PS7 Icon Tutorial: 2 Image Combination, Gradients, and Blending
Second Tutorial.
We'll Be going from here to
with PS7. It'll transfer fine to other PS verisons and more than likely PSP, but I've never used it myself, that's just going from changing PSP tutorials to work with my PS7.
Alright, now we'll be combining these two pictures for our icon. The point it to make House stand out more, but still have the other doctors there.
I have these steps saved as actions because I use them so often and they are used on both images.
Run the Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, and Auto Color set to the defaults. Then we're gonna hit ctrl+U and set the saturation to +37 (this does very on images, but worked on both of these, so you may want to play around with it for yours, or leave it out all together)
Then, duplicate your base and set it to Soft Light then copy that layer and desaturate it. This is easily done with ctrl+shift+U. Then merge these layers with ctrl+shift+E.
This will give us these:
Ok, now crop the picture of House to 100x100 and the picture of the doctors to 100x80, with the majority of the image towards the bottom.
Now we can minimize our doctors and go to House. We're gonna desaturate this.
Then add this (made by Oxoniensis) gradient with the blend mode set to Color
Then add this (made by Oxoniensis) gradient with the blend mode set to Color and Opacity to 35%.
Now, Merge them together, and we have this, yay!
Alrighty, now we're going to copy that once, setting the bottom to a 45% Opacity and leave the top on normal. At this point we'll go ahead and duplicate the bottom layer and delete the one that is labeled Background by default, then go to the copied one and unlock it on the layer menu. Now we can move it from the bottom of the layer menu, go us. I have that one saved as an action as well, which saves time and I generally do it when I start any icon.
Okie, now we're gonna open the doctors picture back up and duplicate it one more time, setting that to soft light. Lets merge this image now, and we'll move it over to our House image. Move it to be your bottom layer. At this point we're going to turn the visibility of the first House layer off, this is done by clicking the little eye next to the layer. Now, move to the top house picture, and create a layer mask. Ok, now we're going to hit "D" to reset our color choices to black and white, then use the default gradient to have it blend into the picture of the doctors. It should look something like this:
Its alright that we kind of lose the top of Foreman's head, because the smooth transition is more important in this icon. Ok, now turn the first house back on, and we should have the look of the doctors showing through the first image.
What I found makes this most visible while still keeping the effect that the top image has more impression is making sure you bottom image is a clear base (which can almost always be made no matter the quality of the original image if you have basic photoshop skills) and having a good stong color to it so it shows through.
Alrightly, now I added some text. Because I wanted it to look most like the actual House logo, so I used Times New Roman, which, even if your computer is from 1993, you have unless you've physically removed it. I set the color to white, bolded the text and set it so that instead of lower case letters, we'd have small caps, anti-alias set to Sharp. Ok, now we'll do another text layer, and I chose a quote from House that reads "I thought we were having a 'state the obvious contest'." Turn off the bold and small caps that we turned on with the other layer, set the font to 8pt, and change the spacing between the lines to 6 pt. That's done with the "A" on top of "A" in the top right corner of the Character window. Then I set my opacity to 85%.
Ok, now we're going to create a new layer and select it all. Quickly done with Ctrl+A. Then go to Select->Modify->Border and set it to 1 pixel. Fill this with black and hit ctrl+shift+I to select the inverse and hit delete a few times. This just gets rid of the pixels that tend to get filled with doing outlines or borders of 1 pixel. I'm just picky though, if you don't mind it, I wouldn't bother. I have a black and a white one of these saved as actions.
Alright, now you have this spiffy icon. Here is my Layer window in case you have any questions.
Comment to let me know what you think.
Shortcuts used in this tutorial:
Ctrl+Shift+U: Desaturates
Ctrl+Shift+E: Merges All Visible Layers
Ctrl+Shift+I: Selection Inverse
D: Sets color swatch so that your foreground is black and background is white
Ctrl+A: Select All
Also, I mentioned in a few places things that have been saved as actions. That saves SO much time that once you get them made the first time, they'll cut quite a bit of time out of icons so that you can just focus on trying new and more creative things without redoing the sane mundane things every time. Though, there are some things like cropping, face touch ups, and blends, that are going to change with every single picture, so an action would only cause you to lose time, because you'd do it and then have to go back and redo it again.
Okie, I'm done rambling.
Hope you Enjoyed! Comment and let me know how it is and if you have any questions!
-Trip
We'll Be going from here to
with PS7. It'll transfer fine to other PS verisons and more than likely PSP, but I've never used it myself, that's just going from changing PSP tutorials to work with my PS7.Alright, now we'll be combining these two pictures for our icon. The point it to make House stand out more, but still have the other doctors there.
I have these steps saved as actions because I use them so often and they are used on both images.
Run the Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, and Auto Color set to the defaults. Then we're gonna hit ctrl+U and set the saturation to +37 (this does very on images, but worked on both of these, so you may want to play around with it for yours, or leave it out all together)
Then, duplicate your base and set it to Soft Light then copy that layer and desaturate it. This is easily done with ctrl+shift+U. Then merge these layers with ctrl+shift+E.
This will give us these:
Ok, now crop the picture of House to 100x100 and the picture of the doctors to 100x80, with the majority of the image towards the bottom.
Now we can minimize our doctors and go to House. We're gonna desaturate this.
Then add this (made by Oxoniensis) gradient with the blend mode set to Color
Then add this (made by Oxoniensis) gradient with the blend mode set to Color and Opacity to 35%.
Now, Merge them together, and we have this, yay!
Alrighty, now we're going to copy that once, setting the bottom to a 45% Opacity and leave the top on normal. At this point we'll go ahead and duplicate the bottom layer and delete the one that is labeled Background by default, then go to the copied one and unlock it on the layer menu. Now we can move it from the bottom of the layer menu, go us. I have that one saved as an action as well, which saves time and I generally do it when I start any icon.
Okie, now we're gonna open the doctors picture back up and duplicate it one more time, setting that to soft light. Lets merge this image now, and we'll move it over to our House image. Move it to be your bottom layer. At this point we're going to turn the visibility of the first House layer off, this is done by clicking the little eye next to the layer. Now, move to the top house picture, and create a layer mask. Ok, now we're going to hit "D" to reset our color choices to black and white, then use the default gradient to have it blend into the picture of the doctors. It should look something like this:
Its alright that we kind of lose the top of Foreman's head, because the smooth transition is more important in this icon. Ok, now turn the first house back on, and we should have the look of the doctors showing through the first image.
What I found makes this most visible while still keeping the effect that the top image has more impression is making sure you bottom image is a clear base (which can almost always be made no matter the quality of the original image if you have basic photoshop skills) and having a good stong color to it so it shows through.
Alrightly, now I added some text. Because I wanted it to look most like the actual House logo, so I used Times New Roman, which, even if your computer is from 1993, you have unless you've physically removed it. I set the color to white, bolded the text and set it so that instead of lower case letters, we'd have small caps, anti-alias set to Sharp. Ok, now we'll do another text layer, and I chose a quote from House that reads "I thought we were having a 'state the obvious contest'." Turn off the bold and small caps that we turned on with the other layer, set the font to 8pt, and change the spacing between the lines to 6 pt. That's done with the "A" on top of "A" in the top right corner of the Character window. Then I set my opacity to 85%.
Ok, now we're going to create a new layer and select it all. Quickly done with Ctrl+A. Then go to Select->Modify->Border and set it to 1 pixel. Fill this with black and hit ctrl+shift+I to select the inverse and hit delete a few times. This just gets rid of the pixels that tend to get filled with doing outlines or borders of 1 pixel. I'm just picky though, if you don't mind it, I wouldn't bother. I have a black and a white one of these saved as actions.
Alright, now you have this spiffy icon. Here is my Layer window in case you have any questions.
Comment to let me know what you think.
Shortcuts used in this tutorial:
Ctrl+Shift+U: Desaturates
Ctrl+Shift+E: Merges All Visible Layers
Ctrl+Shift+I: Selection Inverse
D: Sets color swatch so that your foreground is black and background is white
Ctrl+A: Select All
Also, I mentioned in a few places things that have been saved as actions. That saves SO much time that once you get them made the first time, they'll cut quite a bit of time out of icons so that you can just focus on trying new and more creative things without redoing the sane mundane things every time. Though, there are some things like cropping, face touch ups, and blends, that are going to change with every single picture, so an action would only cause you to lose time, because you'd do it and then have to go back and redo it again.
Okie, I'm done rambling.
Hope you Enjoyed! Comment and let me know how it is and if you have any questions!
-Trip