Tutorial 7: Elizabeth Mitchell Icon

[applepips]

The lovely ohcaptain requested a tutorial of this Elizabeth Mitchell icon for the Ask the Maker activity at icon_talk.

I made this icon for the7days round where you had to make a set of the people you’d invite to an orgy.

This is the orginal cap. I found it on an Elizabeth Mitchell fansite. Fansites are usually a good place to get nice photoshoots of celebrities.

There was no magical thought process behind choosing this cap. I chose it cause it was pretty. I’m shallow like that. I'm showing the entire process on a 100x100 canvas.

My choice of cropping is not unexpected. I stick to a simple centre crop like always. :D

It’s a fairly warm-toned cap and I knew that if I kept the background colour as it was, the icon would become too orange.

So first things first, I swapped out the background for a colour fill layer. I select the outline of here, reversed my selection and filled in selection with a dull blue. I then made sure to mask away any pesky fly away hairs.

This was the colour I chose. #748798

And this is how the icon looks presently.

The colour looks a little dull but that’s intentional. There’s this fantastic tutorial by petite_tomate where she says that, when you do stuff like this, change the back ground and all that is, start with a dull colour, so that you can slowly build-up the intensity of it. I thought that was a really neat way to colour your icon without making it look overblown. You can find the tutorial here!

Now the actual colouring process begins. First things first, we’ve got to brighten this up a little. I used a Curves layer to brighten the cap.

I only brightened it in the RGB channel. The settings for the layer are:

Input: 95 ; Output : 138

Use your own judgement when deciding how much you want to brighten your icon. And even if you pull the point too ahead on your Curves graph, you can always mess with the opacity of the layer or use a layer mask!

Alternatively, if you don’t want to use a Curves layer, you can use a Brightness/Contrast layer. In case of a Brightness/Contrast layer, use focus on the Brightness slider, not the Contrast. We don’t want to add any Contrast, not as yet.

This is how the icon looks right now.

It’s a little washed out, but it’s also perfect for adding more colour. And that’s what we are going to do next, add some colour to the icon using a Vibrance layer.

I push the Vibrance all the way up to +100 and increase the Saturation to +100.

The is how icon looks like now.

Yes, Ms. Mitchell does look a little jaundiced but I do have a reason behind it. I wanted her hair to ‘pop’ against the blue background,
which is why I added this Vibrance layer. As you can see now, her hair looks nice and golden.

If your program does not have Vibrance, use a Color Balance layer and play around with the Cyan and Yellow sliders. Adjusting those two sliders and using a layer mask to mask away any bits you do not want will get you the same result.

The next thing I’m going to do is…make her look less yellow, especially on her face and skin.

I used a Selective Layer to do this. I only focused on the Red channel.

My values were:

This is how the icon looks now. The change is very minimal. But you can see pink in her face as opposed to yellow.

Always build your colour in increments you guys. If you try to pile everything on at once, the end result is going to be a hot mess.

Looking at the icon now, I want to work on the background next and make it a bit more blue. So I use another Selective Layer. This time I focus on the Neutrals channel.

My values were:

The icon now looks like this. And I like how it looks. The colouring that is.  But I still want to bump up the saturation a little more.

So I now add a Vibrance layer.

My values were:

Vibrance: 85
Saturation : 21

This increases the blue of the background and the yellow tones of her hair.  But it also adds some yellow to her face, which I mask away.

But I feel like the masking has not reduced the yellow enough. I want her face and skin to be a little more pink, so that it contrasts better with the yellow.

So I add one more Selective Colouring layer. I only meddle with the Neutrals channel. These are my values:

And this is how the icon looks like now.

I like how the icon looks at this point and I don’t want to mess with the colouring anymore. I now notice that her hair has become jagged, on the right side and that the background looks too flat.

First things first, lettuce fix those pixels. Jagged pixels are pesky and annoying.

I copymerge all the layers and paste them as a new on. And on this layer, I use the blur tool at 3px to go over her hair carefully and smooth away the jagged pixels.

Then I  select all the layers once more, copy all of them and paste them as a new layer. On this layer, I use the Gaussian Blur filter. If I remember rightly, the radius was 3 or 4. And I set that layer to Softlight at 50%. I used a low setting because I wanted to blur the icon just enough to create a soft glow.

The icon now looks like this.

Now lettuce focus on the lighting.

My favourite way to do lighting is to slap on a b&w gradient layer. They are great for giving an icon light/shadow without overwhelming them! Plus, the also increase the contrast without reducing the icon’s quality.

Here is how the icon looks with the b&w gradient layer that has been set to Softlight at 100%.

You could technically stop here and call it a day, but since I want to add a little more light to the top left corner, I do that. I use this texture by vetica and set it on Screen at 100%. I also blur the texture a little to make the lighting smoother.

The icon now looks like this.

+ =

Am I happy as yet? No, I now want to sharpen it a little. Especially the edges, to give the icon a little definition.

I use the High Pass filter at 0.9 radius and set that layer to Softlight. The icon now looks like this.

I can’t quit with the lighting just at yet, so I duplicate the texture by vetica once more, pull that layer on top and set it to Screen at 50%. Now I’m finally happy with the result and voila, we have an icon!

I hope you found this tutorial useful ohcaptain! ♥

Comments

[ohcaptain.livejournal.com]

ahhh omg you made it! and this whole thing is so clear and easy to follow, i am so grateful :) thank you for taking the time to make this, i really appreciate it.

[applepips]

no problem at all! it was my pleasure. :)

[tinny]

Niice! Thank you!

[applepips]

Your welcome! :)