tutorials: large graphics

[longerthanwedo.livejournal.com]

Three different large graphic/icon tutorials.

lucyyh requested a beginner's banner tutorial. This has some basic coloring, blending, and texture use.

I'm going to use two different caps in this banner, the first of which is this, which I crop to 500 pixels wide with the crop tool:



This cap is pretty dark and I know it's going to need a lot of color correction initially, so I take two steps that I usually do at the beginning of any graphic. Duplicate the base layer by selecting it and pressing ctrl+j, then change where the bar at the top of the layer panel says "normal" to "screen". This is a blending mode that lightens every aspect of the image - both the lights and the darks. With the "screen" layer selected press ctrl+j again, and then again, changing only the top one from "screen" to "soft light", which takes the now overly bright image and brings back some darkness and contrast:



Next I add a gradient layer, which you do just by creating a new layer and then clicking on the gradient icon in the tools palette. Make sure the gradient goes from white to black and drag it so that the gradient lies horizontally over your image like this:



Then change the blending mode of the gradient layer from "normal" to "soft light". This gives the image some more depth by making her hands and mouth darker than her eyes and hair:



And that's still not quite right, it's not bright enough and doesn't have enough contrast. So the next layer is a brightness/contrast layer (found in the adjustments panel or under image > adjustments > brightness/contrast). Change the brightness setting to +40 and the contrast to +45. Now it's better:



Now the second image is this as a base:



This one is a lot brighter to start with and doesn't have a unifying color to it, so instead of starting with "screen" and "soft light" layers, I start with another gradient layer, the same as the last one, set to "soft light" over the base so that it looks like this:



Then I decided that I didn't want this image to be in color, so I added a gradient map layer (different than a gradient layer, found under image > adjustments > gradient map) and use a black to white gradient and leave it on "normal". Now the image is black and white:



Now the image is obviously way too dark, so I add a brightness/contrast layer with the brightness all the way up to +123 and no extra contrast setting:



And now it's too bright! Add a new blank layer and change the background color on your color palette to #dddddd, a light gray. Press ctrl+backspace to fill the new layer with that color and change it from "normal" to "multiply", adding a darker shade to the entire image:



Then is another brightness/contrast layer, with brightness at +34 and contrast at -22, which makes it too bright again:



But that's fixed by duplicating (ctrl+j) the light gray "multiply" layer and moving it on top of the brightness/contrast layer:



Now there's just one more gradient layer like the one we used for the second step, set to "soft light" over all the other layers, and that's the second cap done:



Putting them together is really very easy. Take the first cap used (the color one) and with the crop tool still set to 500px width, crop it so that the background extends up above Buffy's forehead and the top of the cap. Make sure your background color is black for this:



Then copy and paste the black and white cap onto the colored one. It will show up in a new layer when you do this, and you can use the move tool to place it so that the bottom of the black and white cap touches the top of the colored one:



Now I just want a simple texture to give a feeling to the entire image and unify it. I chose this large texture:



And paste it over the two images, setting it to "screen". Duplicate the "screen" layer to make the texture more noticable. Now the image has a texture to it, and the top black and white image has almost a purple tone to it:



Now all I want to do is sharpen it a little bit to bring out some edges, especially in the top cap and since Buffy caps tend to be pretty soft. Duplicate all the layers and make a new one by pressing ctrl+shift+e, then go to filter > sharpen > sharpen:



That's a little too sharp, so in the top right corner of the layer palette where it says opacity: 100%, change that number to 43%, making the sharp layer more transparent:



And that's it! You can add text as you like, but I'm not going to for this particular graphic.

Alright, so absolutelybatty asked for a tutorial of this tumblr graphic:



And honestly I don't even have a clue how I made it. So I'm just going to muddle my way through trying to explain it which lolol might not work too well. Samantha, if it's okay with you I'm not even going to TRY to recreate it from scratch because tbh I don't know if I can.

I think I started out with the Rory cap, which was a really, really HQ still and I liked that, so I cropped it down to 500px, and I think it was a pretty normal crop to begin with, showed from where the top one ends to where the bottom one starts (if that makes sense, whatever, it showed all of Rory) and then I colored it.

Wild stab at coloring: a brown to green gradient map on soft light, maybe another soft light layer of the base, probably some brightness/contrast. Then I decided to make it crazy, so I duplicated the Rory cap twice and moved one up so that it cropped out his eyes, and the second duplication I moved down so it showed nothing but his eyes. For the top one I used selective coloring to bring out some pinks, purples, and blues in it as opposed to the reds of the original cap. The bottom one probably had a color balance layer with the shadows pumped up in the red slider.

