Icon Tutorial
Because the FAQ suggests not linking to tutorials and instead putting them here:
Because
hobbit_hunter requested it, I'm going to do my first tutorial. Please bear with me as, because I was in a hurry, I didn't save all the pieces and thus am recreating this from memory. Some things might be slightly off, but this is the general technique I used and the things involved.
Today we're going to be going from this picture (warning: large), then:
Make it from this base
to this icon: 
Please note this tutorial looks longer than it actually is because I happen to be incredibly verbose, not because it's that complicated. Also, I'm using PSP 8.0, though I'll try to explain in general terms what I did.
Step One: Now, before you even had the base I put up I did my first step. I cropped the picture. Usually, for this sort of close-up picture I like to use the line of the throat as a starting or stopping point. Every picture has a natural point to start or stop and often times the throat is it in face shots. So, I set my crop tool to square (not rectangle), lined it up with the collar of the shirt so I knew I'd get the whole face in, and cropped until the edge of the picture.
I ended up with this when I tried to recreate it just now. Looks pretty much the same, doesn't it?
Step Two: Once I had my image I used a little trick I picked up fromchlex, which is possibly the most useful thing I've learned in my entire time of iconning, except that "brushes" don't actually need to be brushes to work that way (more on that later).
I sharpened the image about seven times (or, for PSP users: Sharpen More x3 plus Sharpen one) until the image became almost grainy looking. [Note: The higher the quality of image the more sharpenings it will take to become grainy.] Only then did I resize it.
Step Three: When you resize the image is going to unsharpen itself to a degree because of the pixels involved, but don't worry about that quite yet.
What you want to do now is Duplicate the layer (or copy and paste it into itself, however you make a second identical layer in your program) and then set that layer to Screen. This will be very, very bright, because it's a bright image, so you only want to do that once. If the image is darker, do it again (for screencaps from shows like SG-1 or Angel you may need to do it three or four times as standard in my experience).
Then Duplicate the layer twice more (so that you have three copy layers and the original layer) and set both of those to Soft Light.
[Note: This is also something I picked up fromchlex and her tutorial here. Again, so useful.]
You'll end up with this:
.
This is still too bright obviously, because it is a very well lit picture, and that means you're going to want to go over to your layer menu and play around with the opacity meters. In this case I set Copy of Raster 1 (the first Screened layer) to Opacity 4%, Copy (2) of Raster 1 (the first Soft Light layer) to Opacity 72%, and Copy (3) of Raster 1 (the second Soft Light layer) to Opacity 64%, but with each picture you'll have to adjust to your own eyesight and taste. Most pictures you won't need to adjust at all, thankfully, but play around and see what looks better to you.
Step Four: When that was done I ended up with:
.
Now what I wanted to do was wash out the colour in the image itself and I did that by completely desaturating all three copy layers.
Personally I desat by going to Adjust-->Hue and Saturation-->Hue/Saturation/Lightness and dragging the 'Saturation' meter (on the left side) down to -100. However anything that makes the image black and white will do. For any newer iconners reading this, that is what desaturation is: It's a big word for taking all the colour out of an image (and lord do I wish I'd known that six months ago).
Step Five: Now, to come back to the fact the image went fuzzy again I had to decide how to tackle that. Sometimes sharpening the base layer (i.e. the original Raster Layer 1) multiple times is the trick but sometimes not. For this image I went through and did Sharpen to each layer once.
Step Six: But as that didn't seem contrast-y enough for me I went through to the top two layers [Copy (2) and Copy (3)] and did the following FOUR times: Adjust-->Brightness and Contrast-->Automatic Contrast Enhancement and set it to Darker/Normal/Bold before hitting okay. The idea is just to increase the contrast without effecting the brightness much, if you're doing this in other programs.
Play around with this until you read the contrast you like, but the basic point is to make the image have a sort of glow to it, like so:
Step Seven: Finally, we have a base image. There is nothing else that is going to be done to the image itself to adjust it so at this point you want to copy all of the layers at the same time (for PSP users this is the Copy Merged function) and paste it as a brand new image.
This will be Raster 1.
Step Eight: Now we can get to brushes. Today I used a combination of brushes by_joni, as I often do, both from her Set #15, available here.
The brushes I used in particular were:
06.
02.
Step Nine: This is where the recreation is going to get a little off because no two icons are identical and I'm doing this all from memory, but here's basically what I did:
I took 06 and copied it, pasting it as a new layer on top of my Raster 1. Then, knowing that I wanted the swirly away from his face, I mirrored it (Image-->Mirror). Once that was done I set the image to Negative (Adjust-->Negative Image) and completely erased any part of it that was touching his body.
Then, because I wanted the blue of the image to show through I set this layer 'Raster 2' to Overlay (meaning that anything that's in the background under the white will show as the colour of the background) and reduced Opacity to 40% because I liked how that stood out.
