Tutorial for "Bliss" icon
Want to learn how to go from 
to 
without gradients, and with only one brush?
This tutorial is written with Photoshop in mind, but it shouldn't be difficult to translate it to most other image editors. It's written with beginners in mind, or people who want to learn more about blending modes.
This is the layers palette for the finished icon. Nothing spectacular. What makes the icon here is the blending modes for each layer. The music note is set to 'normal'; layer 3 is set to 'normal'; layer 2 is set to 'overlay'; layer 1 is set to 'linear dodge', and the background is set to 'normal'. With this information, it's not difficult to recreate the icon.
Next, I'll show each layer with the blends to illustrate how the blend impacts the icon.
i) The background.
ii)
The duplicated background layer, blended with 'linear dodge'. It looks pretty decent already, but the colors are still a bit too pale.
iii)
The background duplicated again, blended with 'overlay'. Now there's a lot more contrast.
iv)
Get the stripes from 
asya_17, stamp it on a new layer over the image, and erase the excess so it looks like the stripes are going behind the subject.
v)
A music note just to add some final touches.
What's important here is the linear dodge. Without it—with only the background, and overlay—the icon would look like this:
Ew! No thanks!
I hope you guys found this tutorial useful. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask! By the way, this is my first tutorial, so comments on how you found it—if it was good, or bad—would be great. And if it needed improvement, please point out in which aspects.
Cross-posted togyroscopic_sin and 
icon_tutorial.
Wusai
to without gradients, and with only one brush?This tutorial is written with Photoshop in mind, but it shouldn't be difficult to translate it to most other image editors. It's written with beginners in mind, or people who want to learn more about blending modes.
This is the layers palette for the finished icon. Nothing spectacular. What makes the icon here is the blending modes for each layer. The music note is set to 'normal'; layer 3 is set to 'normal'; layer 2 is set to 'overlay'; layer 1 is set to 'linear dodge', and the background is set to 'normal'. With this information, it's not difficult to recreate the icon.
Next, I'll show each layer with the blends to illustrate how the blend impacts the icon.
i)
The background.ii)
The duplicated background layer, blended with 'linear dodge'. It looks pretty decent already, but the colors are still a bit too pale.iii)
The background duplicated again, blended with 'overlay'. Now there's a lot more contrast.iv)
Get the stripes from asya_17, stamp it on a new layer over the image, and erase the excess so it looks like the stripes are going behind the subject.v)
A music note just to add some final touches.What's important here is the linear dodge. Without it—with only the background, and overlay—the icon would look like this:
Ew! No thanks!
I hope you guys found this tutorial useful. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask! By the way, this is my first tutorial, so comments on how you found it—if it was good, or bad—would be great. And if it needed improvement, please point out in which aspects.
Cross-posted to
gyroscopic_sin and icon_tutorial.Wusai