Small Batch Icons: 5 icons on a theme

PSD Fest! - Isaac from TW

Sat, 14 Sep 2013 16:42:49 GMT

Posted by: laisserais

I'm so glad so many of you have chosen to play along! It's been a lot of fun getting to see your styles. I feel like icons don't get enough love as a fannish production. They can take a lot of effort and thought. Y'all should be celebrated more.

Before I post mine, I wanted to share a couple of more PS tutorials that I have found helpful:

-->Opacity vs. Fill

-->Three great uses for High Pass Filter

-->Making Selections with the Pen Tool

Ok, for my first one, I decided to go with this one [negative space yay!]:

I wish I'd saved the layer where I cut Isaac and Kali out. It was my first time using the pen tool. Using the pen tool can be tricky, but it gives much better results than the lasso.

I started with a solid color fill:

#61606b

Then I put a gradient fill over it. I started out doing various things, like setting it to color burn, etc, but decided to set it to screen, ultimately. It's at 90 degrees, 100% fill.

I pasted in the cut out layer with Kali and Isaac, and fiddled with size in relation to the overall square.

I used guides to find the center, and then moved them about quite a bit until they 'felt' centered, even though they're technically not. The way she's leaning back a bit made it feel lopsided at true center.

The reason I ended up going with the blue gradient is because once I'd pasted the people in, the pink [set on color burn, the blue was pink] stood out too much. I felt like the blue complemented them both and helped minimize any contrastyness left over from the pen tool at the edges.

Then I did the following in clipping masks, tethered to just the people layer, not affecting the background:

Did a gamma layer, set to 1.16. This is a trick I picked up for SPN caps, which are dark. Gamma and Exposure can help bring up the light values without flattening or blowing out everything. It's subtler, I find. And there's better control than with a copy-paste-screen layer.

Next was a color balance layer, where I made the shadows greener, the midtones bluer and the highlights more yellow. I find a good trick for clearing up tiny detail is to fake it with cyans and whites. Yellow and magenta warms images up, sure, but they also give the impression of blurriness sometimes. I just nudged each one by +/- ~10.

Next is a saturation layer. I boosted the master color levels and darkened it. +13 saturation/-5 lightness. This warmed it up a little and helped with the edges of the image. Which now that I'm looking at it on my new monitor, the edges look way too contrasty. Sigh.

Still in clipping mask, I boosted brightness and contrast a teensy bit.

+5/+5 for each.

Again, I wish I'd learned the trick of copying my text layers before I rasterized them sooner. I don't have details on how this looked to start with. Pretty sure it's helvetica? Then stretched with somewhere around +100 kerning points between the letters. I set it to color burn, because I like the subtle look, then I played around with the text color til it looked just a shade or two off the background shade.

I know in TW 'omega' doesn't mean necessarily mean the lowest wolf in the pack, but it tickles me to think of Isaac as a traditional omega. And I dunno, this scene, taken out of context, could be Kali giving him the bad news: he's going to be the whole pack's bitch for the rest of time.

Voila!

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Five Icon Tutorials [prep for Show Us Your Psds]

Fri, 06 Sep 2013 20:59:45 GMT

Posted by: laisserais

Hey y'all!

Next weekend is our psd exchange fest! In preparation for that, I thought I'd share some icon tutorials that were particularly cool and helpful.

I came across all of these by way of icon_talk at LJ.

*A Guide to Text by absolutelybatty

*A Guide to Using Textures by bittergraced

*How to Use Sharpening by naginis

*Use of Negative Space by novindalf

*Tips for Using Less Than Ideal Caps by wickdshy

And a heads up: After this fest is over, the next one will be an icon praise post, so start thinking about icons you really admire. We're gonna be spreading the love at the end of September!

We're hosting a PSD exchange over at smallbatchicons.
Come play with us!.

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Request Fest resources

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 11:41:52 GMT

Posted by: goodbyebird

Figured I'd make a list of sites to find screencaps. And here on dreamwidth, there's always capshare, plus screencappednet (various tv series and movies)

tv/movies.
Home of the Nutty
Bones, Gossip Girl, Lost, Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, Smallville, Haven, Fringe, Glee, Bones, How I Met Your Mother, movies.

midnight_road
Sleepy Hollow, SPN, Hawaii Five-0, Suits, Justified, Revolution, Teen Wolf, Almost Human, White Collar, various movies.

Grande Caps
Many tv series, movies, and movie trailers.

