Winner's tutorial, Challenge #120 (icon) by pensnest

[pensnest]

This icon was made in PS5 on a Mac, and uses a Curves layer.

It's very simple, and I think having that 'tranquillity' text is what makes it. But there's also the matter of cropping. This first pic shows where the crop comes from.



Obviously the crucial part was to rotate my chosen base by 90 degrees and mystify you!

So the base, once I had reduced it to an appropriate size, looks like this:



My first step was to add a Curves adjustment layer, as is my wont in a long S-shape, to intensify the colours a bit and increase the contrast between the lights and darks.



I made a Merge layer and desaturated it. This is set to Screen, and then I masked off parts of the image so that the white stone and the paler parts of the sand become extra pale (you'll see the masking in the Layers Palette).



I then did another Merge layer of all this, which I set to Multiply at 60% so as to increase the contrast again.



That's all there is to the image; the text is in Trebuchet MS 11pt Regular, AV50.

The Layers Palette: