tutorial -- soft yet vibrant

going to show you how to go from to using
photoshop 7. pretty simple, and should translate easily into other programs. enjoy!</p>

	First things first. Take your base image and resize and move it around until you have a positioning you like. Don't sharpen it yet!! Mine came out like this:
	Take this base and duplicate it twice. Set the middle one to screen and the top one to soft light. The opacity of these two layers will depend on your image. Mine were 63% for screen and 100% for soft light. Now you can sharpen your base, if it needs it.
	Whee! Now it's time for fun with gradients! I made a gradient of orange-to-pink and applied it as soft light at 75% opacity. Again, your opacity will vary by image and desired effect.
	Next I did a purple-to-dark green gradient, also as Soft Light at 75%. Then I did a cream-to-tan, applied as Soft Light 1t 70% opacity. This gave the image a nice, ruddy, sepia feel.
	Now time for some light textures! Squee! I took a light texture from colorfilter, flipped it vertically, and applied it as Screen at 100% opacity and 52% Fill Opacity.
	At this point, I wanted to bring more emphasis to the hand, so I made a new layer, flooded it with black, and set it to screen at 100%. Then I took some of the basic, soft round Photoshop brushes and made my own little light texture in a vibrant pink-purple. I moved it underneath all the gradients, so that it was the first layer above the base and copies.
	Next came a brush from blimey_icons in white (on top of everything)
	Then I added some text, and a small text brush. Also went back and desaturated the bottom-most base image. Ta-da!

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If you're going to use any of my gradients or textures, please credit me when you do so. Same if you're going to use the icon.

Thanks for looking! Remember, this tutorial is just a guide to help you in your iconing endeavors. Don't just recreate the icon -- use it to learn new techniques!