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This icon was made in PS CS3 on a Mac. It uses a couple of filters.
Now this was quite interesting, being one of those happy accidents that just come along sometimes.
In order to get the crop I wanted, I selected quite a large area including his head, opened a 100x100 new document, copied in my selection, and resized and rotated it until I got this base.

I copied the base three times. The lowest layer was set to Multiply; to the next I applied a Gaussian Blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur) at 4.0; the uppermost I desaturated (Image>Adjustments>Desaturate) and set to Soft Light. This is a base-refining technique I picked up a long time ago, and I'm usually pretty happy with how it turns out. The Gaussian Blur adds a sort of luminous quality and the desaturation stops it getting too vivid.

I did an Amalgamation layer to merge everything so far (Cmd, Alt, Shift+E on a new layer), then copied this amalgamated layer and played about with Filters. In fact, I copied the amalgamated layer a few times, applying a Filter to the copy, until I had something I was pleased with. I was looking for some kind of 'artistic' effect to give the impression of a painting.
What I ended up using was the Filter>Artistic>Rough Pastels filter, with the background set to Brick and a Stroke of 4. Somewhat to my surprise it gave an effect as though there were almost-legible writing on the face, and I liked it.

I then decided on a Gradient Map (I'm very fond of these), and used 2a3561 (a purplish dark blue)/f2e8cb (cream). Here's the effect, on the layers without the filter.

I moved the Filtered layer over the Gradient Map, set it to Soft Light, and decided it was pretty cool. So there we are.


no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 11:55 am (UTC)I love how this icon came out, and thank you so very much for the deconstruction of it. I can see several new techniques I'm going to have to try out at some point!
no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 02:35 pm (UTC)With this icon, the effect from the Rough Pastels layer was a total surprise, but that's part of the fun of Photoshop, I think. I'll probably find it never happens again.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 03:36 pm (UTC)