Fan tutorial for Photoshop

I've gotten so addicted to this fan technique that I thought I'd post a tutorial in case anyone else would like to give it a shot.

Though it has a lot of steps, it's very specific, so those of you who are fairly new at this will hopefully be able to follow.

We'll be making an icon like this: </a>

1. Take your base (a picture of Claire Leonelli from the Heat Guy J pilot, if anyone cares), make it square. You'll have this:
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2. Then duplicate it (opacity 40%, hard light), and duplicate that layer.

3. On the top layer go to Filter+Blur+Gaussian Blur, setting the blur at whatever level you'd prefer.

4. On the middle layer, the unblurred one, go to Filter+Artistic+Watercolor and use whatever settings you perfer.

5. Depending upon how strong a watercolor effect you want on your icon, either Blur (which tends to be sufficient) or Gaussian Blur this layer.

6. Go to Layer+Flatten Image (I think there's a keyboard shortcut to this, but I don't know it)

7. Since hard light is so intense, I'll usually duplicate the layer and put it on Screen, about 50%, merge, and mess with Saturation, Brightness and all that. In this case I just screen on 50% and it looks like this:
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8. Go to Image+Resize, 100x100

9. Go to Layer+New Layer and set it on Hard Light 100%

10. Now, we use a fan texture from the fan pack from visible_light available here. If you choose one with a background, make sure the background is white or erase it so that it is.
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11. Unless your base has VERY strong colors, you want to go to Enhance+Adjust Color+Hue/Saturation, hit Colorize, and find a color for your fan that you think will complement your base well.
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12. Now, Select+All, Ctrl+C, go back to your base and hit Ctrl+V
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13. If you can see your base well enough through the fan texture for your liking go to Layer+Flatten Layer. If not, duplicate the base, set it on Soft Light 100%, go to Layer+Arrange+Bring To Front. Keep duplicating this layer until your base is visible enough for you, and then merge. (I did that once on this one)
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14. Now, so that the fan looks more like part of the background, use the Zoom brush and then the Blur brush around the edges and perhaps on the folds.
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15. Okay now, after this point comes the creativity and originality. This is where I start making all my fan icons unique with brushes, gradients, filters, text, you name it.


The techinque I used on this particular icon:
1. Use this kimono texture. It's my own, colourized to green and resized. You're all welcome to use it.
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2. Go back to the base, go to Layer+New Layer and put it on Normal, 50% (you'll see why in a minute).

3. Go to the texture and repeat step 11 of the first part of the tutorial.
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4. Zoom in on your pic and erase the texture from the fan portion of the picture.
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5. Go back to Windows+Layers and change the texture opacity to 100% and merge the layers.
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6. Use the eyedropper to get a color from the fan (I chose black, obviously).

7. Select+All, select Rectangular Marquee, right click on the icon and select Stroke.

8. In the Stroke pallet, you want Width: 1 px, Location: Center, Mode: Normal, Opcaity: 80%.
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9. Now, go to Layer+New Layer, Hard Light 50%.

10. Get this layer from [Bad username: candycrack_textures], select it and paste it on the base.
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11. Repeat step four, erasing what's in front of the fan.

12. Merge everything.
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Some other icons using most if not all of the first fourteen steps:
(Angel Sanctuary) (Cowboy Bebop)
(Evangelion) (10 Things I Hate About You)