#70 - a guide to vibrant monochrome-ish coloring.

[shameless666.livejournal.com]

Okay, first time on Ask The Maker and first time writing a guide, so please be gentle :D
violateraindrop, damsiedam, raktajinos, monstersinyou, julie_izumi and scoobyatemysnax have asked me about my coloring process and how I manage to work with just one color for an icon, but at the same time I can do that with all the colors. I've never been good at writing things since my school days, but I will try to do my best while writing this guide ...


So, the first thing I always do when I open my base cap is to duplicate the layer and set it to screen. Then I go to layer → new adjustment layer → vibrance. My default is always vibrance: +100 and saturation: 0, but sometimes when there's not much color on the original cap, I increase the saturation, until it works for me. After that, there are a lot more things that can be done, so I'll just write a little bit of my most used tools when it comes to coloring.

Variations (image → adjustments → variations)

This is probably the most overlooked tool in photoshop. Obviously there are a lot more tools, with which you can achieve basically the same thing, but this one has to be my favourite. Especially when it comes to more monochrome-ish coloring. It's pretty simple to use and basically you can use it to achieve whatever color you want for your overall look on the icon. I chose to work with this Orphan Black cap, because it's pretty, simple and really easy to work with, because the background is not too busy:

So we crop it how we want it and then apply the things I talked about in the beginning of the guide:

The first icon is just the base, in the second I've duplicated the base and set it to screen and on the third one I've added an adjustment vibrance layer (vibrance: 100, saturation: 17). Now, I need the yellows to pop up a bit, or maybe I don't like yellow and want to go after a different color .. anyway, I never know until I try, so here's where the Variations tool comes in play. Since Variations is not an adjustment layer, it doesn’t use a mask on its own layer to make adjustments and makes the changes to the layer itself. That means we need to duplicate our base, in order to not lose anything. So we merge the original base and the duplicate base on screen and then duplicate it. I like to leave the Vibrance layer on the top, so after I'm done with the variations tool I will have all the vibrance. Once that is done, go to the Image menu, then Adjustments, and then Variations. You’ll see the Variations panel, which will look something like this:

So, let's say we like the yellow in the original cap and we want to make it richer. We click several times on More Yellow and then ok. Now our image is awfully yellow over the subject and we don't want that. So we erase everything that covers the subject and then we end up with this:

(okay, the erasing part could have been better, but I feel lazy, so we'll pretend that it is perfect)

Now, if you don't think yellow is your color, you can always change that. Just click on the yellow layer and then go to image → adjustment → hue/saturation, and then play with the hue until you found your color.

(you can go after a different color in the Variation tool, but I personally think that it's always better (in terms of image quality) to enchance the color you already have in your base image and then change it to whatever you like.)

I really like the purple one so far (I feel I'm really into purple lately), so I take that one, add some textures, curves, selective color until I reach some point, when I like what I've done and that's it. Here are the layers of the finished icon (click). Notice that I don't always add layers on the top, sometimes I like the effect more if I put the new layer, texture, etc. below some of the already existing layers.

(and again, it could have been better, but I need to finish this guide before I forget how to type :D)

Textures

Other way to achieve pretty colors, good lighting and stuff is to use textures. Let's prep our base first and then we're gonna talk a bit about that. So, this is our cap, again it's pretty simple and perfect for some texture coloring:

First thing you should now is that textures are your friend. They do not serve only as a background, but they can also be used in very different ways. Most of the time I use them on screen or overlay/soft light mode, but sometimes I use them on color, saturation, divide, etc. Everything depends on the texture and your screencap choice, so the different textures will work differently on different modes, you just have to experiment a bit. Now let's take some textures and get to work.

A simple how to go from .. to .., using only textures:
→
→ duplicate the base and set it to screen, opacity: 100%. Do it again.
→ add this texture by midnight_road, set it to soft light, opacity: 100%
→ add this texture by midnight_road, set it to color, opacity: 23%
→ add this texture by midnight_road, set it to screen, opacity: 100%. Then, take the eraser tool (size: 65, opacity: 44%) and delete the texture on the right half around the face and the hair.
→ take the same texture, but this time set it to soft light, opacity: 100%
→ flatten the image, duplicate it and set it to screen, opacity: 60%. Then duplicate the flatten image again, drag it to the top and set it vivid light, opacity: 10%

And we're done! Here is what the icon looks like at every step of the process:

Color Fill Layers

The color fill layers are also a good way to create colorful icons. I apply those often on both multiply (opacity: high) and screen (opacity: low) to get some colors on an icon. For this one I choose to work with this cap, he's georgeous, right?

