YAIRJ (yet another icon resource journal)

Icon Textures: Light Beam Spotlights

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 02:35:14 GMT

Download File

A set of 11 light beam textures in PNG format for when your icon needs a volumetric spotlight! Probably best copied and pasted as a new Multiply or Screen layer, between 90%-100% opacity. Basic stuff. A few examples:

Same image and texture, left Screen 100% opacity, right Multiply 95% opacity:

PSP Brushes: Misc Texture Stuff

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 19:29:29 GMT

Download: JBR/Image Pack | PSP X | Image Pack, large (500x400)

Use them on icons or to make textures from scratch. Again, despite what the preview image says, the PSPX version brushes are 500x400 ~~-- and I haven't made an image pack for those yet (but soon!)~~ Image pack added for the larger pspBrush version. BTW, if anyone would like one of the orginal textures, please email me. They're larger; most are 1280x960.

And just a little reminder to those who might be new to this journal and are making winter holiday icons, I have a bunch of bases in this post and text brushes here and here. I have a general gradient set and a little gingerbread cookie brush set (JBR only; it's an oldie.)

General Resources: Picture Grunge

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 04:21:40 GMT

Assorted resources used on this experiment (yes, I've been playing with Daz Studio :) ) I found the photo edge tutorial here. If you don't have the Eye Candy 3.1 plugin, this site has a legal download.

Download: Photo Edge (mask)
Download: Picture Grunge JBR file (PSP 7; too lazy to make PSPX)
Download: Picture Grunge (brush image pack)
Download: Scratch Stuff (texture)

Tutorial: Pop Art

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:07:40 GMT

After listing all of those plugins, I thought it would be a good idea to show a few ways in which to use them. One of the projects I was working on recently was a sort of illustrated look, a little comic book, a little pop art. I have commercial filters which do some of these, but wrote up a tutorial that uses only free filters.

The filters you'll need for this are Xero's SuperSmooth, Xero's Lithograph, and Martin Koch's Dither FREE. This is the original image.

1. Apply the SuperSmooth filter. (All images are not created equal and may need different settings!)
2. This is the result.
3. Duplicate image to a new layer.
4. Apply the Lithograph filter to the duplicated layer, using the default settings.
5. Layer settings: Soft light at 100% opacity, and the image should look like this.
6. Merge layers, then duplicate merged image to a new layer.
7. Apply the Dither FREE filter at the default setting.
8. Layer settings can be: Burn at 50% opacity, Overlay at 50% opacity, Soft Light at 50% opacity, or Hard Light at 50% opacity.
9. Merge, save.

For a slightly softer look (as shown in the preview), duplicate the final image to a new layer, with the layer settings at Normal and 30% opacity. Then apply a Gaussian Blur set to 5 and adjust the brightness/contrast at 15/10.

A few more variations to play with. I applied the Mehdi Posterizer plugin to the original image, which produced this result.

Then I came up with this effect by duplicating as a new layer then applying the Dither FREE random setting at Screen 50% opacity.

This worn, scratchy look was achieved by duplicating the image as a new layer and applying these settings to Xero's Soft Vignette filter, then changing the layer setting to Screen at 50%.

(( x-posted to icon_extras and psptutorials ))

PS/PSP Plugins #3

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 00:12:21 GMT

Paint Shop Pro users will probably find these more useful than Photoshop users, since a couple of them make up for regular PS features that can't be found in PSP:

GML Matting

"GML Matting is FREEWARE plugin for Adobe Photoshop and compatible applications. GML Matting is a cutout tool to help separate object from background. Interface of the plugin is similar to that of Photoshop Extract utility while the algorithm used usually produces better result. For Paint Shop Pro users it can become the essential matting plugin since Paint Shop Pro has no built-in matte extraction functionality."

I've seen price tags for similar plugins in the hundreds of dollars, but this one is free. So far, it works great!

