Quick Tutorial...got bored so I decided to make one
La la la la...only my second tute ever so be gentle this is just a quick little FFX icon out of a set I'm making.
we go from this....
to this 
1. To start with I used this familiar picture of Yuna and used my trusty rectangular selection tool to take a chunk of it and size it down to 100 x 100 pixels like so...nothing hard about it.
2. I always duplicate the first layer of the icon and make it invisible so that if I royally screw up every thing and hate what I've done, I can go and delete all the visible layers and still have my nice base to work with. I save a ton too I just find this trick to be extra helpful to be honest.
3. Filters>Sharpen once or twice just to make it extra nice and crisp
4. Next I played around with the saturation to start to give the icon more of a muted (not washed out but just more faded...almost aged really) look. Go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation and take the Saturation down to -70 (or whatever your preferance is...again this is just a tute for a guideline, i dont expect people to follow it 100% but if they do thats okay too)
5. Duplicate the layer, set the blend mode to Screen at 65% opacity...Again, you have to play around with the blend modes and such because the same things dont work for every pic as you all well know
6. Duplicate the screened layer and set it to Soft Light at 75%...a very subtle change but none the less. Merge Visable
7. Next, I wanted to add some texture to the icon and after a bout of trial and error that lasted about two hours, I settled on this texture(texture 41 I believe) from Digital Bristle and set it to linear dodge at 65%. At this point, the icon wasnt looking exactly as I had planned but I liked this look equally as much so I rolled with it.Merge visible again
8. Next I just took a simple border (I cant remember by who...so sorry) zoomed in so I could see the pixels better and erased (using and eraser about 6 pixels in diameter) bits of it to create sort of a mini fragmented frame. I then lowered the opacity to 55% so it wasnt so stark. Merge Visible again.
9.Now to be totally predictable...I added one of those ever popular mini text brushes...I made it myself and Its just a little rambling quote about strenght of character and faded the opacity to 60% again so its not so stark.Merge visible now...or flaten the image, whatever floats your boat. and voila...a quick, nothing too special icon but a nice one none the less.
This icon can be snagged if you like it...just give me credit...also it will be available with others in a set at my icon journal (which has been down forever)
onyx_icons hopefully by the end of the week so swing on by if you wanna check them out.
we go from this....
to this 1. To start with I used this familiar picture of Yuna and used my trusty rectangular selection tool to take a chunk of it and size it down to 100 x 100 pixels like so...nothing hard about it.
2. I always duplicate the first layer of the icon and make it invisible so that if I royally screw up every thing and hate what I've done, I can go and delete all the visible layers and still have my nice base to work with. I save a ton too I just find this trick to be extra helpful to be honest.
3. Filters>Sharpen once or twice just to make it extra nice and crisp
4. Next I played around with the saturation to start to give the icon more of a muted (not washed out but just more faded...almost aged really) look. Go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation and take the Saturation down to -70 (or whatever your preferance is...again this is just a tute for a guideline, i dont expect people to follow it 100% but if they do thats okay too)
5. Duplicate the layer, set the blend mode to Screen at 65% opacity...Again, you have to play around with the blend modes and such because the same things dont work for every pic as you all well know
6. Duplicate the screened layer and set it to Soft Light at 75%...a very subtle change but none the less. Merge Visable
7. Next, I wanted to add some texture to the icon and after a bout of trial and error that lasted about two hours, I settled on this texture(texture 41 I believe) from Digital Bristle and set it to linear dodge at 65%. At this point, the icon wasnt looking exactly as I had planned but I liked this look equally as much so I rolled with it.Merge visible again
8. Next I just took a simple border (I cant remember by who...so sorry) zoomed in so I could see the pixels better and erased (using and eraser about 6 pixels in diameter) bits of it to create sort of a mini fragmented frame. I then lowered the opacity to 55% so it wasnt so stark. Merge Visible again.
9.Now to be totally predictable...I added one of those ever popular mini text brushes...I made it myself and Its just a little rambling quote about strenght of character and faded the opacity to 60% again so its not so stark.Merge visible now...or flaten the image, whatever floats your boat. and voila...a quick, nothing too special icon but a nice one none the less.
This icon can be snagged if you like it...just give me credit...also it will be available with others in a set at my icon journal (which has been down forever)
onyx_icons hopefully by the end of the week so swing on by if you wanna check them out.