icon tutorial: elijah wood, for ps7

this is my first post here, but i've been watching the community for a while. it has been very very helpful with all of my icon making needs, so i thought i would share a tutorial for one of my newer icons to, hopefully, help other people out. this is my first tutorial, so if it sucks i apologize.




made with ps7, images of elijah are from bag end inn. this tutorial is layer intense.

i started with this image, which i cropped and resized to get:



i duplicated the base image, set it to soft light 100%, and sharpened (Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask with the settings - amount 50, radius 1.0, threshold 0)



create a new layer, flood fill with #0A182C, set to exclusion 100%.



duplicate the base again, set to soft light 100%.



then, using a gradient (from teh_indy), i set the blend mode to color 33%



create a new layer. i used one of my texture01 brushes (__likewinter) #FFFFFF, soft light 100%


*note: i put it on a black background so you can see the detail

create another layer. another texture01 brush, #000000, overlay 100%



new layer. another texture01 brush, #000000, soft light 100%



new layer. texture02 brush (my own), #000000, soft light 100%



another new layer. border01 brush (my own), #000000, soft light 100%



new layer. border brush (quebelly), #000000, normal 100%.



for elijah i used verdana, bold, 5pt, anti-alias set to crisp, all caps.



for wood i used the same settings as above, verdana, bold, 5pt, anti-alias set to crisp, all caps.



flatten the image and you should get:



hopefully that wasn't too hard to understand...i'm not too good at writing out my tutorials. if you like it please comment and if you use it for your own icon please credit __likewinter