iconnaissances | Icon Coloring Tutorial (Pin Light + Brightness/Contrast Adjustment layers + Variations)

Today we'll be learning to achieve an interesting coloring, such as turning this:

into this:

, without the use of selective coloring or any of that fun stuff.

The technique is pretty simple but I've got a bit detailed to help you out when making icons through this method. Unfortunately, this tutorial is NOT TRANSLATABLE to PSP as far as I know because it uses the Pin Light blending method.

Step One: Prep the Base.

Crop your screen cap or whatever and resize to get your base. If it's doesn't have enough brightness or contrast, don't worry about it... but if you need to smoothen the picture or edit other things, this is when you should do it. :)

Step Two: Brightness/Contrast Adjustment Layer

Create a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. This may be a bit tricky depending on whatever image you have. But, as a general rule, I had a "higher" brightness than contrast... but try not to have a too-high brightness! It makes the image all cloudy and unclear. And I generally kept the contrast about 8-15 points below the brightness.

Of course, these are just guidelines that I followed and, when having a really different image, you'll have to play around and experiment to see how this works for you. :)

Result:

Step Two: Skin-Colored Pin Light Layer

This one is the important one.

- Create a new layer and apply the image to the new layer (Image>>Apply Image...)

- Zoom in (CRTL + +)

- Using the Eyedropper Tool (I had it on Point Selection), select some of the skin color on one of the people in the image (I'm pretty sure I selected it from Kaylee's face but I'm not 100% sure)

- Create a new layer and fill layer with the selected color (Edit>>Fill Layer, select "Foreground Color")

- Set the color layer to Pin Light and lower the opacity of the layer to your liking (for the icons I made, I generally had the layer between 45-90% opacity)

The color that I got was #874b33. As it was, it was fine. But depending on the skin color you get from your image, you might need to tweak the color to get the right effect. The way to do that is to go to the Color Picker (double-click the foreground color in your Tools) and change the brightness of your color. For the desired effect, you need to have generally darker colors that will affect the light spaces of your icon when put on the Pin Light blend. Lighter colors, in the Pin Light blending mode, will color the darker parts of the picture (hair, background, etc.) and that's not the effect we're going for here.

If you don't like the hue of your Pin Light Layer icon, you're welcome to change it to other colors to get different effects. Skin-ish colors are the best though. Here are a couple that I used in my icons:

#874b33	#70551d	#74522c	#764c3f	#702d0b	#973f11

If you're in the mood to experiment, you should definitely try changing hues and brightness. :)

Result:

Step 4: Another Brightness/Contrast Layer

I'm lazy so I just duplicate the Brightness/Contrast layer that I already made, drag it to the top and lower the opacity. :P

Result:

Step 5 (optional): Variations

You're essentially done! But, in case you want to tweak the colors in your final image, I suggest doing so through the Variations feature.

- Create a new layer and apply the image to the new layer (Image>>Apply Image...)
- Go to Variations (Image>>Adjustments>>Variations)
- Play around with the coloring

For this example, I had just fine tunings and chose "More Cyan" and then "More Blue"

Final Result:

Here are examples of other icons I made with this very technique:

I can't wait to see what fantastic original icons you can come up with this technique... feel free to post some here or link me! Also, please ask questions if any part of the tutorial confuses you.