Winner's Tutorial, Challenge #91, by pensnest

[pensnest]

This icon was created in PS CS3 on a Mac, and uses Curves, a Gradient Map and a custom shape.


I thought it would be interesting to focus on his hand at her neck, so here's the base crop:



First, I added a Gradient Map using 4a250f (dark orange brown)/f2e8cb (cream). I did a new layer amalgamating the base and the GM, and set it to Hard Light.

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In order to up the contrasts and bring it more to life I added a Curves layer, with a very shallow S-shape to increase both the darkest and lightest parts of the image.





I'd already decided to use 'POWER' as the text, the font is Mael, 14pt, AV50, in f7f0d7.

I used a soft-edged brush, size 27, to stroke a diagonal line down behind the text in c08f50 (an orange-y beige), then added a Gaussian Blur of 9.9 to make the stroke of light a bit fuzzier and more diffuse. In the end I set it to blend mode Hard Light, just to get that nice glow in the corner.



I was very pleased to find a fleur de lys among the Shapes (can't tell you whether it is a Photoshop default or from a set I acquired, I'm afraid—I have acquired a bunch of stuff via Photoshop Creative magazine). Anyway, I applied the shape and positioned it behind the text. Then realised I'd chosen the wrong colour, but this is easy to fix—just click on the coloured square in the Layers palette, and choose. I ended up with f1dbc0. It's set on Screen, opacity 31%.

All that remained was to add a 1px border in dark brown, save for web and devices as .png 24.