to
WITHOUT SELECTIVE COLORING!!!
THIS COLORING DOES NOT WORK WITH ALL IMAGES!!!!
This is just a basic, boring tutorial of how to brighten up screencaps.
Start out with your image. I'm going to start out with a screencap of Rory from Gilmore Girls. Screencaps are from Home of the Nutty.
Crop and resize your image.
It's a pretty picture, and seems like it has nice underlying colors, so basically what we want to do is brighten it and increase the contrast. First what you should do as with pretty much any screencap is duplicate the layer and set the duplicate to screen.
Brighter, but not contrasted enough... So select all of your image and go to Edit: Copy Merged then paste and set this layer to Overlay
Next we want to add some coloring, so we're going to add dark blue layer set to difference (or exclusion dependent on your icon and how you want it to look. difference adds more contrast.) right on top of the base. I used #05102C.
layer order:
base-normal
dark blue- difference
duplicate of base- screen
merged base- overlay
-> 
Then we're going to add a light blue, I used #D0F7FF and set it above the exclusion layer and set it to color burn.
layer order:
base- normal
dark blue- diffence
light blue- color burn
duplicate of base- screen
merged base- overlay
-> 
Now dependent on your icon you can skip this step or modify it. We want to brighten the icon up so we're going to duplicate the screen layer a couple times. I duplicated mine 4 times.
layer order:
base- normal
dark blue- diffence
light blue- color burn
duplicate of base- screen x5
merged base- overlay
Now we're going to bring out the colors a little more and brighten it up a bit. We're going to add a light pink layer set at soft light. I used #FFD0DE
layer order:
base- normal
dark blue- diffence
light blue- color burn
duplicate of base- screen x5
pink- softlight
merged base- overlay
-> 
Now again for added contrast, duplicate your base one more time and set it on top of the pink layer, set this to soft light.
layer order:
base- normal
dark blue- diffence
light blue- color burn
duplicate of base- screen x5
pink- softlight
duplicate of base- softlight
merged base- overlay
Next we need to add more contrast and get rid of the yellowish color so we're going to add a dark brown layer, I used #3E1903, and set it to difference.
layer order:
base- normal
dark blue- diffence
light blue- color burn
duplicate of base- screen x5
pink- softlight
duplicate of base- softlight
dark brown-diffence
merged base- overlay
-> 
You're done! Now just edit to your liking. I sharpened the base and a screen layer a couple times and added a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer setting the saturation at +20 to intensify the colors.
VIOLA. NOW YOU HAVE A BRIGHT, SIMPLE ICON :]
Enjoy and Feel free to ask any questions you have! :]
for more examples of this coloring and for more tutorials visit
icyskies