the radius to 6,0 pixels. put the layer on soft light, and play around with fill/opacity. this particular layer in this icon is put on 100% for both opacity and fill. see? the colors are deeper and more saturated, plus, we've managed to acheive that glow effect we wanted.
»last step! here we arrive at brushes. an extra note here is that really, try experimenting with brushes and textures. they're both lovely and excellent tools, and quite fun working with. especially if you're working with negative space icons, i think you should try working with textures. the brush used in this icon, however, is the one commonly called white blobs. true to its name, it's a black base, with a white blob on. depending on what you want, you'll want to play around with shape, size and opacity on your blob. this one's made by me, used for this icon specifically since, more often than not, different icons require different brushes. it makes it look better than using just one brush on all of your icons.
take this, and put it over your icon. play around with position, one might look better than the other one does. here i've put it slightly to the right, so that the center of the white blob covers alona's mouth and chin. then put the settings to screen, fill 25%/opacity 25% if you don't have both. the screening here makes the icon look brighter, instead of if we would've used soft light, which would've accentuated the white part, and deepened the black parts and made the icon darker instead. using the brush, like said, makes the icon look a bit brighter, and the blob gives off a soft glow that's a nice last piece of the puzzle, so to speak.
basically, all done!
note: please direct all comments/questions/etc to the original post, here! it'll be easier for me to access and answer to everything there! .psd requests are also requested there!
thank you! :)
thank you! :)