Editing Stock Images General Tutorial - PSP6 (as requested elsewhere)
This icon tutorial was requested by my friend Sherry, but she requested a complicated one that required editing a stock image, so bear with me. Once again, this is a PaintShopPro 6 tutorial but it translates up. Any questions, just ask!
Obviously we start with a concept. The concept is Mila Kunis is cute as a damn button and should have wings. A side view of wings adds interest (plus I already did a flat wing Mila icon), so I cruised my endless Mila folder till I found a side view of Mila to work with. However.... The picture in question was huge, high quality. So the first thing is cropping and resizing, but it also had a background color I didn't want, so I had to erase out that. I find it's easier to erase at a high quality image then resize, because any mistakes you make, or any jaggies you leave, will be less noticeable. You can see what I mean about the background here, I've resized it twice at 50% and sharpened once and it's still giant.
However!!! Please learn from my mistake and "promote image to layer". You can do that by right clicking on "Background" and it's the last option on the popup list. I didn't do that and it just erased the background to white. What you want is a transparent background, which you can only get if it's a layer. Write that down, it's important. Otherwise you'll be erasing everything twice.
So let's say you carefully erase around the edges and you crop her down, resize her, sharpen her, etc, until you get a base image of this:
Except those edges are way harsh and no one wants that, so you duplicate the image and set it to a Gaussian Blur of maybe 3, maybe 5. You just want the edges to show through and ease the pain. Slide it behind the base. Do it again, on a higher Blur. Evenutally, you get perfection:
+ 
x 2 = 
I pulled up my Gradients folder and skimmed it to find a complimentary gradient, then added that on top of all the Mila Layers, set to Screen. It's one of my early saves, so no artist available for crediting.
+ 
on Screen = 
The second complicated issue is the wings themselves. First, to find, then to fit! I hit Image After for some stock butterfly pictures and decided on this:
It's the right angle, the right wing size, and it can be cropped and rotated to fit Mila's back. And that's what you have to do next. Again. Promote the butterfly to a layer, delete around the edges, make sure you're on a big zoom, and delete delete. If you don't see the checkerboard behind the eraser as you go, you didn't promote it to layer. Bad, bad iconmaker!
Except now you have to resize it and rotate it and fit it to Mila. Which I can't really tell you how to do, it's all in your own sensibilities. Did you want her wings bigger? Did you want them set higher on her back? It's up to you. Mila's a lil thing, so I chose smaller, decorational wings, and opted to Colorize to make them blend with the rest of the image. I chose a pink set to a really high Saturation level so that it made it brighter.
Then you just add your wings as a new layer to your icon (CTRL L remember) and slip it behind all the Mila layers.
+ 
= 
As you can see, it's not the easiest erasing job in the world, so I still have some white jaggies at the top of the wings. I think about five minutes into this icon I realized it wasn't going to be magical or ethereal with my limited artistic abilities so I decided to go whole hog for "campy" instead of "breathtakingly gorgeous". It happens. So one way of fixing the jaggies and upping the camp factor was a neat image pack from
meleada called Twilight Moods. As soon as I saw the moon I knew it was the one for Mila!
Mirror image it to the right position, slide it way under everything, and you'll get:
+ 
= 
Little Mila Butterfly out standing in the moonlight. It looks a little unfinished though so I created another layer and added a black border of 1px and then pulled a pink color from her dress for the inner 1px border. And we're done!!
+ 
=
The final order of the layers is:
Border layer = normal blend
Gradient layer = screen blend
Sharp copy of Mila layer = normal blend
Fuzzy copy of Mila layer = normal blend
Fuzzy copy 2 of Mila layer = normal blend
Wings layer = normal blend
Moon and fog layer = normal blend
Mmmmmm Mila.
Obviously we start with a concept. The concept is Mila Kunis is cute as a damn button and should have wings. A side view of wings adds interest (plus I already did a flat wing Mila icon), so I cruised my endless Mila folder till I found a side view of Mila to work with. However.... The picture in question was huge, high quality. So the first thing is cropping and resizing, but it also had a background color I didn't want, so I had to erase out that. I find it's easier to erase at a high quality image then resize, because any mistakes you make, or any jaggies you leave, will be less noticeable. You can see what I mean about the background here, I've resized it twice at 50% and sharpened once and it's still giant.
However!!! Please learn from my mistake and "promote image to layer". You can do that by right clicking on "Background" and it's the last option on the popup list. I didn't do that and it just erased the background to white. What you want is a transparent background, which you can only get if it's a layer. Write that down, it's important. Otherwise you'll be erasing everything twice.
So let's say you carefully erase around the edges and you crop her down, resize her, sharpen her, etc, until you get a base image of this:
Except those edges are way harsh and no one wants that, so you duplicate the image and set it to a Gaussian Blur of maybe 3, maybe 5. You just want the edges to show through and ease the pain. Slide it behind the base. Do it again, on a higher Blur. Evenutally, you get perfection:
I pulled up my Gradients folder and skimmed it to find a complimentary gradient, then added that on top of all the Mila Layers, set to Screen. It's one of my early saves, so no artist available for crediting.
The second complicated issue is the wings themselves. First, to find, then to fit! I hit Image After for some stock butterfly pictures and decided on this:
It's the right angle, the right wing size, and it can be cropped and rotated to fit Mila's back. And that's what you have to do next. Again. Promote the butterfly to a layer, delete around the edges, make sure you're on a big zoom, and delete delete. If you don't see the checkerboard behind the eraser as you go, you didn't promote it to layer. Bad, bad iconmaker!
Except now you have to resize it and rotate it and fit it to Mila. Which I can't really tell you how to do, it's all in your own sensibilities. Did you want her wings bigger? Did you want them set higher on her back? It's up to you. Mila's a lil thing, so I chose smaller, decorational wings, and opted to Colorize to make them blend with the rest of the image. I chose a pink set to a really high Saturation level so that it made it brighter.
Then you just add your wings as a new layer to your icon (CTRL L remember) and slip it behind all the Mila layers.
As you can see, it's not the easiest erasing job in the world, so I still have some white jaggies at the top of the wings. I think about five minutes into this icon I realized it wasn't going to be magical or ethereal with my limited artistic abilities so I decided to go whole hog for "campy" instead of "breathtakingly gorgeous". It happens. So one way of fixing the jaggies and upping the camp factor was a neat image pack from
meleada called Twilight Moods. As soon as I saw the moon I knew it was the one for Mila! Mirror image it to the right position, slide it way under everything, and you'll get:
Little Mila Butterfly out standing in the moonlight. It looks a little unfinished though so I created another layer and added a black border of 1px and then pulled a pink color from her dress for the inner 1px border. And we're done!!
The final order of the layers is:
Border layer = normal blend
Gradient layer = screen blend
Sharp copy of Mila layer = normal blend
Fuzzy copy of Mila layer = normal blend
Fuzzy copy 2 of Mila layer = normal blend
Wings layer = normal blend
Moon and fog layer = normal blend
Mmmmmm Mila.