icon tutorial: 002 feat. shutter island
•icon tutorial 002: saturated/colorful coloring
»i know, lmao, been obsessed with writing out tutorials. idek, i mean, it's fun. it is, honestly. but that might just be the impossibly big photoshop nerd in me talking, since i get to explain and elaborate on every tool and every theory i use. anyway, since this is a really (and i mean really) simple coloring, i thought i'd just throw it out here!
coloring 002: feat. leo dicaprio & michelle williams
»
program/translatable: icon done in photoshop cs4 extended, but will probably work in gimp, psp etc etc since all you basically need is curves.
.psd: if requested. :)
difficulty: 4 steps, very easy to work with. you need to know where to find curves, basically.
»crop your base the way you want to. as for this one, i've worked with three separate images. the caps, moreover, can be found here, capped by
ghost_goodthing @ 
screencaps_best . really good quality, great to work with. though i've never dowloaded from there before, i can recommend it! as for cropping here, i started out with a 200*200 white base image. the cap on top is taking up a little more than half the space, but about 50% of the image. the other two are 25% each, and simply moved there as to fit right. you don't have to crop them into place, simply drag them to the icon and move them around until you're happy with them. then do a ctrl + shift + E to merge all the layers together.
»time to brighten this up a bit! duplicate your base layer, and set it to screen 100% on both opacity and fill/opacity only if that's what you're working with. the movie is generally very dark, so one or two screen layers are definitely needed. just watch it with them, while the result is supposed to be bright, the majority of the colors in this particular scene are originally bright, and there's the chance of overdoing it if you put too much brightness into it. just, keep calm, be careful, and you're good!
»next up is a curve layer. the reason it's in here is that curves is a great way to really, manually put in brightness and contrast exactly where you want it. there are four "levels" to work with -- i.e RGB for all the colors, red for red, blue for blue, and green for green. this time i've only been working with RGB, but since there's a lot of color in the icon (and the result is meant to be colorful) feel free to play around with the other individual levels too. it's actually quite fun once you've mastered it. (don't be put off if it doesn't work at once, mastering all the levels of curves can be quite frustrating, and often takes a while before you get the exact outcome you want.)
anyway, the settings for this curve layer is for both saturation and brightness: input: 62, output: 67. as you can see the colors brighten, and the pinks in teddy's face, and the yellows in dolores' hair comes out now, much more than it did with only the screen layer there. you could of course work with hue/saturation and brightness/contrast here as well, it's easier. but trust me -- you'll get a more "personal outcome", if i may use the expression, if you work with curves. (or do both, if you feel it's necessary. just take it easy with brightness (once again) and saturation. we don't want it to be too bright and popping just yet.)
»the last step! already here? yeah, like i mentioned, it's a very simple, yet effective coloring, so the process isn't long. i did this particular one in barely a minute (minus the layout of the icon, of course, that took a lot longer, haha) so, shouldn't be hard at all.
if you read the last tutorial i made, you've probably noticed my love for the copy merge layer, and the filter»blur»gaussian blur»radius 6,0 setting. it's really effective, and i still recommend you to try it out! anyway, we're doing this as our last step to brighten it up, give it the saturated depth the coloring has, and for the slightly surreal glow it gives. this particular layer is set to overlay 100% on fill and opacity/only opacity.
if you're interested in my earlier ramblings about this layer, you can just go to my first tutorial, which is a lot longer, and has a lot more on this layer, haha. but for now, i'd say you're 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! :)
»i know, lmao, been obsessed with writing out tutorials. idek, i mean, it's fun. it is, honestly. but that might just be the impossibly big photoshop nerd in me talking, since i get to explain and elaborate on every tool and every theory i use. anyway, since this is a really (and i mean really) simple coloring, i thought i'd just throw it out here!
coloring 002: feat. leo dicaprio & michelle williams
program/translatable: icon done in photoshop cs4 extended, but will probably work in gimp, psp etc etc since all you basically need is curves.
.psd: if requested. :)
difficulty: 4 steps, very easy to work with. you need to know where to find curves, basically.
»crop your base the way you want to. as for this one, i've worked with three separate images. the caps, moreover, can be found here, capped by
ghost_goodthing @ screencaps_best . really good quality, great to work with. though i've never dowloaded from there before, i can recommend it! as for cropping here, i started out with a 200*200 white base image. the cap on top is taking up a little more than half the space, but about 50% of the image. the other two are 25% each, and simply moved there as to fit right. you don't have to crop them into place, simply drag them to the icon and move them around until you're happy with them. then do a ctrl + shift + E to merge all the layers together.»time to brighten this up a bit! duplicate your base layer, and set it to screen 100% on both opacity and fill/opacity only if that's what you're working with. the movie is generally very dark, so one or two screen layers are definitely needed. just watch it with them, while the result is supposed to be bright, the majority of the colors in this particular scene are originally bright, and there's the chance of overdoing it if you put too much brightness into it. just, keep calm, be careful, and you're good!
»next up is a curve layer. the reason it's in here is that curves is a great way to really, manually put in brightness and contrast exactly where you want it. there are four "levels" to work with -- i.e RGB for all the colors, red for red, blue for blue, and green for green. this time i've only been working with RGB, but since there's a lot of color in the icon (and the result is meant to be colorful) feel free to play around with the other individual levels too. it's actually quite fun once you've mastered it. (don't be put off if it doesn't work at once, mastering all the levels of curves can be quite frustrating, and often takes a while before you get the exact outcome you want.)
anyway, the settings for this curve layer is for both saturation and brightness: input: 62, output: 67. as you can see the colors brighten, and the pinks in teddy's face, and the yellows in dolores' hair comes out now, much more than it did with only the screen layer there. you could of course work with hue/saturation and brightness/contrast here as well, it's easier. but trust me -- you'll get a more "personal outcome", if i may use the expression, if you work with curves. (or do both, if you feel it's necessary. just take it easy with brightness (once again) and saturation. we don't want it to be too bright and popping just yet.)
»the last step! already here? yeah, like i mentioned, it's a very simple, yet effective coloring, so the process isn't long. i did this particular one in barely a minute (minus the layout of the icon, of course, that took a lot longer, haha) so, shouldn't be hard at all.
if you read the last tutorial i made, you've probably noticed my love for the copy merge layer, and the filter»blur»gaussian blur»radius 6,0 setting. it's really effective, and i still recommend you to try it out! anyway, we're doing this as our last step to brighten it up, give it the saturated depth the coloring has, and for the slightly surreal glow it gives. this particular layer is set to overlay 100% on fill and opacity/only opacity.
if you're interested in my earlier ramblings about this layer, you can just go to my first tutorial, which is a lot longer, and has a lot more on this layer, haha. but for now, i'd say you're 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! :)