Full Icon Tutorial
In this tutorial, we're going to go from
(from GettyImages)
to this:
.
Follow the cut to a recolouring tutorial.
First, we prep the base. (This differs from a traditional recolouring job in that the photo starts out coloured, which means we're going to get it to look more black and white first, although I want to keep some of the tone.)
1) Resize and crop:
2) Apply Auto Contrast (Enhance: Auto Contrast.)
3) Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer (Layer:New Adjustment Layer:Hue/Saturation...) and pull them all to the left a little. Tinkering is the key here, but basically I made it darker, less saturated, and more blue. Exciting, huh? ^^;;
4) Merge All.
Now that we have our base, let's get started on the recolouring.
5) The first thing I want to do is select the tree via masking, which is the little paintbrush with the selection box around it. You use it by painting over the area of the image that you want not to be selected. It's easier to paint over a tree than to paint over all the little finicky bits that aren't the tree, so I'm going to mask the tree and then invert the selection.Here's a screenshot of the mask itself and the settings on it.
6) When I'm done, I click to the arrow tool and I have a selection that covers the bits that aren't the tree. I'm going to want a layer of this later, too, so I'll make a copy layer (Layer:New:Layer via Copy) . Then I click back to the base, making sure not to click away from the selection, and invert the selection, copying that to a new layer too.
7) I select the layer that's just the tree. I'm going to fiddle with the Hue, so I go to Enhance:Adjust Color:Adjust Hue/Saturation... and pull it around so that it's a more orange color. It's still too bright, so I bring down the saturation, and it becomes a good shade of brown:
8) Notice the little patch of red there? I don't want it to look that obviously recoloured, so I create a new layer and paint over that patch in grey-brown with a small paintbrush. Then I set the Blend Mode to Hue, opacity 100%.
9) Now I take the layer that's made up of everything that's not the tree, and notice that there are two other trees in the background. I'm going to shade the sky blue, and I can't have blue background trees, so I select them with a mask and put them on their own layer too.
10) I go back to the layer made up of the sky bits, and adjust its hue too, this time trying to make it more blue.
11) Then I take the trees and make them more green, using the same technique. Pretty easy so far, right?
That's the basic recolouring procedure, and the rest is fluff, but we're completist here.
12) I add a black stripes gradient layer (Layers:New Fill Layer:Gradient...). The gradient is in the default gradients in Elements, but here it is anyway:
.
13) Then I set the blend mode to soft light. I also paint the attached mask with black on all the places I don't want it to show up--in this case, the tree. Here's a shot of the layer as it shows up now in the layers palette.
And here's how the image should look now:
14) Finally, I slap on a border--stroke (Select All, then Edit:Stroke (Outline)Selection... a new layer with a 4 pixel white border, and then stroke it again with a 1 pixel very pale gray border.
Here's the icon:
I like that OK, but you can add gradients or fill layers right underneath the stripes Gradient Fill layer, for different effects. It also helps the recolouring job look real, because you pay less attention to the colours underneath the overarching colour.
This one has a pale brown overlay layer added to it:
And this one, my favorite, has a radial noise gradient in reds added on overlay:
That's it! Good luck!
My first, so tell me if I'm doing anything wrong! ^^
(from GettyImages)
to this:
.Follow the cut to a recolouring tutorial.
First, we prep the base. (This differs from a traditional recolouring job in that the photo starts out coloured, which means we're going to get it to look more black and white first, although I want to keep some of the tone.)
1) Resize and crop:
2) Apply Auto Contrast (Enhance: Auto Contrast.)
3) Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer (Layer:New Adjustment Layer:Hue/Saturation...) and pull them all to the left a little. Tinkering is the key here, but basically I made it darker, less saturated, and more blue. Exciting, huh? ^^;;
4) Merge All.
Now that we have our base, let's get started on the recolouring.
5) The first thing I want to do is select the tree via masking, which is the little paintbrush with the selection box around it. You use it by painting over the area of the image that you want not to be selected. It's easier to paint over a tree than to paint over all the little finicky bits that aren't the tree, so I'm going to mask the tree and then invert the selection.Here's a screenshot of the mask itself and the settings on it.
6) When I'm done, I click to the arrow tool and I have a selection that covers the bits that aren't the tree. I'm going to want a layer of this later, too, so I'll make a copy layer (Layer:New:Layer via Copy) . Then I click back to the base, making sure not to click away from the selection, and invert the selection, copying that to a new layer too.
7) I select the layer that's just the tree. I'm going to fiddle with the Hue, so I go to Enhance:Adjust Color:Adjust Hue/Saturation... and pull it around so that it's a more orange color. It's still too bright, so I bring down the saturation, and it becomes a good shade of brown:
8) Notice the little patch of red there? I don't want it to look that obviously recoloured, so I create a new layer and paint over that patch in grey-brown with a small paintbrush. Then I set the Blend Mode to Hue, opacity 100%.
9) Now I take the layer that's made up of everything that's not the tree, and notice that there are two other trees in the background. I'm going to shade the sky blue, and I can't have blue background trees, so I select them with a mask and put them on their own layer too.
10) I go back to the layer made up of the sky bits, and adjust its hue too, this time trying to make it more blue.
11) Then I take the trees and make them more green, using the same technique. Pretty easy so far, right?
That's the basic recolouring procedure, and the rest is fluff, but we're completist here.
12) I add a black stripes gradient layer (Layers:New Fill Layer:Gradient...). The gradient is in the default gradients in Elements, but here it is anyway:
.13) Then I set the blend mode to soft light. I also paint the attached mask with black on all the places I don't want it to show up--in this case, the tree. Here's a shot of the layer as it shows up now in the layers palette.
And here's how the image should look now:
14) Finally, I slap on a border--stroke (Select All, then Edit:Stroke (Outline)Selection... a new layer with a 4 pixel white border, and then stroke it again with a 1 pixel very pale gray border.
Here's the icon:
I like that OK, but you can add gradients or fill layers right underneath the stripes Gradient Fill layer, for different effects. It also helps the recolouring job look real, because you pay less attention to the colours underneath the overarching colour.
This one has a pale brown overlay layer added to it:
And this one, my favorite, has a radial noise gradient in reds added on overlay:
That's it! Good luck!
My first, so tell me if I'm doing anything wrong! ^^