PS Bright Color/B&W Background
This is my third tutorial in three days... haha. What can I say, I love making graphics.
** Note: My images are linked from my personal site, and sometimes during peak traffic hours they won't show up. Just refresh a few times and they should appear.
Let's go from this GOF screenshot (taken by me) to
Go ahead and crop your base.
Aaaargh, so dark and blurry. Sharpen once, and adjust the brightness/contrast settings (Image ---> Adjustments ---> Brightness/Contrast) to +30 for both brightness and contrast.
Better. Duplicate your layer, and set the duplicated layer to Soft Light 80-ish%. Flatten your image.
Duplicate you now-flattened image, and Desaturate the new layer (Image ---> Adjustments ---> Desaturate, or Shift + Ctrl + U).
Now, go ahead and select your Eraser tool. Go with a smallish round brush (9-15px). Erase Desaturated Harry so that Colored Harry shows through. Leave the background in black and white (a lot of people had been asking about a way to do this... here it is).
Eh, I don't think Harry is sharp/colorful enough. Go to your base (colored) layer and Sharpen once more. Now let's adjust the curves (Image ---> Adjustments ---> Curves). There's a little pop-down menu on your Curves menu that allows you to select RGB, Red, Green, or Blue. Go ahead and select Red. If you click once on the line somewhere, two boxes allowing you to put in Input and Output numbers should appear. For Harry here, I set the numbers for Input 70 and Output 90. This makes him look more colorful and less washed out. Repeat for Green and Blue until you have something you're happy with. I left Green as it was (Input 255, Output 255) and changed Blue to Input 255, Output 240.
Flatten your image. You should now have a bright, colorful Harry against a black and white background. Create a new layer a fill with the pink/green gradient below (by me) and set it to Soft Light 100%. Create another layer, and fill with a medium-dark blue (I used #1a1a6b) and set to Exclusion 75%. If you leave this as is, it looks a little washed out, so duplicate your base layer, drag it to the top, and set it to Soft Light 50%.
Use the Eyedropper tool to select a nice border color from the existing colors in your icon... I went with the gray-green of Harry's sweatshirt. Create a new layer and use a grungey border brush (like the one below, made by me). Set it to Screen, Color Dodge, or Linear Dodge 100%.
Add any other brushes ("x" brushes also by me) and text you want (Cho, wouyougoballwime?). The text I've used here is Arial Black, strong, 5pt, 200 spacing/kerning. And that's all she wrote :)
** Note: My images are linked from my personal site, and sometimes during peak traffic hours they won't show up. Just refresh a few times and they should appear.
Let's go from this GOF screenshot (taken by me) to
Go ahead and crop your base.
Aaaargh, so dark and blurry. Sharpen once, and adjust the brightness/contrast settings (Image ---> Adjustments ---> Brightness/Contrast) to +30 for both brightness and contrast.
Better. Duplicate your layer, and set the duplicated layer to Soft Light 80-ish%. Flatten your image.
Duplicate you now-flattened image, and Desaturate the new layer (Image ---> Adjustments ---> Desaturate, or Shift + Ctrl + U).
Now, go ahead and select your Eraser tool. Go with a smallish round brush (9-15px). Erase Desaturated Harry so that Colored Harry shows through. Leave the background in black and white (a lot of people had been asking about a way to do this... here it is).
Eh, I don't think Harry is sharp/colorful enough. Go to your base (colored) layer and Sharpen once more. Now let's adjust the curves (Image ---> Adjustments ---> Curves). There's a little pop-down menu on your Curves menu that allows you to select RGB, Red, Green, or Blue. Go ahead and select Red. If you click once on the line somewhere, two boxes allowing you to put in Input and Output numbers should appear. For Harry here, I set the numbers for Input 70 and Output 90. This makes him look more colorful and less washed out. Repeat for Green and Blue until you have something you're happy with. I left Green as it was (Input 255, Output 255) and changed Blue to Input 255, Output 240.
Flatten your image. You should now have a bright, colorful Harry against a black and white background. Create a new layer a fill with the pink/green gradient below (by me) and set it to Soft Light 100%. Create another layer, and fill with a medium-dark blue (I used #1a1a6b) and set to Exclusion 75%. If you leave this as is, it looks a little washed out, so duplicate your base layer, drag it to the top, and set it to Soft Light 50%.
Use the Eyedropper tool to select a nice border color from the existing colors in your icon... I went with the gray-green of Harry's sweatshirt. Create a new layer and use a grungey border brush (like the one below, made by me). Set it to Screen, Color Dodge, or Linear Dodge 100%.
Add any other brushes ("x" brushes also by me) and text you want (Cho, wouyougoballwime?). The text I've used here is Arial Black, strong, 5pt, 200 spacing/kerning. And that's all she wrote :)