Okay, I haven't written an art tutorial before. Mostly because I don't have a set system for making art, I just do whatever feels right, and somehow it ends up pretty.

So I figured I'd warm up with an icon tutorial. (For PS 7)

And I wrote this yesterday, but after last night's conversation on manips, this is all *very* ironic.

The icon:

<center
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/icon.png">
</center>

<lj-cut>
So, this is actually a tutorial on a)manipping a photo and b)turning it into an icon.

First are the source pictures. Which are <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/spike_original.jpg">here</a> and <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/dawn_original.jpg">here</a>.

I decided to use the Spike picture as the base, because he's going to be in the background. Now, I could've used the Dawn picture as the base, even though it's Spike that's going to be in the background, but then I'd have to cut part of him out to fit around her. That never looks quite right, no matter how careful you are when you cut.

So, the Spike picture. It's a) too dark and b) it's grainy

I like to get the picture all smooth and such before I mess with lighting/color, so...

- I go to Filter > Blur > Smart Blur.
- I like to play with the sliders until it looks like something I can touch up with the Smudge Tool. In this case, I have Radius: 0.6, Threshold: 25.0, Quality: Low, Mode: Normal.
- That gives me <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/smartblur_spike.jpg">this</a>.

Smart Blur smoothes a lot of stuff out, but I like to smooth the rough edges with the Smudge Tool. I also like to use it to smooth out skin imperfections and if you're careful, it makes a nice effect if you run it along folds of clothes. The trick is using a light hand, because if you get too carried away, everything ends up distorted or blurry, which isn't good. Also? Go *with* the grain. Don't do circles.

After the smudge tool, I get <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/smudge_spike.jpg">this</a>.

Now to fix the colors/lightness. I favor a desaturated look, with high contrast.

To get this look:

- Duplicate the layer.
- Go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.
- Now I've got a nice greyscale layer. But it's got a *lot* of grey in all the important places, like his face. So I need to up the Contrast/Brightness.
- So I go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast, and play with the sliders until his face is suitably white. For me, it was Brightness: +14, Contrast: +64
- And then I set the blend mode on the greyscale layer to Soft Light, Opacity: 100%, which gives me <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/greyscale_spike.jpg">this</a>.

Sometimes after this step I go back with the smudge tool to catch any stray areas that weren't as visible before. With this particular picture, I'm not going to bother, because there aren't any major problem areas that won't be corrected when I resize it to make the icon.

Now for Dawn.

I'm going to do the same thing to her picture. So, I'll save you all and not repeat myself.:P

But just for reference's sake, and to check and see if you've got a feel for it, here's the values for each step, and what the result should look like.

- Smartblur/Smudge, etc: This particular photo was huuuge, and high quality. So I resized it a bit to get the picture that I'm working with. So there's really no need to blur or smudge.
- Brightness/Contrast on the greyscale layer: Brightness:0, Contrast: +35
- Greyscale layer blended at 100% on Soft Light, to give me <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/greyscale_dawn.jpg">this</a>.

Now it's time to get the two pictures blended together. First, and most importantly, for a manip, you need to check two things: size and color.

Manips with out of proportion people make me cry. Sob, even. It's a hard thing to judge, though. What I do, if I'm having difficulty, is to copy the picture that's going to be on top, and paste it as a new layer, 50% transparency, on top of the picture that's going to be in the foreground. I match up the faces, and try to get them about the same size, and use that as a reference for resizing.

Obviously, since they've both got their heads turned differently, it's going to be impossible to get an exact match. Also? The girl in a manip should is typically smaller. So I'll try to get the faces matched up in size, then make the girl photo a bit smaller. If I'm doing a manip of two guys, obviously you're going to want them to be closer in size.

With these two pictures, Dawn looks to be fairly proportionate to Spike. So I'm not going to resize her.

However, I need to change the canvas size on Spike, because there's not enough room for where I want to put Dawn (on his left side, my right).

I did this by first setting the background color to #F7F9F9 (so the new blank space will match up even though it's going to be covered), with an Image > Canvas Size, Anchor to the left, and set the new width for 400 pixels.

I then copied the merged layers of the Dawn picture, and pasted them as a new layer over the Spike picture.

And of course, that picture covers everything:P

To fix that, I went ahead and hacked away big bits of the Dawn layer that I didn't need. I liked the dark right-hand side of the layer, so I kept that to play with later. All I really cut away was the bit on the left, fairly close to her arm, like <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/firstcut_dawn.jpg">so</a>.

Now's the tricky part, cutting exactly around the left side of the Dawn layer to get rid of the rest of that background. There are several ways to do this, and it just depends on what you're comfortable with.

Me? I'm a control freak, so I do it all by hand. For this particular picture,

- Zoom in at 400%, then just drag the free selection tool around Dawn's left side, cutting away the background. Don't use any feathering.
- The ends are going to look <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/secondcut_dawn.jpg">a bit raggedy</a>. Not overly much, if you
cut right. Just fix them up with the Smudge Tool, and it should look <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/smudge_dawn.jpg">fine</a>.

