Helping icon makers one tutorial at a time.

Icon Coloring

hayleysgoodbye — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 23:35:10 GMT

Does anyone know how to achieve this coloring?
Photos are by Jessie Willner, this coloring is all over her Instagram.

animated icons

cozycaffe — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 20:39:56 GMT

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone could guide me into doing icons similar to these?

Sorry, I do not know the name of the maker(s) or I'd add them to my post.

I am using Photoshop CS6 at the moment.

gif coloring help

caramelaffair — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 06:31:46 GMT

There is obviously a blue hue to this but I can't seem to acheieve the same coloring no matter how many color balances or selective. Help?

Two gifs

jaehero — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 04:09:19 GMT

Hello y'all:) Anyone know how to paste two gifs together like this? Any help is greatly appreciate^^

Rainbow Glow Tutorial

songstressicons — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 17:54:46 GMT

to

This should translate to pretty much any graphics programme that has a channel mixer function. It assumes you know how to use: blend modes, adjustment layers, and masks.

Other Examples:

Part One: Basics

The first thing to do is have a picture you want to use. I’m using a screen cap from Agent Carter (provided by Home of the Nutty)

Crop it however you like, but for this style of icon, some negative space around the focus of your icon is good (basically, don’t fill the whole icon with what you want the subject of the icon to be, make sure there is room around the edge of them/it).

Here’s my starting off point:

The first thing we want to do is brighten it up so we can see it properly, so to do that I will be using curves. You can use screen layers or whatever method you’d like to brighten it, but this is how I did it.

CURVES LAYER SETTINGS:
POINT 1: 0,0
POINT 2: 43, 73
POINT 3: 96, 155
POINT 4: 168, 230
POINT 5: 255, 255

I want it brighter, so I’m going to set the curves layer to ‘Screen’ on the blending mode.

This still wasn’t bright enough, so I duplicated the layer again, still set on Screen, and then I duplicated it once more, and set that layer to Soft Light, to give it some contrast (darks darker, lights lighter).

Any of these layers can have their opacity played with until it looks right to you, right up until the very end of the icon making process, so feel free to adjust as needed. I ended up with both Screen layers on 100%, and my Soft Light layer on 30%:

Next, onto the colouring!

Part Two: Colouring

The first thing I’m going to do is put an exclusion layer on. Exclusion layers, when used in dark red/brown colours, cast an attractive cyan (neon blue) hue over the light parts of an image. I made a new layer, filled with the colour #4f150b, and put it on Exclusion blending mode. It looks like this:

Yuck, but we’ll fix it.

The next layer is a Color Burn layer (or just Burn if you work in PSP). I’m using an orange yellow colour (#f09800), which makes the darker part of the icons a red/orange hue. Set your opacity down to 20% to start off with, and adjust until you like it. In this particular image, I put it on 18%, but in other icons, I’ve used 8%, 3% or turned it off entirely, depending one how it looks. Result:

The next step is a channel mixer layer. Channel mixers are great for getting really vibrant cyan and red colours out of an image, but I don’t understand how they work, so I just play with colours until I like them. My settings for this are:

RED: 125, -30, 0
GREEN: -15, 115, 0
BLUE: -58, 130, 40

And it looks like this:

I’ve lost the green of Ana’s dress, though, so I’ve put a layer mask on the channel mixer layer, and painted over her dress with a paintbrush set on black, to restore the green colour:

I also lowered the opacity of the channel mixer layer to 67%, you can leave it as is, or move it to where you like it.

My next layer is a Levels layer, to add more contrast. Black arrow makes the darks darker, white arrow makes the lights lighter, and the grey arrow makes the midtones darker or lighter. My settings are: 8, .87, 220. Opacity level at 100%.

Now, we want our colours bright on this one, so I’ve added a hue/saturation layer. This makes it all more vibrant. I bumped the Master setting up by +20, and the Red setting up +9, but this, out of everything, is the most image dependent layer in the colouring section. Adjust to match the colours of your image, and keep adjusting as you go on, until it looks ‘right’.

(This looks gross and neon, but the texture steps will help sort that out)

Part Three: Texture

Because we have a bunch of space around the woman in our icon, we can fill that up with a nice ‘background’ of texture and colour. In these icons, I’ve used a texture from a set by midnight_road, who makes the most beautiful textures. If you use this texture, please credit to them. You can get the set here.

This is the texture I am using:

Place this on a new layer atop the others. You have a few options for blend mode here. In this icon, I’ve used ‘Lighten’, but you can also use Hard Light or Soft Light, or basically anything else you think looks good. Don’t worry right now if the texture blocks your subject, we’ll fix that later. This blends texture and colour over the negative space and makes it more visually interesting.