« original image

I didn't mess at all with the images; just matted out the woman and slapped her on the first couple of stock images I had on my drive.

easy.Filter SmartCurve

"Photoshop Elements offers in opposite to its professional version no curves command. That's a pity, because curves are a valuable tool for image editing. To remedy this shortcoming this site offers the plugin SmartCurve to upgrade this ability. Of course this plugin can be used from all programs which can integrate Photoshop plugins."

I am not enamored of curves myself, much less so the trend toward neon-glow colors, but I played around with this plugin a little and it seems to work as advertised. The site offers a few "how-to" tips for curve newbies too.

LUCE

Basically another utility for adding interesting light effects to an image. There's a manual linked from the main download site.

VanDerLee's NightVision Plugin

"The NightVision plug-in can make any image like the ones from night vision goggles. By using the effects in this plug-in, you can make images look like they are from a black & white security camera or CCTV system. It's also possible to make them look like infra-red photos. Or you can just use the interlace to make an image look like a TV picture. You can even use it to enhance real night images!"

Okay...not terribly practical, but who knows when you might have a need for an image like that?

ULead Particle Plugin

Some weird and not too useful, but some of the effects look like mist, smoke, fire, and clouds. Eh, it's free...

Martin Koch's Halftones and Line Art

Some dithering and line art stuff here that's useful for pop art type of projects. Some of the plugins are free, others are not (but inexpensive.)

(( Plugin Post #1 • Plugin Post #2 ))

Colorizing cheat

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 07:30:11 GMT

Most colorizing tutorials I run across usually involve lots of layers, lots of erasing, and lots of coloring manually with the airbrush tool (like, oh, the tutorial I did here; which I should revisit one of these days.) Sometimes all that complicated stuff is the only way to achieve a desired result, but if you just have small areas to colorize or tint, it's easier to put the Lasso Tool tool to work.

To boost an existing eye color, use the Lasso Tool to select the irises of each eye, then increase the saturation level. No layers, erasers, or paint brushes required. (edited to add, you can also use the Retouch Tool, which I always forget about; it's easier to use in PSP 7 than PSP X, imo)

To tint selected areas of an image, use the Lasso and then Colorize. In both of the images below (much reduced from the working files, btw) I used the Lasso to draw around and select the lips, then went into the Colorize menu: Hue=5 / Saturation=50. I did the same for the eyes, with Hue=145 and the same saturation. (I used a round airbrush set at Hardness=0 and Opacity=20, with the color #cd5c5c to color the cheeks.)

(The original images looked like this and this; both downloaded from a public domain archive.)

I know PSPX has a saturation brush tip in the retouch tool bar, but I can never get the results to look the way I want them to (maybe I'm doing something wrong?)

More PS/PSP Filters

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 18:55:49 GMT

Yes, I went hunting around for filter plugins again. All sets but one are free downloads. I've only included one example per plugin site, but linked to a number of others (hopefully that way the dial-up users won't be pulling out their hair while waiting for the page to load.)

I use PSP 7 and PSP X, and all of these filters work in Paint Shop Pro as well as Photoshop. The only exception to this is Filter Forge, which does NOT work in PSP 7. However, it also functions as a stand-alone app, so that's not really an issue.

Original Image

Mehdi Filters

A whole bunch of freebies here, most of which aren't particularly useful, but I really like the Fine Threshold filter (and the end result also colorizes very nicely):

Photo-Plugins

Several filters here -- most of them pretty basic -- but one that's useful is the background gradient blur:

optikVerve Labs

They offer a freebie filter called virtualPhotographer, which does a bunch of stuff, among them effects like this one:

Other examples: Reminiscing || Spice || Slight Grain

Filter Forge

Little Inkpot

I didn't keep these filters after downloading and trying them out -- once I bought Filter Forge, I knew I didn't need them -- but there's a couple of nice artsy freebie filters here.

(( Plugin Post #1 • Plugin Post #3 ))

Textures: Noise, b/w and color

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:29:54 GMT

Usage mostly with multiply, soft light, and/or screen layers. A few more examples inside as well.