Fandom Forever (have to register an account)
A whole lot of TV shows, f.exa. Continuum, Fargo, Longmire, Salem, Penny Dreadful, Nurse Jackie, Homeland, Once Upon A Time, The Good Wife, Pretty Little Liars, Carnivàle, Community, Enlisted, Breaking Bad, Alias, Buffy, Angel, Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica, Cleopatra 2525, Person of Interest, Orange Is The New Black, The Americans, The Musketeers, From Dusk Till Dawn, Reign, Elementary, Nashville, Arrow, Peaky Blinders, Bates Motel, Masters of Sex, The Fosters, Suits, Lost Girl, The Walking Dead, Girls, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. Various movies.

Reality's End
Leverage, NCI:LA, Torchwood.

Screencap Paradise
Buffy, Angel, Supernatural, Charmed, Dead Like Me, Roswell, Grey's Anatomy, The O.C., Tru Calling, Veronica Mars, movies.

Striped Wall
Alias, Arrested Development, Dead like Me, Drive, ER, Heroes, Pushing Daisies, Roswell, Torchwood, movies.

Fishsticktheatre
Community, Pillars of Earth, Parks and recreation, Carnivàle, Being Human, Deadwood, Torchwood, movies.

Oxoniensis Screencaps
Generation Kill, Entourage, Friday Night Lights, Northern Exposure, Psych, Smallville, Sports Night, Supernatural, Stargate Atlantis, Torchwood, The West Wing, Young Americans.

Thirdhex
Battlestar Galactica, Angel, Big Love, Buffy, Dexter, Dollhouse, Eureka, Flight of the Concords, Fringe, Futurama, Heroes, Supernatural, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, True Blood, movies.

Leave Me The White
Moonlighting, Northern Exposure, The Wire, Absolutely Fabulous, Alias, Ally McBeal, Angel, Arrested Development, Battlestar galactica, Being Erica, Better Off Ted, Big Bang theory, Black Books, The Black Donnellys, Bones, Buffy, Coupling, The Daily Show, Dead Like Me, Dexter, Dr Who, ER, Eureka, Firefly, Friends, Gilmore Girls, Green Wing, Life, Life on Mars, the Middleman, My Name Is Earl, The Office, ReGenesis, Rome, Scrubs, That 70s Show, Ugly Betty, The West Wing, Wonderfalls, X-Files, movies.

In A Dream Caps
30 Rock, Archer, Ashes To Ashes, being Human, Better off Ted, Blood Ties, Bored to Death, Burn Notice, Californication, Castle, Chuck, Community, Criminal Minds, Dexter, dark Angel, Dr Who, Eureka, Farscape, Flashforward, Friends, Fringe, Gilmore Girls, Glee, Life on Mars, Lost, One Tree Hill, Prison Break, Pushing Daisies, Robin Hood, Skins, Southland, Big Bang Theory, The Dresden Files, True Blood, Veronica Mars, White Collar, movies.

Hollywood Fanatic
Alias, Angel, Babylon 5, BSG, Dr Who, Flashforward, Fringe, heroes, Legend of the Seeker, Lost, Robin Hood, Sanctuary, Smallville, Spartacus: B&S, Star Trek(several), Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG1, Strike Back, SPN, Sarah Connor Chronicles, True Blood, Xena, movies.

Burgundy Shoes
10 Things I hate About You, 24, Archer, Being Human, Bones, The Boondocks, Closer, Cold Case, Damages, Dark Blue, Dr Who, The Deep End, Drop Dead Diva, Entourage, Eureka, Flash Forward, Fringe, The Good Wife, Hawthorne, House, Justified, Human target, Hung, Law & Order UK, Leverage, Lost, Mad Men, Melrose Place, Merlin, No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Nurse jackie, The Pacific, Philanthropist, Private Practice, Psych, Raising The Bar, Southland, Treme, Ugly Betty, V, Weeds, The Wire. Movies.

Disparue
TV and movies.

Rawr Caps
Too many to list, plus movies.

DJ Capslock
Too many to list. Also movies and music videos.

Friday Night Lights gallery
Farscape Caps
Stargate Caps
Sanctuary Caps
V Fans Gallery
X-Files DVD screencaptures
Disney caps
Teen Wolf caps by wolfwrecked/cody

***

stock.
stock.exchng
Getty Images
ffffound!
We Heart It
Google image search is your friend ;)

***

celebs/fashion.
Hires Hotties
Hires Hunks
Foto Decadent

Streaming apps will usually block screengrabbing what you're watching, but streaming through the browser you can easily bypass that. Not the most convenient way to acquire screengrabs, but it works in a pinch.

A great tutorial on Self-capping with VLC media player by warrior_gypsy, and capping HD (and DVD) with VirtualDub by intothisshadow, so dive into your DVDs if you need to. On my Mac I watch in VLC and just press CTRL+ALT+S when something interesting happens; that way you don't have to scan through a multitude of caps like with auto-capping.

Feel free to suggest your own resources in the comments :)

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