Subtle colours, I hope
This tutorial is also posted at the 
severalplums community, I thought it might be of interest here.
From
to 
Created in Photoshop CS3 on a Mac, but I'm pretty sure it's translatable for any graphics program.
I thought this would be an interesting challenge—I wanted to make sure I didn't make her skin less beautiful than it is in the source picture. Well, I usually want that, but I spend about 99.5% of my icon-making time working on white (male!) faces, so I had to adjust my usual methods.
There was, of course, a bit more experimentation, but this is what I eventually worked out.
So, the crop I chose is this:
First thing was to add in a gradient map, with Foreground set to 000000 and background to e6bba1. I love Gradient Maps. If you don't use them, the easiest way is to pick your two colours, set the dark one on Foreground and the pale one on Background, then go to the drop-down Adjustment Layers menu at the bottom of the Layers palette and select Gradient Map. You can also use a pre-made gradient, but I like the control I get from picking my own colours.
I settled on Soft Light at 100% as the blend mode for the Gradient Map layer. And really, I could have stopped at this point...
... but I didn't. Created a new amalgamation layer (the command+alt+shirt+E thing) of both the base and the gradient map, and set this to Soft Light at 50%. I also added a Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur at 1.4 to this layer. It's very subtle.
Again I made an amalgam of the layers below into a new layer, to which I applied a Radial Blur filter, set to 22, and moving the centre of the blur to her face. Added a layer mask, and masked off the face so that it shows through nice and clear. This layer is set to Normal.
This is the Radial blur layer without the mask.
Next, an adjustment of Levels, quite a simple one. On the RGB channel I basically moved the LH pointer a little to the right (13) and the RH pointer a little to the left (244). Middle pointer then moved right a bit. (0.90). Layer blend mode Normal.
The colour has now got a bit too orange, so I added in a colour layer of f5cab8, a yellowish-pink, on Color at 50%.
I wanted to make a bit more of the colours in the blurry area, so I played a bit: created a new layer and did some random strokes of dfd6d2, applied a ZigZag filter (Filter>Distort>Zigzag on default settings) and also the Radial Blur (with the centre of the blur in the same position as before). Set it to Lighten at 30%.
Another new layer, here with 943936, just a boring soft-edged brush, a few random dots over the blurry area. Set it to Vivid light at 76%, then duplicated the layer and set that one to Color Dodge at 80%.
Next new layer has this nice border brush from
dj43, in 943936 set to Multiply.
Finally, typed 'Gina' in Bickham Script Pro 24pt AV75, colour e9bda0, set to Screen, then cut back the opacity to 66%.
Et voilà.
severalplums community, I thought it might be of interest here.From
to Created in Photoshop CS3 on a Mac, but I'm pretty sure it's translatable for any graphics program.
I thought this would be an interesting challenge—I wanted to make sure I didn't make her skin less beautiful than it is in the source picture. Well, I usually want that, but I spend about 99.5% of my icon-making time working on white (male!) faces, so I had to adjust my usual methods.
There was, of course, a bit more experimentation, but this is what I eventually worked out.
So, the crop I chose is this:
First thing was to add in a gradient map, with Foreground set to 000000 and background to e6bba1. I love Gradient Maps. If you don't use them, the easiest way is to pick your two colours, set the dark one on Foreground and the pale one on Background, then go to the drop-down Adjustment Layers menu at the bottom of the Layers palette and select Gradient Map. You can also use a pre-made gradient, but I like the control I get from picking my own colours.
I settled on Soft Light at 100% as the blend mode for the Gradient Map layer. And really, I could have stopped at this point...
... but I didn't. Created a new amalgamation layer (the command+alt+shirt+E thing) of both the base and the gradient map, and set this to Soft Light at 50%. I also added a Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur at 1.4 to this layer. It's very subtle.
Again I made an amalgam of the layers below into a new layer, to which I applied a Radial Blur filter, set to 22, and moving the centre of the blur to her face. Added a layer mask, and masked off the face so that it shows through nice and clear. This layer is set to Normal.
This is the Radial blur layer without the mask.
Next, an adjustment of Levels, quite a simple one. On the RGB channel I basically moved the LH pointer a little to the right (13) and the RH pointer a little to the left (244). Middle pointer then moved right a bit. (0.90). Layer blend mode Normal.
The colour has now got a bit too orange, so I added in a colour layer of f5cab8, a yellowish-pink, on Color at 50%.
I wanted to make a bit more of the colours in the blurry area, so I played a bit: created a new layer and did some random strokes of dfd6d2, applied a ZigZag filter (Filter>Distort>Zigzag on default settings) and also the Radial Blur (with the centre of the blur in the same position as before). Set it to Lighten at 30%.
Another new layer, here with 943936, just a boring soft-edged brush, a few random dots over the blurry area. Set it to Vivid light at 76%, then duplicated the layer and set that one to Color Dodge at 80%.
Next new layer has this nice border brush from
dj43, in 943936 set to Multiply.Finally, typed 'Gina' in Bickham Script Pro 24pt AV75, colour e9bda0, set to Screen, then cut back the opacity to 66%.
Et voilà.