Tutorial #2, for Photoshop

Tutorial, for nostalgia_lj, who was curious as to how I made this icon:


Tutorial is very long, involves far too many layers, and is generally annoying. It's for Photoshop, but is easily translatable, I think.


We're using this image first:


Okay, so what I did first? Duplicated the original image three times. Set the first two to screen, and the third to soft light, ‘cause it was all nasty and dark. I got this:


Then I sharpened it, just for kicks. And then, because it wasn’t sharp enough, I duplicated that layer, sharpened it again, and set the new layer to 30% opacity. Duplicate it yet again, and set that one to Soft Light at 50% opacity, then desaturated it. Here we go:


Then, ‘cause, well, Will and Tara are kind of flat and not very interesting, I created a new layer between the desaturated one and the base, and picked out a nice yellow colour (#FFB500), set on a small brush, and coloured in the yellow swirls on Willow and Tara’s shirts.

Yes, that’s right. I coloured them in. Of course, this makes them look yellow like woah, so I set the layer with the colour to Soft Light and lowered the opacity to 60%. You get this:


But, no. I couldn’t leave it like that. So I did the same thing, with the rest of the shirts, and their hair.

The red in their shirts is #FF000A, set to Soft Light, opacity 50%
The magenta is #85274D (only on Tara’s shirt, however, as Willow’s doesn’t involve pink), set to Soft Light (sensing a trend?), opacity 75%
The green is #25A90F, set to Soft Light, yet again, opacity 50%
Willow’s hair is a nicely awful auburn shade, #C64213, set to Soft Light, 30% opacity.

The end result is this:


So, subtle difference. Not that bad, eh?

Now, for the floaty Willow and Tara image in the background.

Create a new canvas (white, blankness is good) and get your second cap. This is the one I used:


Clean it up, make it smaller, do the same things as you did with the first one with exception of the colouring, etcetera, etcetera.

You should get something like this:


Create a new 100x100 canvas and copy’n’paste the first base onto it. Don’t merge the layers.

With the eraser tool, erase everything but Willow and Tara. Everything. I mean it. Don’t leave a background of it’ll look icky.
You should get something like this:


Then copy’n’paste the second one, with the dancing onto it. Go to Image>Adjustments>Selective Colour and do Black and slide the bar up to 100%. You should get this:


And then, to be difficult, I want you to make another layer in between the Willow and Tara and the dancing shot. With a regular brush (I used 9pt), colour on white (#FFFFFF), outline them on the new layer, going behind them so you don’t have to be precise:


Now, go up to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and, well, blur it. I set it to 4.5. Then set the layer to Hard Light, opacity 31%:


See? Now they’re all nice and defined.

Next we make a brand, shiny new layer on top of everything. Fill it with an exclusion layer, colour #04081C, 100% opacity. Here’s the outcome:


And, of course, now we get to the gradients. All of them are made by [Bad username: crumblingwalls], because she rocks like that. And I am hopeless at making my own. So, go her.

For every gradient you need, obviously a new layer. And I use a lot of them. So be prepared to wear out your fingers doing ctrl-alt-shift-n, ‘cause it’ll be a while.

First gradient:

Set to Soft Light, 100% opacity

Second gradient:

Set to Soft Light, 100% opacity.

Third:
Well, okay, this isn’t a gradient. But it’ll help with the picture. Using a soft, small brush, go over Willow and Tara’s skin with white (#FFFFFF) at set it to Overlay, 55%. It’ll brighten up their features, so they’re not lost under all the gradients.

So, the Third Gradient:

Set to Colour, 34% opacity.

Fourth:

Same gradient, set to Soft Light, 100% opacity.

Fifth:

Set to Soft Light, 42% opacity.


Sixth:

Set to Overlay, 44% opacity.


Now, merge your layers. Go up to Image>Adjustments>Selective Colour. Click black and move the black bar up to 25%.

Here you are:


Back to the gradients. Two left. ::sigh of relief::

Seventh:

Set to Colour, 18% opacity.

Eighth:

Set to Soft Light, 20% opacity.

And, thank whatever god you worship (or, you know, Athiests/Agnostics, don’t), ‘cause we’re so done with the gradients.

Yeah, you thought we were done? No way, buddy. You’re so screwed. We’ve got borders and text left.

But I’m not helping with that. You should know how to do that kind of stuff already. Go on, get to it.

When you're all done you should have something vaguely resembling this:


Go you.