jadesunsets wrote in icon_tutorial

Icon Tutorial

INTO

I use PSP 9, but I believe it will work in other versions.


1. Start with this picture. Resize and crop it to get the base.


2. Do you see the small portion of skin showing by her hip (in the corner)? It annoys me when only a small piece of something is shown in the icon. It looks awkward, so we're going to get rid of it! Take the push brush and set the SIZE to 5 and leave the OPACITY at 100. You want to zoom in a lot to see the area that you're working on. Now drag the push brush over her hip, starting right above the patch of skin to the edge of the icon, going over the entire area of skin. Don't go outside the area where her hip is. Try to "color inside the lines." Here's what I've done. I zoomed in by 1000% so that's why we're just looking at the pixels.


Try and get the part closest to the edge first and then go back and smooth it out a little bit. If you don't like the way it turns out, go back and try it again!


3. Duplicate the background layer 4 times. Going from top to bottom, I'm going to refer to the duplicate layers using the numbers 1-4, with 1 being the top most layer and 4 being the duplicate layer closest to the background layer. Double click on the layer you want to select to view the LAYER PROPERTIES for that layer, and then change the settings to the following.

LAYER ONE
Blend mode: Screen
Opacity: 100

LAYER TWO
Blend mode: Multiply
Opacity: 100

LAYER THREE
Blend mode: Multiply
Opacity: 90

LAYER FOUR
Blend mode: Soft Light
Opacity: 100


4. Create two new raster layers above the layer 2nd closest to the top (layer two). Create another raster layer below layer two. Set the properties to the following.

ABOVE LAYER (TOP)
FLOOD FILL the layer with the color (#f0cf9c)
Blend mode: Soft Light
Opacity: 35

ABOVE LAYER (BOTTOM)
FLOOD FILL the layer with the color (#f52551)
Blend mode: Multiply
Opacity: 70

BELOW LAYER
FLOOD FILL the layer with the color (#f0cf9c)
Blend mode: Multiply
Opacity: 90


5. Either copy the merged image (CTRL + SHIFT + C) and paste it as a new image (CTRL + V) OR merge the layers of the image (LAYERS >> MERGE >> MERGE ALL (FLATTEN)).

6. Now we're going to clean up the background. By resizing the image to a much smaller size, you minimize many of the image's flaws, but I'm a perfectionist so let's go fix our image! For this, we're going to use the soften brush . You will probably need to change the size of the brush to get into some of the smaller spaces, but leave the OPACITY at 100. Run the brush over the pink park of the background (the sky). If you want to, you can also go over her cheeks, forehead, and arms.


7. Duplicate the layer. Set the OPACITY of the duplicate layer to 95. Select the original layer and then sharpen it (ADJUST >> SHARPNESS >> SHARPEN). Make sure that you sharpen the original layer and not the duplicate.


8. Right by her ear, there are a couple of pixels that are a little bit lighter than the rest, so I just used my soften brush to even it out. Use the soften brush on the duplicate layer.


9. Stay on the duplicate layer and run the sharpen brush over her eyes and mouth. The sharpen brush should have a SIZE of about 3 and an OPACITY of 2 or 3. Now we're done!

LJ Video