Luther Coloring Tutorial
LUTHER COLORING TUTORIAL
Go from this:
To this:
Program: Adobe Photoshop CS5
Translatable: No, uses Selective Coloring and Vibrance
Difficulty: Easy :)
PSD: No
I've recently been getting into the TV series Luther and decided to make some icons. Unfortunately, as fans of the show know, the way it is shot drains a lot of color and the screencaps are not particularly sharp all the time :) This is a tutorial to make a brighter, sharper, but not overwhelmingly so, Luther icon. It can also work for other more dully colored media like Twilight, Hanna, and so on :)
I will be using Alice for this, because I think she is awesome and that Luther is the essentially a smarter more British Elliot Stabler :|
Original:
Start out, of course, by cropping your screencap to a square shape. This is one that is better to keep at full squared off size until the end of the process :)
First you will want to Duplicate your bottom layer and set it to Blend Mode - Screen at 100% Opactiy.
With Screen:
Duplicate your original layer once again and drag it to the top. Go to Filters>Other>High Pass and set your pixel radius to 10.0 px. Feel free to adjust it according to your own sharpness preferences but I find that an even 10 works the best :) Make sure to set the Blend Mode of the layer to Soft Light!
With High Pass:
The image is already a lot brighter and clearer, but there is very little good contrast or shadow. Duplicate the bottom layer once more and bring it to the top again. Set it to Blend Mode - Soft Light. I prefer to leave it on 100% Opacity here because it gives it a nice bit of shadows :D
With Soft Light:
Okay, now we need a Selective Color layer, with some seemingly crazy adjustments XD Go to Layer - New Adjustment Layer - Selective Color, with the Blend Mode - Color and use these adjustments.
Reds:
C: -100
M: -10
Y: 0
K: 0
Blues:
C: +100
M: +10
Y: 0
K: -20
Whites:
C: 0
M: 0
Y: 0
K: +100
Neutrals:
C: 0
M: 0
Y: 0
K: -10
Blacks:
C: 0
M: 0
Y: 0
K: +25
You can make adjustments to this depending on the image and character. I find this works best with Alice as it makes her hair stand out quite well!
With Selective Coloring:
Add a Vibrance layer on Blend Mode - Color. Since we still want to keep a bit of the washed feel of the show, don't pump the Vibrance all the way up. I put these figures:
Vibrance: +50
Saturation: +10
This makes the color more natural :)
With Vibrance:
If there are any areas on the image that are too dark for you, then add a new transparent layer, set on Soft Light, and paint white blobs over these areas using a soft paint brush. If you wish to make any particular colors a bit more vibrant ( like I did with Alice's eyes ) then find a default color that is somewhat close and apply that to the area on the same level as the white blobs.
With adjustments:
Size your icon to 100x100 and there you go!
And there you go! A vibrant, sharp but not overwhelming icon that you can add any sorts of texture of text too :)
Go from this:
To this:
Program: Adobe Photoshop CS5
Translatable: No, uses Selective Coloring and Vibrance
Difficulty: Easy :)
PSD: No
I've recently been getting into the TV series Luther and decided to make some icons. Unfortunately, as fans of the show know, the way it is shot drains a lot of color and the screencaps are not particularly sharp all the time :) This is a tutorial to make a brighter, sharper, but not overwhelmingly so, Luther icon. It can also work for other more dully colored media like Twilight, Hanna, and so on :)
I will be using Alice for this, because I think she is awesome and that Luther is the essentially a smarter more British Elliot Stabler :|
Original:
Start out, of course, by cropping your screencap to a square shape. This is one that is better to keep at full squared off size until the end of the process :)
First you will want to Duplicate your bottom layer and set it to Blend Mode - Screen at 100% Opactiy.
With Screen:
Duplicate your original layer once again and drag it to the top. Go to Filters>Other>High Pass and set your pixel radius to 10.0 px. Feel free to adjust it according to your own sharpness preferences but I find that an even 10 works the best :) Make sure to set the Blend Mode of the layer to Soft Light!
With High Pass:
The image is already a lot brighter and clearer, but there is very little good contrast or shadow. Duplicate the bottom layer once more and bring it to the top again. Set it to Blend Mode - Soft Light. I prefer to leave it on 100% Opacity here because it gives it a nice bit of shadows :D
With Soft Light:
Okay, now we need a Selective Color layer, with some seemingly crazy adjustments XD Go to Layer - New Adjustment Layer - Selective Color, with the Blend Mode - Color and use these adjustments.
Reds:
C: -100
M: -10
Y: 0
K: 0
Blues:
C: +100
M: +10
Y: 0
K: -20
Whites:
C: 0
M: 0
Y: 0
K: +100
Neutrals:
C: 0
M: 0
Y: 0
K: -10
Blacks:
C: 0
M: 0
Y: 0
K: +25
You can make adjustments to this depending on the image and character. I find this works best with Alice as it makes her hair stand out quite well!
With Selective Coloring:
Add a Vibrance layer on Blend Mode - Color. Since we still want to keep a bit of the washed feel of the show, don't pump the Vibrance all the way up. I put these figures:
Vibrance: +50
Saturation: +10
This makes the color more natural :)
With Vibrance:
If there are any areas on the image that are too dark for you, then add a new transparent layer, set on Soft Light, and paint white blobs over these areas using a soft paint brush. If you wish to make any particular colors a bit more vibrant ( like I did with Alice's eyes ) then find a default color that is somewhat close and apply that to the area on the same level as the white blobs.
With adjustments:
Size your icon to 100x100 and there you go!
And there you go! A vibrant, sharp but not overwhelming icon that you can add any sorts of texture of text too :)