oh_freckle | 04. Icon tutorial: blending

Several people asked how to make this icon:

I don't have the original psd anymore, but I've tried to recreate it as good as I could. This is what I came up with:

This icon is a collage of several caps, blended together.
These are the caps we're going to need: 1 2 3

Made with Photoshop CS4. It's only using basic blending modes, so it should be translatable to all programs.

1. Preparing the images

For this kind of icons I prepare the images I want to blend separately, for various reasons:

Even if the caps are from the same scene and have similar coloring, they still vary in nuances. It's easier to color each image and adjust adjustment layers for this single picture than trying to get everything right for three images.

If something doesn't work out the way I want later, I always have the source image ready. Replacing one image is a lot easier than fussing with several layers just to get back to a certain point.

So, the overall hue for these is yellow. I like yellow, so I'll go with that and just enhance the colors.
Most of the time I'm too lazy to make drastic changes in colors. Drastic changes also often result in quality loss, and that's the least thing you need for blending images.

First image

For the base image I cropped the image to 100x100.
I want to blend several images, so I'll need a lot of blank space to add the other images, so I cropped it with a lot of negative space around Joe.
Don't worry that the cap isn't "big enough" and that you'll get a stripe of black at the top. This is part of the space we'll need later for adding the other images. For blending images this part needs to be as dark as possible, so always make sure that your background color is set to black before you start cropping, and the stripe will appear in black.

After cropping I simply duplicated the layer and set it to Screen 100%.

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Save your image as .png.

second image

This is the image I want to place on top, so I cropped it just like the first one, just with the black part at the bottom.
I used the whole cap and not just parts of it, so of course you can crop it differently and just place it on top later. However, I like the smooth lines that appear at at the bottom and top of a cap if you it this ways, it makes blending a bit easier and the blending lines less harsh.

Again, duplicate you layer and set it to screen 100%.

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I want to stick with the yellow color, but also add a little something to make it a bit more interesting. For that I like to use textures, so I chose a texture by

deny1984 that has yellow and a different color in it.
Paste it as a new layer.

For coloring with textures the only way is to experiment with blending modes. There's no magic or right solution, all I do is go through several modes until I find something that looks good.
Here I settled on Linear Burn, because it adds color without adding too much contrast (like Color Burn or Overlay would do).
I intend to do some additional coloring after blending everything later, so I keep this fairly tame and lowered the opacity of the texture to 75%

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It turned out a bit dark, so I'm adding a Brightness layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast) and increased the brightness until I like it, here 24.

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We're done with this image, save it as .png.

third image

The first two images are going to be placed on top of each other, so the middle space of the icon is already occupied and additional images can only be added at the sides.
The cap is a partial face shot, so the ways to crop it with lots of space are limited. Here I chose to put it on the left side of the icon, so I need space on the right side.

The coloring is exactly the same as in the second image, so I'm not repeating the process. Just repeat the steps from the second image.

The only difference is that I rotated the texture 90° clockwise (Edit > transform > Rotate 90°CW), because the purple part on his face looked weird. It should look like this.

This is your result:

Flatten your layers (Layer > Flatten Image).
Now grab the Smudge Tool from your tool box and set it to a soft round brush, around 9 px. Smooth the right side until it looks like this:

We're done with this image, save it as .png.

2. Blending

Go back and open your first two prepared images. Grab the second with the Move Tool and drag it onto first one, until it appears as a new layer.

Now comes the blending part. I do that by setting the top image to Lighten.

Lighten works like this: In your top image everything that's lighter than the color in the image beneath it will show up, everything that's darker will disappear.

That means:
- Joe's face in the second image will show, because it's lighter than the black stripe in the first image.
- The black stripe in the second image will disappear, because it's darker than the image of Joe in the first one.

You result should look like this:

As you can see, a tiny part of Joe's neck (light) is overlapping his hair (dark) in the first one and shows. Add a Layer Mask (Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All) to the second image and paint over that part with a soft round brush in black, and it will disappear.
You could also erase that part, but layers asks are much more convenient because the part you painted over isn't actually gone. You can always go back and make it visible again by painting over it in white and it will be there again. The general rule for layer masks is: white parts are revealed, black parts are hidden.

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Not bad, but the coloring is kind of pale. To add a more dramatic color, take the same texture you used before, paste it as new layer and set it again to Linear Burn. It looks good like this, so leave the opacity at 100%.

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The only thing that doesn't look good is that Joe's face in the first image is now very dark. Add a layer mask to texture and paint over this in a medium gray. You see it'll appear lighter.

--> You can't just use black on layer masks, but also grays. That way you'll only reveal what's underneath is partly. The darker the color you paint with, the more will be revealed.

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Now open the third image and drag in onto your canvas as a new layer. Set it to Lighten 100%.
There's a small black gap left to his neck, so move it a bit to the left and down until it looks better.

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By moving the image you'll lose the right part of it and a small stripe will show at the left where the layers under it aren't covered. Pick the Smudge Tool and smooth the black and yellow parts to the right until everything is covered.

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Note: this part of the blending wouldn't work without the texture. The texture on Linear Burn makes the lower left corner very dark, without it the yellow parts of the first image would be too light and Joe's face in the third image would be barely visible.
Click on the eye next to the layer with your texture to make it disappear, and you'll see what I mean.

The upper left corner is very dark. I want it to look exactly like the yellow parts in the lower half. To achieve that I'll actually use these parts of the icon:

Copy/merge everything as a new layer (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E). Move it up until only the lower half of the image is visible.
The yellow part is on the right, but is supposed to be on the left, so flip it horizontal (Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal>

To make it blend better, set it to Lighten 100%. Now parts of the image on top are covered. To fix it, add a Layer Mask to the flipped layer and paint on the right side with black until only the yellow part to the left is visible. Smudge in gray over the left side of Joe's face and hair, that way the yellow will be revealed at a low opacity without actually hiding his face.

Looking at it, Joe's profile at the bottom is kind of floating without showing his body. To fix it I will use a Soft Light layer with only the parts of the first image and the texture.
The reason why I don't simply duplicate the layer with the first image:
- it is very light at the sides, and setting it to Soft Light would cover Joe's face on the second image and make it too bright.
- merging it with the texture doesn't only make it darker, but also more colorful. This way I can easily enhance the colors.

In your layer palette, make everything but the first image and the texture invisible by clicking on the little eyes next to the layers. Select the layer with the texture and copy/merge everything as a new layer (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E).
Your result will be this:

Drag it on top of your layers and set it to Soft Light 100%. Make all layers visible again by clicking in the now empty boxes next to the layers, so the eyes will show again.

The black part of the new Soft Light layer makes the upper part to dark, so erase it with a large soft round brush.

I noticed that the bar in the second image doesn't look good, so I smoothed it out with the Smudge Tool:

If you like the result, you're done. Flatten the image and sharpen if needed.

If you like light effects like I do, add a new layer under the soft light layer and paint some white lines with a hard round brush (~ 9px). Use Gaussian Blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur) on it until it looks good.
Set against a black background mine would look like this:

Leave this layer at Normal and lower the opacity until you like the effect. The Soft Light layer on top will make it automatically look like a light effect. Here I left it at 96%.

This is your result:

Your layer palette should look like this for the blending part: