gwen tutorial
how to go from this: 
to this: 
this tutorial is for photoshop. i use cs, but it'll work for other versions. this is my first tutorial, so i apologize if there things that are unclear. if anything is unclear, do not hesitate to ask me about it.
here's where we start.
i duplicated the background and set the new layer on soft light. obviously, it's very light, so i played around with brightness/contrast and hue/saturation until i got something i liked, like what you see above. it looks fine uncompressed, but since i saved it as a jpeg, it looks a little icky.
i duplicated the background again, dragged the new layer to the top, and set the new layer to screen at 64%. it's a little light now, though. i added a new fill layer with a dark blue color set to lighten at 40% to bring some of the shadows back in.
then i created another new fill layer with a very light pink and set it to overlay at 30%. i got this:
i then created yet another fill layer and filled it with a light yellow and set it to color burn at 60%. mostly i'm not a fan of yellow, but i think it works with her blonde hair.
i then merged all my layers. i copied my background. i played around with hue/saturation and brightness/contrast again until i got this:
if you're satisfied, merge visible layers again. i then copied my background yet again. the background of the image is kind of plain, so i used this tutorial to add a background without actually doing anything to gwen. here's where you can get really creative. colorfilter has some really nice textures. i tried to select some backgrounds that used similar colors to my picture. just play around with different things until you get something you like. i got this:
you can stop there. i like borders on my icons, so i used the eyedropper to pull a reddish color out of her shirt for the border. i find the easiest way to make a border is the marquee tool because you don't have to dulplicate the background. but whatever way you use works. so i get this:
again, you could stop there. but why? i then added some text. i used a font called porcelain, which can be found at dafont.com (i am a total typography junkie). i made it the same red color i used for the background. i antialiased it to sharp. i gave it a stroke of black at 1px. i thought the text was too harsh against the softness of the rest of the icon, so i set the opacity to 70%. and now i have this:
and we're done! this is pretty similar to the icon i have, but the background is different. my best advice if you're not sure about something is to turn off the visibility of the layer and then turn it back on again so you can see which one you like better.
this tutorial is for photoshop. i use cs, but it'll work for other versions. this is my first tutorial, so i apologize if there things that are unclear. if anything is unclear, do not hesitate to ask me about it.
here's where we start.
i duplicated the background and set the new layer on soft light. obviously, it's very light, so i played around with brightness/contrast and hue/saturation until i got something i liked, like what you see above. it looks fine uncompressed, but since i saved it as a jpeg, it looks a little icky.
i duplicated the background again, dragged the new layer to the top, and set the new layer to screen at 64%. it's a little light now, though. i added a new fill layer with a dark blue color set to lighten at 40% to bring some of the shadows back in.
then i created another new fill layer with a very light pink and set it to overlay at 30%. i got this:
i then created yet another fill layer and filled it with a light yellow and set it to color burn at 60%. mostly i'm not a fan of yellow, but i think it works with her blonde hair.
i then merged all my layers. i copied my background. i played around with hue/saturation and brightness/contrast again until i got this:
if you're satisfied, merge visible layers again. i then copied my background yet again. the background of the image is kind of plain, so i used this tutorial to add a background without actually doing anything to gwen. here's where you can get really creative. colorfilter has some really nice textures. i tried to select some backgrounds that used similar colors to my picture. just play around with different things until you get something you like. i got this:
you can stop there. i like borders on my icons, so i used the eyedropper to pull a reddish color out of her shirt for the border. i find the easiest way to make a border is the marquee tool because you don't have to dulplicate the background. but whatever way you use works. so i get this:
again, you could stop there. but why? i then added some text. i used a font called porcelain, which can be found at dafont.com (i am a total typography junkie). i made it the same red color i used for the background. i antialiased it to sharp. i gave it a stroke of black at 1px. i thought the text was too harsh against the softness of the rest of the icon, so i set the opacity to 70%. and now i have this:
and we're done! this is pretty similar to the icon i have, but the background is different. my best advice if you're not sure about something is to turn off the visibility of the layer and then turn it back on again so you can see which one you like better.