Step Ten: As you can see, the background of the image is already set and now I needed to add the other brush. You might have noticed that I didn't use either of these as brushes, from the PSP Brush function. Usually, you really don't want to because it limits what you can do with the brush.
Now, with 02 I repeated the process of 06 in that I Copy/Paste as New Layer and then did Mirror to the image before setting it to Negative Image. This is Raster 3. Then I set Raster 3 to Screen, and ended up with this:
Step Eleven: Clearly it's a bit messy so what I did was erase Raster 3 any where it was over his face, to end up this:
, but unfortunately the pretty colour of the background was washed out in the process so what I had to do was Duplicate Raster 1 once more and set it on the very top of the layers before setting it to Soft Light.
Step Twelve: Finally, the finishing touches! It seems like this icon has taken forever, doesn't it? And it took even longer for me because I screwed up a few of these steps before settling on something I liked, but we're in the last part.
Now, I applied this brush from the now defunct Yume_Images as a new layer:
.
Once again, I did Copy/Paste, Negative Image, and then set the layer to Screen before erasing the brush completely away from his face or body. Then, because I thought a spike would look cool I erased the brush a little and did Duplicate on the layer once to make the white brighter:
.
Step Thirteen: Then, because the hair looked off to me I created two new Raster layers. Raster 5 and Raster 6, at this point. I selected my Paint tool, set it to Circle, Size:10, Black, Opacity 46% and went over the lighter part of his hair once with it before setting the whole layer to Overlay. This darkened that bit. I repeated the same action with the other side of his hair on Raster 6, except that I set this layer to Opacity 20% when I was finished.
This is what came of it:
Step Fourteen: Basically, right there, I have an icon, but I decided to add some text just because I thought it might look neat. I used a font called 'Hannibal Lecter' which I found by Googling after seeing it onteh_indy's Most Commonly Used Fonts list. I really love this font.
I set the font to Hannibal Lecter in a nice medium grey colour, then: PtSize 14, Stroke Width 0, Kerning 624. The last bit is really important because it spaces out the font. Whatever your program uses to space out the font always do that to Hannibal Lecter. It will save you pain.
Finally, I settled the Font Applier to the middle of the silver-blue square and typed in 'Flyboy' (actually, I typed in Pilot first, but details!), applied it, and moved it around until I could basically read the word. Then, because it seemed a little too light but the next grey up seemed a little too dark, I did Duplicate to the layer and finished with this:
.
And thus I reach the end of my very first tutorial. If anything is unclear please tell me so that I can edit it and if anyone uses this to make icons of their own I would LOVE to know. Thanks!
- Andrea.
Because
hobbit_hunter requested it, I'm going to do my first tutorial. Please bear with me as, because I was in a hurry, I didn't save all the pieces and thus am recreating this from memory. Some things might be slightly off, but this is the general technique I used and the things involved. Today we're going to be going from this picture (warning: large), then:
Make it from this base
to this icon: Please note this tutorial looks longer than it actually is because I happen to be incredibly verbose, not because it's that complicated. Also, I'm using PSP 8.0, though I'll try to explain in general terms what I did.
Step One: Now, before you even had the base I put up I did my first step. I cropped the picture. Usually, for this sort of close-up picture I like to use the line of the throat as a starting or stopping point. Every picture has a natural point to start or stop and often times the throat is it in face shots. So, I set my crop tool to square (not rectangle), lined it up with the collar of the shirt so I knew I'd get the whole face in, and cropped until the edge of the picture.
I ended up with this when I tried to recreate it just now. Looks pretty much the same, doesn't it?
Step Two: Once I had my image I used a little trick I picked up from
chlex, which is possibly the most useful thing I've learned in my entire time of iconning, except that "brushes" don't actually need to be brushes to work that way (more on that later). I sharpened the image about seven times (or, for PSP users: Sharpen More x3 plus Sharpen one) until the image became almost grainy looking. [Note: The higher the quality of image the more sharpenings it will take to become grainy.] Only then did I resize it.
Step Three: When you resize the image is going to unsharpen itself to a degree because of the pixels involved, but don't worry about that quite yet.
What you want to do now is Duplicate the layer (or copy and paste it into itself, however you make a second identical layer in your program) and then set that layer to Screen. This will be very, very bright, because it's a bright image, so you only want to do that once. If the image is darker, do it again (for screencaps from shows like SG-1 or Angel you may need to do it three or four times as standard in my experience).
Then Duplicate the layer twice more (so that you have three copy layers and the original layer) and set both of those to Soft Light.
[Note: This is also something I picked up from
chlex and her tutorial here. Again, so useful.]You'll end up with this:
. This is still too bright obviously, because it is a very well lit picture, and that means you're going to want to go over to your layer menu and play around with the opacity meters. In this case I set Copy of Raster 1 (the first Screened layer) to Opacity 4%, Copy (2) of Raster 1 (the first Soft Light layer) to Opacity 72%, and Copy (3) of Raster 1 (the second Soft Light layer) to Opacity 64%, but with each picture you'll have to adjust to your own eyesight and taste. Most pictures you won't need to adjust at all, thankfully, but play around and see what looks better to you.
Step Four: When that was done I ended up with:
.Now what I wanted to do was wash out the colour in the image itself and I did that by completely desaturating all three copy layers.
Personally I desat by going to Adjust-->Hue and Saturation-->Hue/Saturation/Lightness and dragging the 'Saturation' meter (on the left side) down to -100. However anything that makes the image black and white will do. For any newer iconners reading this, that is what desaturation is: It's a big word for taking all the colour out of an image (and lord do I wish I'd known that six months ago).
Step Five: Now, to come back to the fact the image went fuzzy again I had to decide how to tackle that. Sometimes sharpening the base layer (i.e. the original Raster Layer 1) multiple times is the trick but sometimes not. For this image I went through and did Sharpen to each layer once.
Step Six: But as that didn't seem contrast-y enough for me I went through to the top two layers [Copy (2) and Copy (3)] and did the following FOUR times: Adjust-->Brightness and Contrast-->Automatic Contrast Enhancement and set it to Darker/Normal/Bold before hitting okay. The idea is just to increase the contrast without effecting the brightness much, if you're doing this in other programs.
Play around with this until you read the contrast you like, but the basic point is to make the image have a sort of glow to it, like so:
Step Seven: Finally, we have a base image. There is nothing else that is going to be done to the image itself to adjust it so at this point you want to copy all of the layers at the same time (for PSP users this is the Copy Merged function) and paste it as a brand new image.
This will be Raster 1.
Step Eight: Now we can get to brushes. Today I used a combination of brushes by
_joni, as I often do, both from her Set #15, available here. The brushes I used in particular were:
06.
02.
Step Nine: This is where the recreation is going to get a little off because no two icons are identical and I'm doing this all from memory, but here's basically what I did:
I took 06 and copied it, pasting it as a new layer on top of my Raster 1. Then, knowing that I wanted the swirly away from his face, I mirrored it (Image-->Mirror). Once that was done I set the image to Negative (Adjust-->Negative Image) and completely erased any part of it that was touching his body.
Then, because I wanted the blue of the image to show through I set this layer 'Raster 2' to Overlay (meaning that anything that's in the background under the white will show as the colour of the background) and reduced Opacity to 40% because I liked how that stood out.
Step Ten: As you can see, the background of the image is already set and now I needed to add the other brush. You might have noticed that I didn't use either of these as brushes, from the PSP Brush function. Usually, you really don't want to because it limits what you can do with the brush.
Now, with 02 I repeated the process of 06 in that I Copy/Paste as New Layer and then did Mirror to the image before setting it to Negative Image. This is Raster 3. Then I set Raster 3 to Screen, and ended up with this:
Step Eleven: Clearly it's a bit messy so what I did was erase Raster 3 any where it was over his face, to end up this:
, but unfortunately the pretty colour of the background was washed out in the process so what I had to do was Duplicate Raster 1 once more and set it on the very top of the layers before setting it to Soft Light. Step Twelve: Finally, the finishing touches! It seems like this icon has taken forever, doesn't it? And it took even longer for me because I screwed up a few of these steps before settling on something I liked, but we're in the last part.
Now, I applied this brush from the now defunct Yume_Images as a new layer:
. Once again, I did Copy/Paste, Negative Image, and then set the layer to Screen before erasing the brush completely away from his face or body. Then, because I thought a spike would look cool I erased the brush a little and did Duplicate on the layer once to make the white brighter:
.Step Thirteen: Then, because the hair looked off to me I created two new Raster layers. Raster 5 and Raster 6, at this point. I selected my Paint tool, set it to Circle, Size:10, Black, Opacity 46% and went over the lighter part of his hair once with it before setting the whole layer to Overlay. This darkened that bit. I repeated the same action with the other side of his hair on Raster 6, except that I set this layer to Opacity 20% when I was finished.
This is what came of it:
Step Fourteen: Basically, right there, I have an icon, but I decided to add some text just because I thought it might look neat. I used a font called 'Hannibal Lecter' which I found by Googling after seeing it on
teh_indy's Most Commonly Used Fonts list. I really love this font.I set the font to Hannibal Lecter in a nice medium grey colour, then: PtSize 14, Stroke Width 0, Kerning 624. The last bit is really important because it spaces out the font. Whatever your program uses to space out the font always do that to Hannibal Lecter. It will save you pain.
Finally, I settled the Font Applier to the middle of the silver-blue square and typed in 'Flyboy' (actually, I typed in Pilot first, but details!), applied it, and moved it around until I could basically read the word. Then, because it seemed a little too light but the next grey up seemed a little too dark, I did Duplicate to the layer and finished with this:
. And thus I reach the end of my very first tutorial. If anything is unclear please tell me so that I can edit it and if anyone uses this to make icons of their own I would LOVE to know. Thanks!
- Andrea.