Sara (beautyfulevil) wrote in emerald_designs, @ 2007-08-12 23:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | tutorial |
Tutorial: Back Off icon
Made using Photoshop CS2
Should be translatable into PSP
Uses layers and blending modes (no selective coloring)
Going from: to
Start with your picture. I chose the promo picture of Harry on the ground with his wand pointed up in the air. Huge kudo's to The Leaky Cauldron for having hi-res pictures.
I cropped it to 100x100. Feel free to play around with the cropping of the icon. It's all about the look you're going for with the picture.
My base
Copy and paste it into a new document. This makes sure that you're original picture is still in tact.
Duplicate you base either by right clicking in the layers window (on your base layer) and going to duplicate layer. You could also paste the same base onto a new layer. I usually do this to make sure that at all times I have a copy of the base in case I mess up and want to start over.
On a new layer above your base, flood fill the layer with #076070.
Set the blending mode to linear dodge opacity and fill at 100%. You should see an improvement in your icon already.
Create another new layer above your linear dodge'd layer. This time, we're going to use texture by infinite_stars. Paste that texture onto the layer. Change the blending mode to hard light opacity and fill at 100%.
Now we're going to add a border to our icon. Create a new layer on top of everything else you've got. Use your rectangle marquee tool and drag it so that the entire outside of the icon is covered in the little crawling 'ants'. It should look something like:
Go to the edit menu - down to stroke. Remember the color that we used for the flood fill layer? Well, change the color to that color (if it's not already that color). Change your stroke size to two (2) pixels and your location to inside.
The settings should look like this:
This will give you an instant two pixel wide border around your icon. Click OK once you're happy with it and see the results.
On the border layer, change the blending mode to hue. You should get a pale blue border that brightens up the edges of the icon.
You could leave the icon for finished here if you'd like, but I prefer to add some text to mine. This icon screams 'back off' so that's what we're going to add.
You'll find that certain fonts don't look good on icons, sometimes you have to play around with fonts before you find one you like.
For this icon, I chose BigMisterC at 18pt in #076070. simply write back off any way you chose and position it on the icon where you're going to be happy at.
It looked a little plain to me. Didn't really pop like I wanted it to. To fix that, I wanted to give the text a little glow to it.
Go to your layers menu and right click on the text layer. Go to Blending Options (should be the second item on the menu that appears).
The left hand side of the box that appears will have a list of blending styles. Go to the third one that says Outer Glow.
Most of the settings you can play around with for different affects with your outer glow on the text. I've chosen to use the solid color #5adcf4. To select a color, click on the solid square box of color. In the picture, it's the light blue.
Under the quality settings, I usually change the contour of the glow. Click on the little down arrow next to the contour option. YOu'll find a whole bunch of different ones to play around with. For this, I've chosen to use 'half round'.
After you've finished playing with the settings for the glow, click OK and then you're done!
You should have something similar to this (if you've used the same picture as I have).
Congrats! I hope you liked this tutorial. Any questions, comments, concerns, please feel free to address them via email or in comments.