Tutorial : Icon Making Basics Part 2

[timetobegin]

PART TWO:
A little about colouring and sharpening to make your icon more exciting! If you need the basics, part 1 is here.


This is the base i'm using: . It's already had screen + soft light layers.

Bright/Light/Depth
Cavet: you'll still have to experiment a lot to try and find things you like! I can help with the tools, but it depends on your taste on what you really want to use!

I use a lot of tools in photoshop, including Variations, Selective Colour, Curves, Vibration and a few more. I'll cover those tools i have found in both Gimp + PS, and then go from there.

Curves are great to add more depth to your icon. It can change the colours, as it's got red/green/blue sections, and i find using it for adding more contrast is really helpful. In photoshop, to find curves, go to Layer > new layer > curves, in Gimp, Colours > Curves. Both give you a pretty similar screen! You get a line in the middle, which you can drag up and down. Above the line will give you more lightness/brightness, below the line will darken it and add contrast. I recommend a kind of S curve, but do experiment with this. You can see even with a very minimal curve, i can add some contrast and depth with output 106, input 123. If i make it even a little more severe, with output 188, input 168 it's giving a bit more bright and contrast - careful as more of this will make it look a little bit yellow and saturated which can be a bit harsh on peoples faces.

I don't tend to use this very often, but if you change the channel to Red, Blue or Green you can then change those specific colours. Here are two tutorials about curves for further reading here and here

Colouring with Colours I don't use this much anymore, but this used to be my go-to. Light pink colour layers on softlight, dark blue layers on soft light and some others on softlight or overlay often give good results. So back to our base and lets see what we can do! The result i ended up with is super subtle. Each layer is on softlight, except that light orange/gold layer, which i used "overlay" what i'm going to do is add a merged softlight later and it should enhance the colours. here is a tutorial on this
& soft light layer:

Colour Balance I don't use ths normally, but i had a play around for this tutorial and it came up with some interesting colouring! worth experimenting with i think.


Vibrance This is photoshop only, but i use it ALL THE TIME because i love bright icons. Too much and it will look not great though. Layer > new adjustment layer > vibrance. It adds more pop, but often adds more yellows that occasionally you have to even out.

Variations I often use variations to even out the colours, and they are found in photoshop only, Image > adjustments > Variations. You are given a screen which shows you the different variations of colour, such as +green, +red +yellow etc. It's also able to show you lighter/darker versions as well. I find this helpful as it shows you as you click in the preview, so i might add more blue and more green, and then darken it and see what it looks like. Remember you can always adjust the opacity to make it less or more of the layer, so sometimes i add more blue and then drop the opacity so it's not so much blue.


Brightness/Contrast Another GREAT option is Brightness/Contrast layer, found in PS as layer > new adjustment layer > brightness/contrast, or in GIMP under colour > Brightness/contrast. This helps lighten/brighten and the contrast can be decreased or increased.

Sharpening!
It doesn't really matter which tool you use, although i'll run through a couple, but it's more knowing the amount of sharpening that is good. The icon should be clear, but not pixelated. Often adding lots of colouring and effects can make your icon a bit more blurry. SOMETIMES your base is just fine and won't need it.

BASE > BLURRY > SHARP > TOO SHARP


GIMP
Sharpen: Filters > Enhance > Sharpen (unsharp mask) I used this on the settings it gave me, but i did lower the opacity a little as it was a bit sharp for me

Photoshop
Sharpen : Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen I find this a bit harsh, you'll likely need to drop down the opacity on this too
Paint Daubs : Filter > Filter Gallery > Paint Daubs I set this on brush size 1, sharpeness 1, and this is the right amount of sharpening for me. I find it's not so harsh as well

Please feel free to ask questions/for clarification i'd love to make this guide better

Comments

[meridian_rose]

Great reference :) I've not used the paint daubs filter so I'll check that out :)
Sadly my ancient version of Photoshop doesn't have vibrance and lot of tutorials on icons or graphic effects mention it. I guess you can try messing around more with the curves and levels :)

[timetobegin]

You can definitely get away without vibrance, adding Satuaration would give you a pretty similar results, although vibrance seems to work better on SOME caps. A combo of Saturation layer + some colour balance would work just as well.

for example, this is the comparison of vibrance vs saturation

new layer > hue/saturation > saturation +43


and this is the same with vibrance +100


imo on this cap, the saturation looks better. Vibrance is kinda a softer touch, so you can add more without getting too much yellow, with saturation you just have to be a little more careful :)

[meridian_rose]

Thank you, that's very helpful :)

[musyc]

I'm following these because my graphic skills are absolutely minimal. XD So in the hope of learning, why do you call the last icon in the sharpening section too sharp? The one before it still looks slightly blurry to me, so if I were doing it, I'd pick the last one. The focus of the icon is on her face, so my brain says it should be clearest as it can be and that sure looks like it.

[timetobegin]

To be fair, screens can have a lot to do with it, depending on your computer what looks too sharp to me might look fine/blurry for other people. Overall, too sharp generally means too pixelated, which for me the last one is heading towards.

But i also kinda see the normal one as a bit blurry now, so that shows you how reliable things are!! LOL. I would pick whatever looks best for you :)