brokenrecord

Tutorial requested for this icon:

This icon was made using PSP8, but I think the steps are probably translatable to other programs.

1. Started with this screencap. Cropped it to my liking and resized it to 100x100.

2. Duplicated the base and set it to screen (opacity=100).

3. Created a new layer and filled it with a light blue gradient. Set the layer to burn at an opacity of 70.

4. Created a new layer and filled it with a light brown gradient. Set the layer to overlay at an opacity of 60.

5. Created a new layer and filled it with a light brownish/greenish/grayish color. Set the layer to burn at an opacity of 30.

6. Created a new adjustment layer for the color balance (layers > adjustment layers > color balance). Preserve luminance should be checked. (If it's unchecked, in this case at least, it'll just make the icon brighter.) Under midtones, set cyan/red at 79, magenta/green at 0, and yellow/blue at 74. Under shadows, set cyan/red to 17, magenta/green to 11, and yellow/blue to 19.

After that, all there's left to do is add any text you want, and you end up with this:

Just a note, please do not use this tutorial step by step, all the opacities and layer settings and such for every screencap, because it just won't work. It really depends on the screencap you use. If the screencap was lighter, you might not need to set a duplicated layer to screen, or if it was darker, you might need more screened layers. This screencap was very green, so I had to use the color balance adjustment layer to make it more red/blue. But, if your screencap was very reddish or blueish, then you probably wouldn't use the adjustment layer quite like that. For example, using this screencap and these exact same steps, down to every last detail, I came up with this icon:

Not nearly as nice, in my opinion. So play around with opacities and layer settings and such.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

expatiates.livejournal.com

that was actually really helpful. i'm kind of clueless about how to use layers for the most part. :(

stupid question: how do you know to use, like, a blue gradient? or a light brown? do you just randomly guess and see what happens? because, like...i have no idea, 9 times out of 10, what anything's going to look like until i do it.

http://users.livejournal.com/brokenrecord__/

Well, for me it just kind of comes from messing around with different gradients at different settings. So yeah, at first it is kind of like randomly guessing and seeing what happens. And now that I've done that, I know what a light blue gradient at burn and a light brown gradient at overlay do. I've used those two layers a lot, so I know just about what the icon will look like if I use them. Then I'll try other gradients and see if they make the icon look any better, or if they only make it look worse.

That's also kind of why the color adjustment layer is really nice. It's a lot easier to mess around with the colors. I think you can also do stuff like that with curves, but I generally don't use them because they kind of confuse me.

Anyways, I'm glad it helped! :)

hee, just shows how oblivious i am -- i have no idea what curves are! hell, i had no idea that there was such a thing as an adjustment layer until i read this tutorial! i always just did whatever adjustments on my background layer. i guess i need to read more tutorials!

anyway, thank you! :D