Full icon tutorial - PS7, soft skin + shiny eyes/lips
sister_art posted a wonderful tutorial here on the much-asked about soft/shiny skin and glowy/shiny eyes/lips effect made for Paint Shop Pro users. I tried translating her tutorial and I think I came off rather successfully although my final product is not as gorgeous or as polished as hers. So I decided to write a tutorial for Adobe Photoshop users in case there are users who find it difficult to translate (although I have to say it's not very difficult). It should be noted, however, that 95% of the credit goes to
sister_art, I won't be able to make the icon OR write the tutorial without hers. My tools of trade: Adobe Photoshop 7.0, and this tute need not be translate-able for PSP users - just click on the links above. Not so sure about GIMP (in fact I know next to nothing about GIMP).
This is the original picture, found in The Nicole Kidman Picture Pages.
From
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Step 01
Based on my previous tutorials (here#01 and here #02) - and as usual, I strongly recommend that you play around with the Image-Adjustments controls. And this is what I get after shifting the levels to my liking.
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Step 02
Duplicate your base layer, and use the Gaussian Blur filter (Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur), radius 2.0. Set that layer to Soft Light, 90%.
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Step 03
Now duplicate your blurred layer, and set that to Screen, opacity 50%.
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Step 04
For the glowy skin effect: Go to your base later, and use the Sharpen tool (Filter -> Sharpen -> Sharpen) and then go to Edit - > Fade Sharpen to 80%. Now, use the Blur tool, choose a soft round pixel brush around 10px, Mode:Lighten, Strength 55%. Magnify your icon (it makes things easier, trust me) and use the brush gently on the skin area. Avoid heavy brushing on the eyes and lips.
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Step 05
Not quite done on the skin yet - now duplicate the base layer (from step 04) and use the Dodge tool, a soft round brush of about 11px, Range:Midtones, Exposure 40%, and check the "Enable Airbrush capabilities" button. As we did on Step 04, use the tool around Nicole's skin, avoiding eyes and lips, and be careful around the nose. You will note that she look a little too ghostly, so set the mode to Hard Light, opacity levels to 45%.
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Step 06
Use the Lasso tool, and lasso the eye-area. Then go to every layer EXCEPT THE BASE and delete the area (which at this point you should be deleting eyes off three layers). This should make the eyes more striking.
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(Lassoing the eyes ----> erasing the blurred layers)
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Step 07
Now duplicate the BASE layer and dragged it to the top. Sharpen it twice, and fade the second time to approximately 50%. Then erase everything else except the eyes. You can see that the eyes look a little too sharp now.Therefore, just duplicate the eyes layer, use Gaussian Blur at radius 3.5, and set that to Hard Light, 100%. Looks much better, but still a little sharp, so return to the original sharpened-eyeslayer, and reduce opacity to 85%.
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(Sharpened, erased eyes ----> overall effect before modifications ----> after Hard Light effect)
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Step 08
Now for the lips. Do what you did for the eyes, EXCEPT you don't need to lasso the lips and erase those (at least not for this icon). I tried out both ways (erasing and not erasing lips) and there's not much of a difference to it, so might as well save the extra work. Sharpened the new layer and erased everything but the lips. It doesn't look oversharpened as did the eyes, but I feel it lacks a little colour.
So I repeated the steps for the eye (duplicate lips layer, Gaussian Blur, radius 3.5) and set that to Vivid Light, opacity 65%. Now Nicole has brighter lips!
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(Sharpened ----> overall effect before modification ----> after Vivid Light)
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Step 09
Extra added step to make skin a little more glowy: Add a new layer, and using your ordinary soft round pixel brush (approx 10px), airbrush areas of her skin white. Gaussian-Blur that layer (radius 3.5) and then set the layer to Soft Light, opacity 30%.
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(White-areas with brush ----> Soft Light)
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Step 10
Basically you're done with achieving the glowly skin and shiny eyes/lips effect! But I want to jazz up the icon a little, so bear with me for a few more steps. =)
I decided to add a little colour to the white spot there, so I used a couple of light textures from
_joni. The first one, I set that to Linear Burn, Opacity 100%, and erased all the bits obscuring Nicole, leaving the bluish tinge only on the white part. Next, I used another light texture (also by
_joni, and as above, erased all the bits covering Nicole, and set that to Lighten, 100%. (just for a pinkish hue, really - and this is purely by experimenting). 
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(Texture one ----> erased and Linear Burn ----> Texture two ----> Lighten)
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Step 11
Then I used one of by favourite babytext brushes by
ohpaintbrush and randomly dot the bruch here and there, wherever I see suit. Then I miraculously managed to draw a decent heart by hand (probably my first and last) and put that in as decoration. 
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(Text brush ----> on icon ----> miraculous hand-drawn heart)
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Step 12
As usual, I capped off my icon with a border (opacity faded to 30% because definitely too strong at 100%) and we're all done!
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Layer cap here if anyone needs it.
Comments will really be appreciated along with samples of work. I hope this tutorial isn't hard to follow - I admit I'm not as detailed as my last two.
Once again all credits to
sister_art and her tutorial - PSP users will find it very useful. (will be)x-posted to
mouseiconsAnd I should stop writing tutorials for a while. >>;; I can't seem to stop though, stressed as I might be from other matters.
EDIT: Just a few short words I want to say with regards to the comments of the frequency and repetitive-ness of such tutorials. I'm writing this up mostly as a favor to a friend and to help translate
sister_art's tutorial for PS7 users and thought I'll share. Please feel free to skip over this tutorial completely if it does not interest you. I frankly do not see the need for complaints because this is the fourth known tutorial (at least to my knowledge) and not the 100th one or something and I'm sure at least one or two people among the millions of LJ users out there will find this helpful to them. And that's really my point for writing tutorials - helping people who needs it, and I did spend a significant amount of time writing the tutorial. So it's a little disheartening to see comments basically telling me that I've wasted my time writing this because there's OMG SO MANY OF THEM AND WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER - so honestly, if it doesn't interest you, SKIP. And that's my piece on the whole matter, you can keep complaining and ranting at me and I'll be ignoring everything. Thanks.