Usually I paste it on, and then flip it horizontally or vertically or both until I like how it sits.

Duplicate your texture layer, and set it to Soft Light. This just adds a bit more colour and texture.

At this point, I go back and put a Mask on both the texture layers, and gently paint with black or grey over where the subject is, removing the parts of the texture that are blocking it too much. This is all to personal taste, so mess around and see what you like.

One more texture layer, this one from satine_violet. You can find the pack here, and once again, please give credit if you use it. I’m using this texture:

Paste it top the others, and set it to Soft Light. This darkens the outside edges, and puts a glowy yellow haze over the middle parts. I usually use a radial blur on this layer, to enhance this effect even more, but that’s optional.

Last step! Merge visible, duplicate the layer, set it on soft light and put a radial blur on it. This deepens and adds more contrast, and gives everything more of a glow. I put mine on 30%, but once again, this is to your taste.

And we’re done!

QUICK VERSION

Prepare your base.
(Exclusion 100%)
(Burn 20% [or lower])
Channel Mixer:
RED: 125, -30, 0
GREEN: -15, 115, 0
BLUE: -58, 130, 40
MASK on Channel Mixer Layer and paint black over any areas that were green in the original image to restore them if desired
Levels:
8, .87, 220.
Hue/Sat:
Master +20
Red +9
(Lighten)
Above texture again (Soft Light)
MASK the two preceding texture layers and paint with black or dark grey over any areas you want to make clearer if desired
(Soft Light, Radial Blur)
Merge Visible
Duplicate Layer
Soft Light w/ Radial Blur

Thanks very much for reading. If you have any questions, please let me know. Please remember to credit midnight_road and/or satine_violet if you use their textures.

Coloring manga

ext_3612007 — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 15:08:56 GMT

Hey guys!
I have CS6 extended and I would like to know how to achieve this "smooth" but bold black lines and whenever I try to color hair it doesn't come like I want, mostly with characters with dark hair.

(icon credits to http://phonographs.dreamwidth.org/)

The manga artist does color their hair dark to show they have dark hair and when I try to color their hair (for example, with brown or dark-blueish colors) it barely shows because of the original dark part.

What should I do?

Icon size... help!

kehleyr — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 14:40:13 GMT

I have CS6 extended... and when I make an icon in 100x100 I always use 3,54 cm x 3,54 cm but now when I try to add those figures into the boxes above I get an error sign

What am I missing?

Thanks for any assistance!

luminosity effect on photoshop?

carvelur — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 02:43:03 GMT

Hi! Can anyone recommend a colouring tutorial or some tips to achieve a colouring similitar to the one in this picture?

Thanks a lot! :)

unwanted letter spacing

gallaghers — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 19:03:05 GMT

For a few days now whenever I use the text tool it creates spacing between the letters. I was playing around with text last week so I'm sure I hit the wrong button somewhere, I just don't know which. I'm using Photoshop Elements 13.

How make text from big to small on Photoshop?

smilelaughter — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 20:45:05 GMT

I wanted to try make something like this?

Gif timing question

beetle_breath — Sun, 24 May 2015 17:49:03 GMT

Hi all!

I'm hoping someone could give me some tips on how to make animated gifs for Tumblr. I understand the basics but timing is getting me down.

I know there's a way to save multiple gifs in one canvas so the first bit finishes before the second, but the file size ends up being way too large or there's too much loss of quality for my liking.

Is there a good way to manually time separate gifs to align properly? I'm using Photoshop CS3.

2 separate images:

Versus one canvas:

Thanks!!

gallaghers — Thu, 14 May 2015 20:00:27 GMT

hello! i've recently started using Photoshop Elements 13, before that i used Photoshop Elements 6.

i save my icons under .png and i've never broken livejournal's 40kb limit, but since switching programs i now do. when i do a typical save of [file → save as → format: png] my icons will be over 40kb, however if i do [save for web → png-24 & interlaced] they save under 40kb. as far as i know quality isn't lost when i do this and the icons look the exact same. is there a reason for this?

60kb

12kb

outshining — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 04:45:38 GMT

I'm sorry if this is a newbie question, but I can't figure out how with using paint why all pictures I save at 100 x 100.. like lj requires.. seem so small compared to other icons, besides one I found on a google search I think is a nice size, the above icon seems small.. can anyone help? I did try to look at some beginner tutorials but they didn't seem to address this issue.. thanks in advance ! Also, has anyone retrieved viruses from saving others lj pics?

