tutorial: xavier de rosnay (of justice) & uffie
Hi everybody! I recently decided I really like the high-contrast look for icons, so I've made a tutorial for how to achieve the effect.
to 
Adobe Photoshop 7.0
I started with this photo from the cobra snake.
I really wanted to focus on Xavier and Uffie here so I cropped it close to their faces. With this style the cropping is really important, because it's not very elaborate so your choice of base needs to stand out for itself!
This picture was pretty dark so I put on a screen layer.
But I really wanted something with higher contrast so I added another screen layer. If you're using this tutorial, this is one place where you'll want to experiment a lot with the layer's opacity. Sometimes you'll also want a soft light layer, if your base is very low in contrast; sometimes this second screen layer will need to be sharpened depending on the relative blurriness of your base. For this picture I just used one more screen layer, on 48% opacity.
I liked the purple background and I wanted to bring it out, as well as put some color into Xav and Uffie's faces, so I did a selective color layer:
REDS
C: +98
M: +68
Y: +100
WHITES
C: -17
M: +37
Y: +8
K: -11
NEUTRALS
C: -21
M: +8
Y: -17
K: +15
Now I still felt like the colors looked a bit too washed out and not contrasty enough, so I used a levels layer, which I ended up putting on 49% opacity (otherwise it gets too black and white):
RGB
34/1.00/253
I wanted to bring out the most colorful items in the picture (Uffie's nail polish, Xavier's lips, Uffie's hoodie) so I did another selective color layer:
REDS <-- Xav's lips, Uffie's nails
C: -59
M: +19
Y: +50
YELLOWS <-- to make the foreground stand out more from the background
C: -100
M: +84
Y: +3
K: +15
GREENS <-- for Uffie's hoodie
C: +100
M: +49
Y: +65
K: +81
NEUTRALS
C: -3
M: +3
Y: -11
BLACKS
K: +91 <-- really improves the contrast
So now we have this:
And really I could have finished there, but I ended up making the last three layers (effects layers) into a set and duplicating the set, which I put on top at 30%. So here's the final result:
Maybe it jarrs the eye a little bit on first viewing, but depending on your Livejournal theme could look really nice. Hope you enjoyed, please don't copy exactly, etc. :)
Other icons made using this technique
to Adobe Photoshop 7.0
I started with this photo from the cobra snake.
I really wanted to focus on Xavier and Uffie here so I cropped it close to their faces. With this style the cropping is really important, because it's not very elaborate so your choice of base needs to stand out for itself!
This picture was pretty dark so I put on a screen layer.
But I really wanted something with higher contrast so I added another screen layer. If you're using this tutorial, this is one place where you'll want to experiment a lot with the layer's opacity. Sometimes you'll also want a soft light layer, if your base is very low in contrast; sometimes this second screen layer will need to be sharpened depending on the relative blurriness of your base. For this picture I just used one more screen layer, on 48% opacity.
I liked the purple background and I wanted to bring it out, as well as put some color into Xav and Uffie's faces, so I did a selective color layer:
REDS
C: +98
M: +68
Y: +100
WHITES
C: -17
M: +37
Y: +8
K: -11
NEUTRALS
C: -21
M: +8
Y: -17
K: +15
Now I still felt like the colors looked a bit too washed out and not contrasty enough, so I used a levels layer, which I ended up putting on 49% opacity (otherwise it gets too black and white):
RGB
34/1.00/253
I wanted to bring out the most colorful items in the picture (Uffie's nail polish, Xavier's lips, Uffie's hoodie) so I did another selective color layer:
REDS <-- Xav's lips, Uffie's nails
C: -59
M: +19
Y: +50
YELLOWS <-- to make the foreground stand out more from the background
C: -100
M: +84
Y: +3
K: +15
GREENS <-- for Uffie's hoodie
C: +100
M: +49
Y: +65
K: +81
NEUTRALS
C: -3
M: +3
Y: -11
BLACKS
K: +91 <-- really improves the contrast
So now we have this:
And really I could have finished there, but I ended up making the last three layers (effects layers) into a set and duplicating the set, which I put on top at 30%. So here's the final result:
Maybe it jarrs the eye a little bit on first viewing, but depending on your Livejournal theme could look really nice. Hope you enjoyed, please don't copy exactly, etc. :)
Other icons made using this technique