Um, and then there was the Amy cap, which I originally had as black and white and just with basic screen-soft light coloring steps. That one goes from the right edge of the canvas to over by Rory's left shoulder, and then I duplicated it and moved it to the left so that it would continue all the way across. Umm, and then I probably decided I didn't like the black and white, so I used a gradient map with some sort of blue scheme (darker to lighter, a really light, almost white shade for the light part and something bright for the dark) set to soft light.

And, like, that wasn't crazy enough so my brain went TARDIS TIME and I took the TARDIS cap which was again in black and white and again with just probably a screen and soft light layer to fix the contrast. I made that small and duplicated it, moving one to cover the right side of Amy's face and the other to cover up most of the left side of the cap and the duplicated part.

AND THEN I DECIDED TEXTURES WOULD BE GOOD. I think that the one that bisects Rory's cap and falls on the left side of Amy's is a boxy film texture? Probably by slayground, set to screen and moved to be placed where it is. And then it looks like I added just a white line? Below the boxy texture and making it connect to the other white line. either on normal or screen, I guess it doesn't really matter which. Um, and then there's that weird blue stuff, which is some sort of cloudy texture or just a light blue abstract one. I divided it up into three sections I believe, all set to screen, the first at the top in a strip and with part of it erased to show Rory's face. The second part went behind the TARDIS caps and in front of the Amy ones, but with part of it cut out to let Amy's eye shine through on the right side. The bottom one is like the top, erasing part of it so as not to completely cover up Rory's face. And then over everything there's a grungy, dark texture, in a blue or purple shade, it looks like, which gives that texture most notably to the top Rory cap and gives some blue and purple to the black and white of the TARDIS caps.

WHEW THAT WAS DIFFICULT I'm sorry about that lol but tbh that is one of the few graphics that I just cannot remember and didn't really like that much in the first place.

Which, incidentally, is applicable to the final request as well, which was for this icon:


requested by capelle

Which is fine and everything and I like that icon but the problem is that it came from this graphic:



Which falls into the category of WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING I DON'T REMEMBER. It probably would be easier to explain if it had just started out as an icon, but alas I must make things big and thus difficult. But, um, I will explain the general steps without going into too much detail okay because I'm running out of time for this challenge and also it would be impossible.

Okay, so. Original canvas is 500px by 600px (ish I think IDK), and a lightish gray color.

Then the top cap of young Sam and Dean was the first thing I edited, and I originally made it black and white, using gradient maps and probably just a few screen and soft light layers. Then I duplicated it and screwed with the duplication with red to yellow gradient maps both on multiply and soft light until it was radioactive orange and stuff. Then I decided to cut out the backgrounds of both, just by drawing a rough selection around the figures with the lasso tool feathered 1px, and deleted the backgrounds from both the black and white and the colored caps, and shrunk the black and white one down so that it lay inside the colored one. These go in the middle-ish of the gray canvas.

Then there's the bottom caps, which is the same classic Pilot silhouette duplicated, again one in black and white, but this time the black and white was a gradient map over the blue one, which is just a soft light layer and a bunch of vibrance/saturation for the blues. Move them so that they overlap each other and set one to lighten, so that they run together. Then I merged those two layers together and used the polygonal lasso to delete parts of the edges and make them crooked. I probably should've feathered that selection to match the top but ehh I didn't.

Then the texture in between them I cannot find for the life of me, but it's set to screen and just positioned so that it makes a nice little divider between the sections of the graphics.

The text is in Times New Roman, with "heart" and "far" different shades of yellow from the background of the radioactive cap and blurred with Gaussian blur at 0.3 pixels (my standard blur for text). The text I just rotated and placed so that the ends of the long line would go where Sam and Dean's arms are. The last thing is over all of it this paint texture which is the best thing ever except I don't actually know who made it. But that's set to soft light over the whole thing and probably at a lowish (less than 50%) opacity.

Um and then the icon, well that was also a weird process. Mostly I think I took the bottom half with the silhouette caps and moved it up so that it was closer to the top half and didn't leave so much of the white texture exposed. Then I cropped it so that it was how you see it on the left side, duplicated it, and moved the copy over to the right. Then I stuck a orangey-yellow gradient on top of the first layer set to multiply. I think over the whole thing I put a photo filter on one of the "warming" filters without preserving luminance at a setting probably around 20 or 30. And then over the whole thing is a glowy round paint brush on the left between the two cap, blurred and on a lowish opacity.

MY APOLOGIES FOR THE CRAP EXPLANATIONS ON THOSE LAST TWO ;_;
If only I wasn't too lazy for saving PSDs of everything. If only I didn't make such weird stuff.
Lolol but yeah if you have (inevitable) questions I will try to clarify, but otherwise yay I'm done!

Oh, but one announcement quickly:

wonderous_stuff!
This is a new maker challenge community in which myself and 8 other fabulous makers gather to participate in challenges with the goal of upping our creativity and inspiration. It's great fun, check out the first challenge which has just been posted and watch if you feel so inclined!