Looking for a tutorial

dark_x_huntress — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 21:24:04 GMT

Program: Photoshop

I recently saw a tutorial that used a picture from Once Upon a Time, Regina to be specific and there was someone behind her (I don't watch the show so I'm only vaguely familiar with the characters). The tutorial taught how to remove an unwanted object/person in the background using (I think) the lasso tool and something that might have been called Content Aware. I thought I had saved it but apparently I hadn't. The tutorial used the full image (It wasn't icon sized at that point though the maker might have resized it later). The coloring had blues and purples in it.

I hope that helps. I really need that tutorial too.

Trouble with KM Player

macfraser82 — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 05:54:01 GMT

I had to use a new version of KM Player and now I have trouble making screencaps.
I use the same settings as I always do, but now the screencap size is really huge. Normally they are between 100-150 kb per screencap, and now they are between 500kb-1MB. That's way too big to upload to my screencap community.
Anyone knows how to fix that?

Moving a group

unreal — Sat, 22 Nov 2014 21:42:30 GMT

Normaly when I had the group selected I could just use the move tool to move it. Now the move tool acts like a selection tool. What am I doing wrong?

eddavanheemstra — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 02:52:57 GMT

Hello everyone! Could anyone help me reach this kind of muted colouring? I'm using Photoshop CS5.

(click the pics to enlarge)

--->

-->

those were made by deprincessed on tumblr.

also notice how the edited pics have a somewhat "grainy" quality to them, how do I reach that effect? (add noise maybe?)

thanks a lot in advance! ;)

How to achieve this coloring?

charingyu — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 14:13:25 GMT

Hi! Does anybody know how to achieve this kind of colouring? I know these photos are taken with an actual film camera with filter, but I want to know whether it is possible to re-create the vintage, matted, sepia/brownish (and slightly grainy) colouring on other similar photos.

I use photoshop CS6.

And the sort of photos I want the effect on

Thanks in advance!

Coloring Question

emmi_lee — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 12:13:21 GMT

Hi! I was wondering how to achieve this kind of look. Seems I can't get as soft look even though I try.

Do you have any ideas or know tutorials that would look the same?

animation

unreal — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 18:21:26 GMT

I hope you can help me with this. I make blinkies like these in CS5:

There are multiply frames in here. If I change the stroke of the pixel text it sometimes only changed the first frame. But now hese starting to act weird. Let's say there a six frames. If I change the first frame it could be he only changes the first two. Or he changes frame 1,2,3,5,6 leaving 4 out. Any idea why he might be doing it?

Another gif question

beetle_breath — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 02:58:26 GMT

Thanks for the help on my last question. Now I don't know if this is more a photoshop thing or a browser thing, but when I try to make animated images, they speed up like crazy. I've tried adjusting the delay, but it doesn't help. It either has no effect or it goes too slow. I'm using photoshop cs3 & firefox.

Sorry for all the level 1 questions :/

Fighting with frames

beetle_breath — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 18:21:26 GMT

I feel like frekin fool for not remembering how to do this, but, how do I get text on an animated image to stay consistent?

I'm using Photoshop CS3 I added a text layer above all the layers I want the text to appear, but if I try to move or adjust the text, it only wants to change on the layer directly beneath it. All the other frames have the text as it was originally, so it jumps around. I seem to recall a way of doing it so I don't have to manually click on every frame and move the text.

How do I fix this?

help to get this colouring

huddy4chris — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 01:19:39 GMT

hello guys.

so, I came across this wonderfully coloured gif on tumblr:

(made by http://frivolouswhim.tumblr.com)

and it amazed me, seeing that the original colours of it were these:

and

I tried a bit on my own, mostly on my video making program (which I know works differently than photoshop in the colouring matters, yet I tried it anyway) but no luck at all. So could anyone help me with how I could achieve this colouring? I would love to get it both in photoshop CS5 and in Sony Vegas Pro 9 (for any future videos). Of course, since this is a photo editing community, the vidder's part of my question is only added as a bonus, just in case someone could guide me for both programs. If not, I would be extremely happy to just get this result in photoshop ;)

Working with an image's existing colors

dark_x_huntress — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 03:39:38 GMT

Program I use: Photoshop CS5

I am so out of touch with the latest icon making techniques but one thing I’d definitely like to learn is how to work WITH a screen capture’s original coloring instead of against it. I always want to change orange looking caps to look more natural by adding blues and such and they come out looking faded and gross. Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about:

This (made by geckoholic):

From this:

Moved Text

havers — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 12:49:47 GMT

Lately I saw many artwork using text which was a little moved within one word. Here you can see an example.

Can someone explain how to make this? I use PS CS5.