Full Icon Tutorial - photo manip!
Alrighty then. A couple people were interested in learning how to do photo manips, and because that's something I'm pretty decent at, I thought I'd make a tutorial. This is how I do it. There are other sort of techniques, this is just my ideas.
So we're going to make this icon:
I use PSP8. I'm thinking this will be fairly translatable. I hope.
Okay, the first step is obviously to chose your pictures. This is very very important, savvy? Make sure you pick pictures that you can manip. If you're working with people, which you probably are, make sure they're in the right positions. I'm going to use Lee Starkey (Ringo Starr's daughter) and Julian Lennon (John Lennon's son). I play Lee in a Beatle kids RPG, and in the RPG the lovely Lee and Julian have just gotten married. Of course, in real life, they barely know each other. So there are no pictures of them. So I'm forced to make 'em! Hence, these two are my favorite subjects to manip. So here's the pictures I'll be using:
Now, we need to get these pics ready to go. I want it to look like Julian is standing behind Lee and looking over her shoulder, so I plan accordingly.
For Lee, I just mirror the image.
For Jules, I resize to 70% of the original and make him greyscale.
Now, it's time to combine. I'm going to use my pic of Lee as my base and paste Julian on. You'll have to decide which way you want to work. I'm using Lee because I have more of her to work with. Keep in mind the backgrounds on the pictures as well. You could also try using a completely separate picture as a background, if you like.
I copy the image of Jules and paste him as a new layer on top of Lee. Then I move him up kinda where I want him. Don't worry too much about positioning now, I only do this cuz I feel weird working with a head growing out of Lee's stomach. Go figure.
Then I take a big old eraser brush - doesn't really matter what it looks like - and erase around Julian. Just get the background stuff out of the way quickly, and leave a liddle border there.
Now, this is the majorly important step. Take a smaller eraser brush - I used size 6 and a hardness of 66. I usually like my hardness somewhere around there, but you can experiment and see what looks good. I use this eraser brush to erase all around Julian, right up to the edges of him.
Note: with a black and white image like this it's easier to get the edges to look okay and you don't have to be really picky about detailed. If you're using color images, the techniques is the same but it will probably be harder. Be patient!
Now, I lower the opacity on Jules' layer to 60 so I can see Lee underneath him. I move him up where I want him - this is where you want to get your positioning exactly right.
Now I go in again and erase where I can see Lee underneath him. She's standing in front of him, so I need to erase him wherever she is, if that makes sense. I end up with this.
Then I crop this into a square, making sure I'm not cropping below where the pic of Jules ends.
Next, I resize it to 100x100. This is an icon, after all. Silly.
I also resize the manip to whatever size I want before doing the finishing touches, because little imperfections don't show up as much on a smaller image and you might not even need to fix them.
Now, it's time to make the images "match." The picture of Lee is a lot grainier than Jules, so I grab the soften tool on a small size and soften up her skin - on her forehead, cheeks, chin, and neck.
Now, I'm not happy with the boundary between Julian's cheek and Lee's hair, so I go back in there with my eraser and redo that. You can right-click to "unerase" stuff, and of course left-click to erase. When I'm happy with this, I also use the lighten tool a bit on that dark bit of Lee's hair. And then I fiddle with the brightness and contrast of Lee's layer a bit. If you're using color images, you may also need to fiddle with the saturation, color balance, all that sort of stuff. Do what you can to make the images "match."
Now we've got our base done and it's time to make it into an icon! So if you're just looking to do manips, you can end there. If you wanna know what else I did to the icon, read on!
First, I add this texture, made by me, on a new layer.
I set it to Hard Light at 80%. I don't like the dark smudgy thing right under Julian's face, so I just grab my soften tool and attack it to make it less noticeable.
Then, I add another texture, also one of mine.
This one I set to Hard Light at 50%. And then I use my soften tool again to get rid of the crisscrosses over their faces.
I'm kind of losing my base under all that. What I always do when this happens when I'm iconning is duplicate the base layer, move it to the top of everything, and set it to soft light. This time, I make the opacity 42% (I set things to 42 a lot - Hitchhiker's guide, anyone?)
Now, I'm adding a light texture. This is one that I made using a tutorial posted here not too long ago. If only the memories hadn't a sploded, I could give you the link. I'll add it in here if the memories come back.
I set this layer to screen.
Almost there. Really.
Next comes a border brush. This one's by
darkislight. I LOVE this person's border brushes. A lot.
I add it in black on a new layer. Simple, eh?
And then comes text. I add a line from the Beatles song "It's Only Love" (which, coincidentally, was Jules' and Lee's first dance in our RPG, not that you care). It's in 5 point Arial Black in white. I always add text as a vector, so then I can squish it and rotate it and do whatever it takes to make it fit where I want. Once I've got it there, I notice that I can hardly see it. Whoops. So, I do what I always do when this happens. Add a drop shadow. Woohoo. I do this to hard to read text A LOT. Make the offset 0 for both horizontal and vertical, and the color black. Check the box to make the shadow a new layer.You can experiment with the blur and opacity, I use a blur of 5 and an opacity of 100. And then I notice that I STILL can't read it. So, again, I do what I always do. I duplicate the shadow layer, and I keep doing this until I can read it. I don't know how many times I did it, sorry.
And, there we have it! Phew.
Some notes:
- I didn't get too too detailed. If I lost you along the way, PLEASE comment to ask me and I'll try to clear up whatever I said that confused you.
- If you like my textures, feel free to grab 'em, just remember to credit me.
- If you like the icon itself, you're out of luck. I highly doubt anyone would want it, but I'm reserving it for the RPG.
And now, because I am a shameless annoying thingie, I'm gonna post my other Lee/Jules manips, so you can see the sort of things you can do. Some of these are better than others. Erm. Yes. Some of these are a LOT better than others. Oh well. I'll show you anyway.
(that one is really by my friend Ida, but I did do a few touch-ups when she finished)
Yeah. Anyway. You don't care about them, it's okay, you don't have to pretend.
So, please, lemme know what you think! And I'd love to see what you come up with. And like I said, if you have any problems/questions/whatever, please lemme know.
So we're going to make this icon:
I use PSP8. I'm thinking this will be fairly translatable. I hope.
Okay, the first step is obviously to chose your pictures. This is very very important, savvy? Make sure you pick pictures that you can manip. If you're working with people, which you probably are, make sure they're in the right positions. I'm going to use Lee Starkey (Ringo Starr's daughter) and Julian Lennon (John Lennon's son). I play Lee in a Beatle kids RPG, and in the RPG the lovely Lee and Julian have just gotten married. Of course, in real life, they barely know each other. So there are no pictures of them. So I'm forced to make 'em! Hence, these two are my favorite subjects to manip. So here's the pictures I'll be using:
Now, we need to get these pics ready to go. I want it to look like Julian is standing behind Lee and looking over her shoulder, so I plan accordingly.
For Lee, I just mirror the image.
For Jules, I resize to 70% of the original and make him greyscale.
Now, it's time to combine. I'm going to use my pic of Lee as my base and paste Julian on. You'll have to decide which way you want to work. I'm using Lee because I have more of her to work with. Keep in mind the backgrounds on the pictures as well. You could also try using a completely separate picture as a background, if you like.
I copy the image of Jules and paste him as a new layer on top of Lee. Then I move him up kinda where I want him. Don't worry too much about positioning now, I only do this cuz I feel weird working with a head growing out of Lee's stomach. Go figure.
Then I take a big old eraser brush - doesn't really matter what it looks like - and erase around Julian. Just get the background stuff out of the way quickly, and leave a liddle border there.
Now, this is the majorly important step. Take a smaller eraser brush - I used size 6 and a hardness of 66. I usually like my hardness somewhere around there, but you can experiment and see what looks good. I use this eraser brush to erase all around Julian, right up to the edges of him.
Note: with a black and white image like this it's easier to get the edges to look okay and you don't have to be really picky about detailed. If you're using color images, the techniques is the same but it will probably be harder. Be patient!
