tutorials: lost

[longerthanwedo.livejournal.com]

requested by midnightisclose

This is a fairly simple icon, with only a couple coloring layers and a couple textures, because Lost caps are really easy to work with in terms of colors and having wonderful light already (for the most part). This is the base:



The basic coloring steps are almost always the same: duplicate the base layer (ctrl+j) and change the blending mode from “normal” to “screen”, then duplicate that and change it from “screen” to “soft light”, leaving all the layers at 100% opacity. This increases both the contrast and the brightness of the cap:



Next is one of my favorite tools, the gradient map (image > adjustments > gradient map). Set the gradient map layer to “soft light” before even choosing the colors, because otherwise it’s hard to see how the colors will work. For this icon, I used a gradient going from #9d1c32 to #cfd54c , which adds yellows to the highlights and accentuates the reds in the shadows:



I like the colors that are present in the icon, but I want even more vibrancy, especially in the yellow, so I add a vibrance layer (image > adjustments > vibrance) and slide the vibrance bar all the way to 100, and saturation to +3:



Next are the textures. The first one is this texture by eamesie:



Paste that over the top and set it to screen. Left alone, it looks like this:



Which isn’t great, because, well, you can’t see Kate anymore. So, using the free transform tool stretch the texture horizontally to the right and move it down so that it looks like this, and only covers the bottom of the icon:



The last step is a grungy texture to lighten the shadows even more, and add some, well, texture to them. Any dark, black and white grunge or scratch texture will work for this step, but I used this one:



Set to “lighten” over all the other layers. Which looks like this:



And that’s the finished icon!


requested by rocketgirl2

Duplicate the base twice, one layer set to "screen" and one to "soft light", both at 100% opacity:



Next is a vibrance layer just to put some extra color in the cap. Vibrance on 100:



The first texture I used in this icon is actually the same one as in the Kate icon, just used differently. The first time, paste it over everything, set it to "screen", and invert it (ctrl+i), so that the white and black is reversed. Then erase the parts in the lower right hand corner that washes out the original image:



Now paste it again, invert it, and erase the light parts in the right hand corner, but this time flip the layer horizontally and then vertically (edit > transform > flip horizontally/vertically). This layer is also on "screen". Now it looks like this:



Next is this texture:



Set to "multiply" at 100%, but erasing the parts of the texture that go over Alex's face, and a bit of the dark green strip in the top right corner, so that the texture blends in with the background of the image:



Then I add this texture:



And set it to "multiply" at 26% opacity, to give more green and more unity to the image:



Paste that texture again, still at 26% opacity, but this time set it to "soft light" to make everything a bit brighter and more cohesive:



More vibrance! Another vibrance layer at 100:



The last step is a brightness/contrast layer, with brightness at +10 and contrast at +16, just to balance everything out a little more:



And that's it!