Now for finishing up the mapipulation part of this. I was still interested in using that background on the Dawn layer, and I wanted her to be closer to Spike. So, I moved that layer on over like <a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/move_dawn.jpg">this</a>.

And then there's that nasty white gap. To fix it, I pulled a dark brown/black color from the Dawn layer, selected that white area, and filled it in with the color. (#020202)

And yeah, it looks like it's done, but I loved the texture on the far right. So I used the healing brush at its default settings, and paint some of that texture above Dawn's head.

And that's pretty much it for the manip portion of this tutorial.

<center>
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/finished_manip.jpg">
</center>

Now for cropping. What I do is just create a fixed aspect ratio selection(1:1), and move it around on the picture, until I see something interesting.

This is what I came up with for this particular icon:
<center>
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/cropped.jpg">
</center>

I like things off-center, usually to leave room for text. Also, I don't like random bits of negative space everywhere. Now, with Spike, I usually crop off the side of his head. But because of the direction his face is pointing, if I'd cropped closer to the side of his face, his head would look really tiny compared to Dawn's. So by leaving in his ear, and the whole left side of his face, it balances them out. I would've liked to also keep in the left side of his collar, because I liked the lines it created, but I'd have lost too much space on the right side.

And now looking at the picture, I'm realizing that leaving the white space around Spike's head might not be a good idea when I start messing around with the colors. So before I resize, I need to:

- Make a copy of the merged layers, paste it as a new layer.
- Create a new layer underneath the the copy of the merged layers, filling it with black.
- Cut out the white around Spike's head.

And yeah, okay, some of his hair and the right side of his face is white because of the light reflecting. Cut it off. He'll never miss it, promise. Leave a little bit, so he doesn't like a mutant, and because a little shine is okay and natural looking. I also played with the lines of Dawn's hair a bit, to make it look all pretty.:P

Which gave me this:
<center>
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/finished_manip.jpg">
</center>

And then I made a copy of the merged layers, pasted it as a new layer, and resized to 100 pixels.

Now for colors... I'll try a billion different things until something just clicks. For this icon, I loved the pink and yellow in Dawn's shirt. So I used those colors in a two tone gradient to tint the icon. (#6B2F38 and #E5C185, respectively)

I created a new layer just for the gradient, painted it in, yellow in the bottom-left, pink in the top-right. I then set the layer blend mode to Screen at 100%.

<center>
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/gradient_screen.jpg">
</center>

I liked this. But I like my contrast. There's a couple different ways to play with the contrast, but I love my greyscale layers.

So I duplicated the merged layer, made it the top layer, and did a quick Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

I then played with the Brightness/Contrast. (Brightness: 0 Contrast: +30)

Sound familiar?:P

I then changed the blend mode on the greyscale layer to Soft Light at 100%.

This makes the icon look like crap.

<center>
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/crap.jpg">
</center>

Soooo... After playing around with the blend modes of the gradient layer and the greyscale layer, I decided to leave the greyscale layer at Soft Light at 100%, and change the blend mode on the gradient layer to Hard Light.

<center>
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/hardlight.jpg">
</center>

I really liked this look, but the black just kills it. So, it's time to make a new layer, and pull out the paintbrushes.

I set the new layer to screen, so the color I add will show up nice and good against the black. And I used my favorite grungy brush to add just a little bit of texture and color, and using the pink color from before, I got this:

<center>
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/brush.jpg">
</center>

I didn't like the way it made Spike and Dawn look gritty though, so I use the smudge tool to smooth over the bit of the layer that covers them. I *didn't* erase it though, because otherwise the colors wouldn't match up all the way across the icon.

<center>
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/brush2.jpg">
</center>

I didn't like having just the pink on the black though, so I made another new layer, and did the same thing, same brush, but using the yellow color this time.

I don't like the way it looked with the blend mode on Screen, so I switched the yellow layer over to Soft Light at 100%.

<center>
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/yellowpink.jpg">
</center>

I liked the colors, liked the texture, but there's a spot up in the right-hand corner that looks kind of bare. I fixed this by selecting the pinky yellow black bit on the right side and making a copy of the merged layers. I pasted it as a new layer, then moved it over to the area I wanted fixed, and blended it in by erasing around the edges.

Yes, I could use the healing brush, but I like doing it this way instead. *shrugs*

<center>
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/yellowpink2.jpg">
</center>

And now it's time for a border, which isn't one of my brushes, and I did the border in two layers, using the pink color again. One is just a flat layer color, no blend mode, 100% opacity, and the layer on top is set to Multiply, at 100%.

And that's it.:)

<center>
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/Mirax/tutorials/icon/icon.png">
</center>

Also, hoping that this isn't news to anyone... But save your icon as a PNG file. Please. For the love of puppies and all that is good.