Winner's Invitation Tutorial, Challenge 91, by pensnest

[pensnest]

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.

Comments

[pensnest]

I love gradient maps! Try something like a dark grey-blue and a pale peach, and set it to Hard Light. Or—actually I wrote a Gradient Map tutorial ages ago, it's here should you feel like taking a look.

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.

[stripped]

That gaussian blur layer -- is it completely opaque and normal blending, or is it set to something to allow the layer below it to bleed through at all?

[pensnest]

It's set to Screen. Sometimes, if I don't go through those particular stages for improving a base, I'll do a GB layer and put it on Soft Light instead, which just gives that little bit of softening and smoothing, but a screen layer with a Gaussian Blur on it can be a wonderful thing!

[stripped]

Awesome thank you! Lunch starts shortly so I wanted to ask so I can play. :)

[pensnest]

I hope you'll post some of your experiments!