Tutorial : Icon cut-outs

[timetobegin]

to



I love cutting people out of backgrounds, and it's pretty simple. Lots of people use masking, and other various ways, but i honestly just duplicate it, and then use the eraser brush or the paint brush.

Here is this icon of Gwen and how i did it.

STEP ONE
To prepare my screencap, i add x2 screen layers, a vibrance layer and a selective colour layer (to increase the blacks) I'd likely do more colouring later, but it helps to just know what sort of colours you are dealing with. I then stamp it, which is a new layer that is a "stamp" or merge of all the previous layers. If you don't stamp (ctrl+shift+alt+e) you can merge visible layers and use that. I duplicate that layer so i can use it. Sometimes I sharpen at this point to make the edges easier to see


Now I try to be careful when i'm painting around my subject, in this case Gwen but i still find that cutouts usually look a little off. I try to use the smallest brush i can, and make sure its on hard edge. Once i've done that you'll get your basic cutout, which occasionally will be the nearly the finished icon! But then I add lots of other stuff to help subdue the cutout and help it blend into the background a little more. These are usually; lighting layers, softlight layers and textures. In this case i did a bit of everything :)

Firstly I used this texture by raiindust on screen to make the background a little bit more blendy (technical term obviously) and also make the colour pop a bit more. You can see particularly around the left side of her hair that it's starting to blend in more and look more natural.


Next, I create a new layer and draw a soft line around gwen - quite big. I then blur that layer (Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur) at 52% so that the background blends into the hair. I'm still not happy with how the right of her hair, but the left is starting to look pretty good.


Now it's time to find some textures that might help this icon. I find that grungy textures and patterns work really well on covering up awkward looking cutouts. I find this flower pattern texture (not sure where i got it from) and think it will work really well with both Gwen and the icon. So i paste it on as a new layer and set that layer to screen. But obviously it covers her face, so i take an eraser to it and edit out the parts covering her up. I end up playing around with it so that it's rotated and size the way i like it, an the texture is over that part of hair i'm not fond of.


Finally, i add a few white blobs to a black layer, and set to screen to add some "glow" and sharpen it again before resizing and hey presto:



There is a lot going on in this post, but if you have any questions, Feel free to ask!
You can copy and replicate everything i did here if you like. I don't mind :)
PSD

Comments

[summerstorm]

I always feel like I suck at this so it's great to see this step by step and have you talk about how you're not always thrilled with the initial cutout and add stuff to mitigate the "bad" stuff because I always feel like I'm cheating a bit when I do that. Not that I've done it much, I'm real lazy. But I appreciate this tutorial. :)

[timetobegin]

I loveeee cutouts but yes, can be seriously awkward sometimes. I think the covering up part usually adds to it though!

[meridian_rose]

Thank you, I've done a lot of these things but not all of them and not in this way so I've picked up some tips to try out :D

[timetobegin]

yay!! i hope it is useful

[emotional_support_demon]

I have literally never done one of these this way. I'll have to try it. :)

[timetobegin]

i hope it's helpful!

[emotional_support_demon]

OMG, I just tried a whole batch using the paint technique instead of literal cutting, and it was so much easier and better looking! THANK YOU!

[timetobegin]

:) yay!