Requested on one of my two icon posts and I thought a few other people might find this useful.
Going from this:
to this: 
Made in Photoshop 7, and uses Selective Coloring.
It's probably a good idea to keep in mind that I was trying to recreate a coloring I'd previously made and stupidly didn't save a .psd for the first time.
Well, obviously you start by cropping and resizing your base.
Next the base needs to be brightened a bit so duplicate the base three times. Set the first copy to Multiply at 100% opacity, the second to Screen at 100% opacity, and the third to Screen 100% opacity, too. Of course you can/should adjust these to fit your picture.
After that go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color and set the mode to Exclusion. When choosing the color it should be something the dark reds. I used #280000 for my image.
It looks a little screwy right now, and it should. It made it easier (for me, anyway) when it came to using the Color Balance tool which comes next.
All right, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance. Makes sure Midtones is selected because that's the only thing I messed with. We're going to make the image a little magenta-ish with this layer. My color levels were, -15, -40, 0.
Now, although it probably seems a little redundant, we're gonna add some yellow/green-ish tints to it with another Color Balance layer. For this your Red/Cyan should be pretty even with your Yellow/Blue. My color values were: -20, 0, -20 which are dead even.
I use selective color a lot, but I promise if I can do this pretty much anyone can. So next go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Selectice Color. The point of this layer is to get rid of the yellowy color for the last and to bring out the reds and the darker colors, since they've been a little muted by the other steps. If your Method isn't set to Relative make sure it is before you start adjusting the levels. For this image my levels were:
Reds;
-100, +10, +100, +5
Yellows;
+100, 0, -70, 0
Cyans;
-100, 0, +100, 0
Whites;
0, 0, +40, 0
Blacks;
+100, 0, 0, +10
All right, for the final selective color layer we're going to make the colors look a little more normal since people usually don't look like sunfaded Peptobismol. The values for that I used where:
Reds;
0, +10, +20, 0
Cyans;
+100, 0, 0, 0
Whites;
+100, 0, -100, 0
Neutrals;
0, 0, 0, +5 (All this does is make the image a bit darker and if you choose to leave it out it doesn't affect the rest of the icon that much.)
Blacks;
+15, 0, 0, +5
For the final step to make the colors more vibrant I added a Hue/Saturation layer and set Saturation to +10 on Master. Now you have your final product.
I'd really appreciate it if you left feeback and asked questions at THIS post at my personal journal. I have another very image heavy version there that might be a little more helpful if there was something that confused you in this post along with a .psd.
Going from this:
to this: Made in Photoshop 7, and uses Selective Coloring.
It's probably a good idea to keep in mind that I was trying to recreate a coloring I'd previously made and stupidly didn't save a .psd for the first time.
Well, obviously you start by cropping and resizing your base.
Next the base needs to be brightened a bit so duplicate the base three times. Set the first copy to Multiply at 100% opacity, the second to Screen at 100% opacity, and the third to Screen 100% opacity, too. Of course you can/should adjust these to fit your picture.
After that go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color and set the mode to Exclusion. When choosing the color it should be something the dark reds. I used #280000 for my image.
It looks a little screwy right now, and it should. It made it easier (for me, anyway) when it came to using the Color Balance tool which comes next.
All right, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance. Makes sure Midtones is selected because that's the only thing I messed with. We're going to make the image a little magenta-ish with this layer. My color levels were, -15, -40, 0.
Now, although it probably seems a little redundant, we're gonna add some yellow/green-ish tints to it with another Color Balance layer. For this your Red/Cyan should be pretty even with your Yellow/Blue. My color values were: -20, 0, -20 which are dead even.
I use selective color a lot, but I promise if I can do this pretty much anyone can. So next go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Selectice Color. The point of this layer is to get rid of the yellowy color for the last and to bring out the reds and the darker colors, since they've been a little muted by the other steps. If your Method isn't set to Relative make sure it is before you start adjusting the levels. For this image my levels were:
Reds;
-100, +10, +100, +5
Yellows;
+100, 0, -70, 0
Cyans;
-100, 0, +100, 0
Whites;
0, 0, +40, 0
Blacks;
+100, 0, 0, +10
All right, for the final selective color layer we're going to make the colors look a little more normal since people usually don't look like sunfaded Peptobismol. The values for that I used where:
Reds;
0, +10, +20, 0
Cyans;
+100, 0, 0, 0
Whites;
+100, 0, -100, 0
Neutrals;
0, 0, 0, +5 (All this does is make the image a bit darker and if you choose to leave it out it doesn't affect the rest of the icon that much.)
Blacks;
+15, 0, 0, +5
For the final step to make the colors more vibrant I added a Hue/Saturation layer and set Saturation to +10 on Master. Now you have your final product.
I'd really appreciate it if you left feeback and asked questions at THIS post at my personal journal. I have another very image heavy version there that might be a little more helpful if there was something that confused you in this post along with a .psd.