→ First, I cropped the image, duplicated the layer and sharpened it and decreased the opacity to 40%. Then I duplicated my base again and set it to screen, opacity: 100%. And we already have a beauiful, somewhat muted icon. But that's not what we're aiming to at this guide, so we continue from there.
→ add a new curves layer (layer → new adjustment layer → curves) with these settings
→ I like the lighting on the original cap, so I want to keep that, so I added this texture by wolfatmidnight on soft light, opacity: 100% and deleted some of the parts over his face, which turned too dark
→ then we start on coloring (finally!) and add a vibrance layer, with vibrance: +100, saturation: 0
→ after that I decided that I want the icon red, so added a color fill layer (layer → new fill layer → solid color) #4c0606 and set it to screen, opacity: 20%
→ now it's time to add again this texture by wolfatmidnight , but this time I flipped it vertically.
→ as a final step, I added a new color fill layer (#f30a0a) and set it to multiply, opacity: 100% and then I used layer mask to erase the parts on the subject. I kept the parts on his jacket though.

And we're done! Here is what the icon looks like at every step of the process:

(of course, we can change the colors on steps 5 and 7, if we want a different color)

Vibrance, Selective Coloring, Color Balance

I don't really know what to include here, because these are pretty basic stuff, which everyone uses in lots of different ways. The only thing I can give you as a tip is to try these on different blending modes, instead of using it on Normal. I often use Vibrance, set to Screen or to Soft Light (but with lower opacity). Selective Coloring looks great, when used on Soft Light or Color. My advice is - try different things, different modes, just experiment more in the coloring department and you will get the results you want.

So that's it. I think it was good when writing it, but on a second reading, I think this guide sucks big time :D Anyway, I hope you all will find it at least a bit useful. It's pretty clear for me now that I'm not J. K. Rowling, so I'll stick to making icons, instead of writing about making them and I plan to start saving my psd-s, so I don't suck that much the next time, when I'm writing something like this :D

Comments

[kitamikeita.livejournal.com]

Awesome guide! Thanks for sharing it :)

[shameless666.livejournal.com]

you're welcome, I'm glad you like it :)

[violateraindrop]

This is so awesome! Thank you very much ♥
I can't wait to spend some time going through this properly :D

[shameless666.livejournal.com]

you're welcome! ♥
I hope you'll find something useful there :D

[julie-izumi.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Thank you for writing this all up, it's really cool and useful to see how you work with colors!

[shameless666.livejournal.com]

you're welcome, I'm glad you find it useful! =)

[scoobyatemysnax.livejournal.com]

omg this is really cool, thank you so much for writing it :D

also i'm laughing @ "I'm not J. K. Rowling, so I'll stick to making icons, instead of writing about making them" ME TOO. i am having so much difficulty with writing :v

[shameless666.livejournal.com]

you're welcome, I hope you find it useful :D

and yeah, writing is definitely not my thing, I'm jealous to all the people who write amazing guides :D

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

I've been quietly marveling at your sense of color and wondering how you're achieving such gorgeous effects. Thank you for this guide; you've given me a new appreciation for the variations tools. I've seen other tutorials that use but I never thought it would get better results than I could get with other tools. This is the first time I've been impressed with its possibilities. Thank you to those who requested this and THANK YOU for writing it!

[shameless666.livejournal.com]

Oh, the Variation Tool has been my favourite way-to-go since I started iconning again. It always brings me the results I want, so I'm happy to share it's greatness with everybody. I'm glad you have found it helpful/useful! :)

[crazycordy.livejournal.com]

This looks awesome an I'd love to try it, but I can't seem to find the "variations" tool... am I missing something? I have CS5
(http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/crazy_cordy/54727791/48803/48803_original.png)

[shameless666.livejournal.com]

I guess CS5 don't have it. I'm with CS6 Extended, and it's right under HDR Toning

[crazycordy.livejournal.com]

weird... I checked and apparently I have to run it as 32-bit application and now it's magically there... haha Will definitely try out this technique now :D

[shameless666.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you found it, I hope it will be useful to you :)