Scott & Bailey: Janet and Rachel

2014-06-06T08:31:06Z

Posted by: tree

(does one icon even constitute a 'batch'? sadface. sorry chaila.)

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Top of the Lake: Robin Griffin

2014-06-02T07:42:59Z

Posted by: tree

for chaila

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wonder woman

2014-05-31T09:46:42Z

Posted by: tree

request fill for chaila

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miss fisher's murder mysteries

2014-05-21T07:12:05Z

Posted by: tree

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my puny contribution to the .psd exchange

2013-09-15T01:49:43Z

Posted by: tree

I feel like I should begin with the caveat that I honestly have no idea what the hell I'm doing making icons, but every now and then something turns out okay.

This one is from last year, after I first learned the ways of duplicating layers and setting them to screen. Talk about your revelation! Also, up until a few weeks ago I was using Photoshop CS (yeah, that's right, oldskool with no numbers) so there's none of that vibrance or whatnot that the young whippersnappers use these days.

➽

I started with this dark, red mess from a Firefly screencap:

I duplicated my background and set it to screen at 100% opacity, which gave me a less dark, more yellow version:

It's still too dark, so I added a curves layer:

At this point, I finally got what I was after, namely the light shining on the right side of Inara's face. (There seems to be a trend of this sort of thing in my icons. Apparently I am obsessed with light?) Next up: fix the colours. I added a colour balance layer where I messed with everything, most significantly ramping up the blue in the highlights:

To lighten it even more, I added a this texture by colourmayfade

and set it to screen at 80% opacity.

Finally to add some lustre and pinks to her skin I added this texture (unfortunately I don't know who made it):

and set it to overlay at 35% opacity. Thus, an icon:

.psd here

(Note that I did not mention the agonising over whether to use 33% or 35% opacity, or -3 or -5 cyan in the midtones, etc. It took hours. Hours I tell you!)

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Small Batch Icons: 5 icons on a theme

Scott & Bailey: Janet and Rachel

Top of the Lake: Robin Griffin

wonder woman

miss fisher's murder mysteries

my puny contribution to the .psd exchange