Model Icon

Here's a tutorial for an icon I entered in _model_icontest. It didn't win anything but I hope you find it helpful :)

I use PSP8 but I think it's translatable

Today we'll go from to


To get my first "base" I did the normal cropping and resizing to get what you see above. Now to make the base I used for the rest of my icon I:
-sharpened the whole thing once (adjust > sharpness > sharpen)
-took the sharpen tool and went over her eyes, lips, nose (only a little) and hair to make it clearer.
-went to "Adjust > Hue and Saturation > Automatic Saturation Enhancement" with the settings on normal, normal and "skin tones present" checked off
All this created:


I duplicated this new base twice, setting the lower layer to darken and the top layer to multiply at 50%. It didn't have the right punch so I did the classic dark blue exclusion layer (#0B0A2C) between the base and the darkened layer to get:


I now took this box image from _joni and pasted it as a new layer set on muliply, opacity 70%. I also filled in the white wave in the bottom right corner so it was just a black square. The black was too harsh so I opened the box in a new image. I used the dropper tool to get a blue colour from her hat (#16282E) and flood filled a new layer with that colour. I set that layer to lighten and merged them. I took the now-coloured box and pasted it on top of the black one, set on darken, opacity 100%.

To get the small picture I duplicated the base and opened it in a new image and resized it to 28x28. I then went to "adjust > hue and saturation > hue/saturation/lightness" (shift+H) and set the saturation -70 (for some reason I never like fully desaturating my pictures :X). I copied this and pasted it as a new layer on top of my boxes to get:


Not much left now. I wanted it to be darker, and more gold so I took this gradient and pasted it above everything else, set on color (Legacy), opacity 28%:


Better, it's golder but it seemed too flat so I took this texture by theatresphynx and set it to multiply, opacity 60%. However, I didn't want it to be so noticible so I took the clone tool and went over the darker swirls until it was just . Looks much better!


I wanted it to be framed slightly so I made a 1px line across the top and bottom in black, set on soft light, opacity 100%. Finally I added some small text, just some gibberish in black, set on normal, opacity 100%.

Fin!

Here's the layer overview:
11- black text set on normal, opacity 100%
10- black border, set on soft light, opacity 100%
9- texture, set on multiply, opacity 60%
8- gradient, set on color (legacy), opacity 28%
7- resized desaturated base layer set on normal, opacity 100%
6- teal (#16282E) box, set on darken, opacity 100%
5- black box, set on mulitply, opacity 70%
4- copy of background, set on multiply, opacity 50%
3- copy of background, set on darken, opacity 100%
2- blue (#0B0A2C)layer, set on exclusion, opacity 100%
1- base

I hope this was clear, feel free to ask questions and share anything you've made :)