brianslave68 (brianslave68) wrote in graphics_r_us, @ 2009-06-04 09:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | basics, tutorial |
A basic tutorial
This is in response to suze_y's post over here. I couldn't respond as a comment to that post because this was way beyond the character limit of a comment!
Here are the steps I generally use on most icons. I didn't really plan on making a tutorial but I think that's what this turned into! This is done in Gimp and I have no idea if everything is called the same thing in Photoshop.
The original screen cap:
The cap cropped & re-sized. I don't re-size in increments like others. I never really saw a problem with re-sizing down to 100x100 immediately after the crop.
Always do your work on a new layer. If you mess up or don't like the results you can always delete that layer and start again. In the layers box there's a button to make a duplicate copy of the base image. Click on that and now you have a second copy of your image.
First thing I do is make a 'screen' copy of the image to brighten, that's assuming it's too dark. I rarely have a cap that doesn't need to be brightened up. Sometimes the cap will need two screen layers. Play around with the opacity until it looks right.
This is one screened layer at 100% opacity:
This part is in my opinion the most important step in making icons clear. I discovered this purely by accident and it made a world of difference in my icons. Unsharp mask! filters/enhance/unsharp mask with the following settings: radius @ 5.0, amount @ 0.50, threshold @ 0. This is the default setting and it works beautifully for a good portion of my icons. The only setting I ever change is the 'amount'. I never go higher than 0.50 but do sometimes need to lower that number depending on the image.
This is my unsharp mask layer at 100% opacity:
At this point I think Justin looks a bit too yellow for my liking so I do another layer and 'desaturate' it @ -20.
Now I want to add a little bit of color back in so I make a new layer, not a copy of the image layer. In the layer box there's a button that looks like a blank piece of paper. Click on that and you have a new blank layer. One of my favorite colors to use is 'a15b07'. It's a golden brown that adds lovely color to skin tones. Drag and drop that color into the new blank layer, change the mode to overlay and set the opacity to 12%. If you leave it at 100% opacity it looks horrendous. Always remember to play around with opacity levels.
The next thing I do is blur the skin a bit so it doesn't have any pixeled look to it. In the 'toolbox' click on the button that looks like a rain drop. That's the blur/sharpen tool. I usually have my blur rate set to 60%. You can find that setting in the toolbox as well. Using a round brush go over the skin to smooth out the rough spots. For this particular image don't go over Justin's cheek folds too much, it'll make him look unnatural.
The next thing I do is sharpen. Go to filters/enhance/sharpen and set the sharpness to 25. Be careful not to oversharpen. I usually use somewhere between 15 - 30 and never go over 40.
The very last thing I've done is gotten rid of the white from Brian's leather jacket. In the toolbox there's a button that looks like a hand with the index finger pointing out. That's the smudge tool. Click on that and set the rate to 100%. Using a round brush start on the black part of his jacket and take the brush across the white parts. It magically disappears. :D
When you're done with all of your layers do image/flatten image and you now have one layer. Save the image as a PNG file, it's much better quality than a JPG file. If you're in the middle of an icon and have a bunch of layers and need to stop just save your image as an XCF file. (PSD for Photoshop users) Next time you open it all of your lovely layers will still be intact.
I hope you found this useful!