*LOL!* Snag away! I actually haven't done an icons post in like 30,000 yrs now (75% mind you, b/c Michael Cale has been non-operational while I was on the move, & he had all my caps galleries stored away in his genius 500MB hard-drive brain) sooooo ... yeah. *coughs uncomfortably* There's that. Yeah.
*whistles and stares at the sky*
Actually, the really **ironic part** is that EVERY FREAKIN little thing I learned about art (& Photoshop) I learned off tuts & LJ, & loads AND loads of experimenting! *LOL!* Never had the patience for books (even those with titles like: "PS for the extremely mentally handicapped") ... my old modis operendi was if I saw a style of icon I liked, I'd stalk the artist's LJ til I found on tut on how they did it (most of the best LJ artists had tuts or at least had requests for them) & then I'd practice til I got it down. That's how I learned everything. So its highly bitchy of me now to be all like: "mheh, I'm too busy for you LJ, you wonderful trainer who taught me everything about PS when I was just a newbie ..." *hangs head*
Naughty C! No caramel corn haz you!
Actually now I feel like doubly guilty cause I have been promised for like 19,000 yrs now that I'd put up a master post of tuts from where I learned everything (at least, wtev is still live ... I have like a huge mem-ed list from back in the day, but I haven't looked at it in ages to see if those journals are still around) ...
... & yeah, rly, I should put up one or two tuts myself, even. Least I could do to give back to the LJ art community, considering *mumbles ... oughta kick your lazy ass C ... /mumble*
Honestly, color fills & "Soft Light/Color Burn" modes are the secret to my success but that was after lots of experimentation & learning what worked for me. I use lots of Curves & Levels too (BlindBeats, if she's still around, taught me how to do Curves & Selective Color & Surrexi used to have like the world's best tut on using Levels to lighten a fugly screencap!)
The BEST GEN PIECE OF ADVICE I can give though --& I do this with every art I create, regardless of what it is!-- is, if you're using a screencap, always always ALWAYS **ALWAYS** "Screen" your first layer. Screencaps are just naturally dark (dunno why, they iz trickzy like that) so setting your first layer to "Screen" lightens them enough to give you something to work with. When I see a dark piece of art that somebody made where I can barely see the pic used, I know they probably didn't (or didn't know how) to Screen their layer.
So, open the cap in Photoshop, right click, select "Duplicate Layer" (it'll ask where to do you want to put it, I just hit the Enter key) then from your Blend Modes, set that Layer to "Screen". Voila!! INSTANT LIGHTING FOR YOUR CAP!
I flatten it (at that point) & resize. That's my second valuable tip ... its no good to start coloring or fiddling with a cap if its like 14,000px big & eventually you're gonna make it 100x100. It's gonna look diff, the coloring, the cropping, how sharp the pic is, everything looks diff at 100px versus 1248px.
So get it closer to the size you want- for me, I size it down to about 300px if I know my eventual product will be in the 200px-100px range, & that gives me a far better idea of what my end dealio will look like. I don't crop tho, not til the end (after I'm done coloring & adding textures, wtev) cause I like being able to study the whole cap & decide what crop looks best.
Anyway, Screen Layer & Downsizing, those are the two I always do, every cap, every time (even picspams & promo art & stuff, which is a little bigger than icon dimensions, I still downsize before I color) ...
That's C's Tip of the Day ... tune in tomorrow to find out how to make a lampshade out of a used coffee filter ... ;)
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*whistles and stares at the sky*
Actually, the really **ironic part** is that EVERY FREAKIN little thing I learned about art (& Photoshop) I learned off tuts & LJ, & loads AND loads of experimenting! *LOL!* Never had the patience for books (even those with titles like: "PS for the extremely mentally handicapped") ... my old modis operendi was if I saw a style of icon I liked, I'd stalk the artist's LJ til I found on tut on how they did it (most of the best LJ artists had tuts or at least had requests for them) & then I'd practice til I got it down. That's how I learned everything. So its highly bitchy of me now to be all like: "mheh, I'm too busy for you LJ, you wonderful trainer who taught me everything about PS when I was just a newbie ..." *hangs head*
Naughty C! No caramel corn haz you!
Actually now I feel like doubly guilty cause I have been promised for like 19,000 yrs now that I'd put up a master post of tuts from where I learned everything (at least, wtev is still live ... I have like a huge mem-ed list from back in the day, but I haven't looked at it in ages to see if those journals are still around) ...
... & yeah, rly, I should put up one or two tuts myself, even. Least I could do to give back to the LJ art community, considering *mumbles ... oughta kick your lazy ass C ... /mumble*
Honestly, color fills & "Soft Light/Color Burn" modes are the secret to my success but that was after lots of experimentation & learning what worked for me. I use lots of Curves & Levels too (BlindBeats, if she's still around, taught me how to do Curves & Selective Color & Surrexi used to have like the world's best tut on using Levels to lighten a fugly screencap!)
The BEST GEN PIECE OF ADVICE I can give though --& I do this with every art I create, regardless of what it is!-- is, if you're using a screencap, always always ALWAYS **ALWAYS** "Screen" your first layer. Screencaps are just naturally dark (dunno why, they iz trickzy like that) so setting your first layer to "Screen" lightens them enough to give you something to work with. When I see a dark piece of art that somebody made where I can barely see the pic used, I know they probably didn't (or didn't know how) to Screen their layer.
So, open the cap in Photoshop, right click, select "Duplicate Layer" (it'll ask where to do you want to put it, I just hit the Enter key) then from your Blend Modes, set that Layer to "Screen". Voila!! INSTANT LIGHTING FOR YOUR CAP!
I flatten it (at that point) & resize. That's my second valuable tip ... its no good to start coloring or fiddling with a cap if its like 14,000px big & eventually you're gonna make it 100x100. It's gonna look diff, the coloring, the cropping, how sharp the pic is, everything looks diff at 100px versus 1248px.
So get it closer to the size you want- for me, I size it down to about 300px if I know my eventual product will be in the 200px-100px range, & that gives me a far better idea of what my end dealio will look like. I don't crop tho, not til the end (after I'm done coloring & adding textures, wtev) cause I like being able to study the whole cap & decide what crop looks best.
Anyway, Screen Layer & Downsizing, those are the two I always do, every cap, every time (even picspams & promo art & stuff, which is a little bigger than icon dimensions, I still downsize before I color) ...
That's C's Tip of the Day ... tune in tomorrow to find out how to make a lampshade out of a used coffee filter ... ;)