Tutorial 02: Icon Using Gradient Color Light Textures
Many of you have been requesting a tutorial for these icons that I posted as examples for my gradient color light textures. Sorry it took me this long to get around to it, but better late than never right? ^^; This tutorial will basically cover how to use my color textures to achieve the following 3 icons with very minor alterations to get the different color scheme you see.

Tutorial Results:



Intro: This tutorial is written using Photoshop 6.0 because that's what I use, but it should be easily translated for use in other softwares/versions as well. Also, this is written with the assumption that you have at least some basic knowledge of your software- meaning when I talk about setting a layer to Overlay, I'm going to assume that you know what I mean, etc. Other than that, this tutorial should all be pretty basic.

Tutorial #02: Icon Using Gradient Color Light Textures Set 01 (textures are here)

*Note: This tutorial is not meant to be copied exactly. Use it as reference, use it to learn what you can do- don't use it to just reproduce some exact replica. That's just not cool...and what's the fun in that anyway right? :p

I'm going to assume you know how to do all the cropping and standard editing to obtain your base so I'm going to skip all that redundant info. This will be the base I'm starting out on:


Step 01.
We're going to begin with the base up above on the bottom-most layer and add on to it as we go. So let's start with some color textures to go on top of it. I chose this as my first layer:
- Set this layer to Screen blend mode with 67% opacity.

And then I'm going to add the following texture on top of all that:
- Set this layer to Overlay blend mode with 100% opacity.

Important: Now of course I don't want the texture to obstruct Emilie's face, so I use the Eraser tool to erase this layer where it's covering her face and body. That way, the colors remain on the background without doing weird things to her face and in turn taking away the focus. I shall say now that the Eraser is your best friend. *nods*

Here's what we have so far:

Yes, the image is all faded out so we'll fix that in a bit. But notice how the 2nd color texture is erased and now only sits on the background and not on top of her face. Yes? Yes. :) Let's move along then.

Step 02.
Remember the un-touched original base we started out with? Duplicate that layer and move it to the very top-most layer. Desaturate this layer by going to Image --> Adjust --> Desaturate. Then Sharpen the image by going to Filter --> Sharpen --> Sharpen. You should get this:

Set layer to Soft Light, 100% opacity to get this:

As you can see, doing that makes the image stand out a bit more. It's still faded out but we're not done yet.

Step 03.
Before I fix the faded out issue, I feel like adding yet another color texture. Yes, why not? :D This is the one I chose:
- Set to Screen blend mode with 100% opacity.

I think the lighting effect is more fitting to be on the bottom than on top so I'm going to flip the texture layer vertically by going to Edit --> Transform --> Flip Vertical. I also thought the lighting is obstructing Emilie's face a bit, so I once again use the Eraser tool to lightly erase across the layer around where her face is. I finally end up with this:


Now that I think I've added all the different textures I want to add, we're left with the final touches to get rid of the faded out look.

Step 04.
Like Step 02, you're going to duplicate the original un-touched base. So go ahead and duplicate it then move it to your top most layer and set it to Overlay at 45% opacity. Still not quite so we'll duplicate the base once more and drag that to your top most layer again. This time Desaturate the layer and set it to Overlay at 50% opacity.

Right now, you should have two duplicated bases with the above settings to get this:

Much clearer right? At this point, you can pretty much call the icon done if you like. What's left are just some optional steps in finalizing the icon.

Optional Step: This is really a coloring preference. It's just to give you an idea of the different coloring you can get. So let's try the exclusion layer technique. Create a new layer and fill it with a dark blue. This example uses #000033. Set that layer to Exclusion and you'll get the following:


Notice the color difference between this one and the previous example. Again, it all depends on which coloring you like better.

All that aside, what's left is really the text and the border. So I add my text and then created a light 4px border layer to go around the icon, using color #F7F6EF. Then I just created a new layer and added another light 1px border to finally get the end result:


Yes, we're all done now. But remember I mentioned something about minor fixing to get different results? The following are basically the variations I made to end up with the other two example icons.

Variation #1:

To get the above icon, you just have to delete the very first color texture we used in the tutorial back in Step 01. Yes, that's all. ^^

Variation #2:


To get this icon, you will be adding one extra color texture as follows:

Add this layer in between the first two color textures we used back in Step 01 and set it to Overlay at 100% opacity. Sidenote: The dark blue exclusion layer is also skipped as well. And that's all.

Afternote: After that entire tutorial plus the variations, I hope you get the idea of how different layers can be played to achieve different colors. The example icons for my tutorials were meant to show what you can do with the textures- but it doesn't necessarily mean you should always pile them all up like the way I did here. As you can see, deleting or adding an extra layer can create an entirely different color effect. All in all, play around and see what you come up with. Every icon is different and you shouldn't always do the exact same thing because it probably won't work the same from icon to icon.

I hope this tutorial has been helpful; any comments are appreciated. I know a lot of you often ask me to do tutorials- except I'm not entirely sure which kind of tutorials you'd like me to do. If there's a particular effect you're looking for or an icon of mine you'd like to see a tutorial for, just let me know. The more specific, the easier it is for me to figure out what kind of tutorials to post. ^^; Feel free to suggest or request for tutorials at my suggestion box.