Now, I lower the opacity on Jules' layer to 60 so I can see Lee underneath him. I move him up where I want him - this is where you want to get your positioning exactly right.
Now I go in again and erase where I can see Lee underneath him. She's standing in front of him, so I need to erase him wherever she is, if that makes sense. I end up with this.
Then I crop this into a square, making sure I'm not cropping below where the pic of Jules ends.
Next, I resize it to 100x100. This is an icon, after all. Silly.
I also resize the manip to whatever size I want before doing the finishing touches, because little imperfections don't show up as much on a smaller image and you might not even need to fix them.
Now, it's time to make the images "match." The picture of Lee is a lot grainier than Jules, so I grab the soften tool on a small size and soften up her skin - on her forehead, cheeks, chin, and neck.
Now, I'm not happy with the boundary between Julian's cheek and Lee's hair, so I go back in there with my eraser and redo that. You can right-click to "unerase" stuff, and of course left-click to erase. When I'm happy with this, I also use the lighten tool a bit on that dark bit of Lee's hair. And then I fiddle with the brightness and contrast of Lee's layer a bit. If you're using color images, you may also need to fiddle with the saturation, color balance, all that sort of stuff. Do what you can to make the images "match."
Now we've got our base done and it's time to make it into an icon! So if you're just looking to do manips, you can end there. If you wanna know what else I did to the icon, read on!
First, I add this texture, made by me, on a new layer.
I set it to Hard Light at 80%. I don't like the dark smudgy thing right under Julian's face, so I just grab my soften tool and attack it to make it less noticeable.
Then, I add another texture, also one of mine.
This one I set to Hard Light at 50%. And then I use my soften tool again to get rid of the crisscrosses over their faces.
I'm kind of losing my base under all that. What I always do when this happens when I'm iconning is duplicate the base layer, move it to the top of everything, and set it to soft light. This time, I make the opacity 42% (I set things to 42 a lot - Hitchhiker's guide, anyone?)
Now, I'm adding a light texture. This is one that I made using a tutorial posted here not too long ago. If only the memories hadn't a sploded, I could give you the link. I'll add it in here if the memories come back.
I set this layer to screen.
Almost there. Really.
Next comes a border brush. This one's by
darkislight. I LOVE this person's border brushes. A lot.I add it in black on a new layer. Simple, eh?
And then comes text. I add a line from the Beatles song "It's Only Love" (which, coincidentally, was Jules' and Lee's first dance in our RPG, not that you care). It's in 5 point Arial Black in white. I always add text as a vector, so then I can squish it and rotate it and do whatever it takes to make it fit where I want. Once I've got it there, I notice that I can hardly see it. Whoops. So, I do what I always do when this happens. Add a drop shadow. Woohoo. I do this to hard to read text A LOT. Make the offset 0 for both horizontal and vertical, and the color black. Check the box to make the shadow a new layer.You can experiment with the blur and opacity, I use a blur of 5 and an opacity of 100. And then I notice that I STILL can't read it. So, again, I do what I always do. I duplicate the shadow layer, and I keep doing this until I can read it. I don't know how many times I did it, sorry.
And, there we have it! Phew.
Some notes:
- I didn't get too too detailed. If I lost you along the way, PLEASE comment to ask me and I'll try to clear up whatever I said that confused you.
- If you like my textures, feel free to grab 'em, just remember to credit me.
- If you like the icon itself, you're out of luck. I highly doubt anyone would want it, but I'm reserving it for the RPG.
And now, because I am a shameless annoying thingie, I'm gonna post my other Lee/Jules manips, so you can see the sort of things you can do. Some of these are better than others. Erm. Yes. Some of these are a LOT better than others. Oh well. I'll show you anyway.
(that one is really by my friend Ida, but I did do a few touch-ups when she finished)Yeah. Anyway. You don't care about them, it's okay, you don't have to pretend.
So, please, lemme know what you think! And I'd love to see what you come up with. And like I said, if you have any problems/questions/whatever, please lemme know.