Examples:

The one on the left just uses one of the b/w textures as a new layer, 100% soft light. The second one uses a b/w texture at soft light 50 - 80% and then one of the color ones at 60 - 70% multiply. Basic stuff...

PSP Brushes: Anglo-Saxon alphabet

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:02:25 GMT

Oh, yeah! I forgot to upload the last of the large-ish historical brushes. This one, like all the others, was made from a public domain scan from an old book. It's an early Anglo-Saxon alphabet. Not all of the letters of the modern alphabet are included, but most of them are.

Download: JBR/pspBrush/Image Pack

The preview is much reduced in size, but the detail on some of the letters is quite nice. ((and just corrected the zip url, sigh...i shouldn't try anything requiring my brain before i've had my first cup of coffee!))

PSP: Magic Symbols, Crosses and Flourishes

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 22:48:49 GMT

Crosses, Monograms, and Flourishes:

Download: JBR/pspBrush/Image Pack

Magic Symbols:

Download: JBR/pspBrush/Image Pack

There's about 16 brushes in the magic symbols set and about 34 in the crosses/monograms/flourishes set. These were all scanned from old books.

The preview images are reduced in size by at least 50%.

PSP Brushes: Old Things

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 22:11:29 GMT

I was in the mood to make a bunch of historical-themed brushes because I hit on a motherlode of public domain images and couldn't resist playing around with them. None of them are icon-sized. Although I'm only uploading one set today, there's four in total: Magic Symbols, Monograms/Crosses/Flourishes, Anglo Saxon Alphabet, and Old Things.

Old Things is the biggest set, and there are two versions available. One is for PSP7 and the other is for PSPX. I did this because of the size restriction differences between the two programs for making brushes. For PSP7, no brush can exceed 255x255 pixels. In PSPX, the limit is 500x500 pixels.

The PSP7 File:

Download: JBR/Images

Please note the preview images are reduced in size and don't include all the brushes, just as many as I could squeeze in without making it look too muddy. :)

Download: pspBrush Files || Images

I broke this set into separate files for the brushes and images because they're big files, even when compressed.

Hope you'll find 'em useful. :) Photoshop users should download the images for the PSPX version and make brushes from those.

Plugins, PSP/PS

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 23:22:18 GMT

Still doing the hiatus thing, but adding a general resource post on plugin filters, for those who might be interested.

These are all FREE plugins that you can use in Paint Shop Pro (they work in my PSP7 and PSP X/XI) as well as Photoshop. A number of these have randomized setting, and you can keep refreshing the view while exploring different effects. If you find something you really like, you can usually save it and load it for later use.

Sometimes, filter effects can add a little something extra to icons or other graphics projects. Just follow the installation instructions for your program after downloading.

<-- original image from bangarang_bases

Xero Graphics

These examples show Xero Graphics greytinter, illustrator, lithograph, and nostalgia filters.

These show Xero Graphics alien mist, illustrator, pasteliser, porcelain, soft mood, duochrome, radiance, and nostalgia filters.
Flaming Pear's Freebies (fixed the link!)

These examples all use the Kyoto Color filter, which is part of the freebie package you can download at Flaming Pear. Editing to make this clearer: only the product I linked to is free. The other products on that page are commercial. It's the download that says Free Plugins / Ornament, ChromaSolarize, Tachyon, Ghost, Solidify, Vitriol, RGB/HSL, Circle to Square, Make Cube Tile...

PhotoFreebies

PhotoFreebies has a nice b/w conversion filter, a desaturation gradient filter that can go L to R, R to L, top to bottom, and bottom to top, and a sepia filter with various settings.

Harry's Filters

Lots of colorizing, b/w, and noise options. No examples for this one, though. :)

Edited to add other freebies:

-- Auto FX Software's Dreamy Photo plugin -- the plugin is free, but you will need an activation key to use it.

-- You can also find some free plugins at Cybia.

-- The baby version of BladePro is called Primus, and can be downloaded here. It's free, but offers less features.

-- This site offers a rather odd little plugin that makes retro dots.

-- And there's a few freebie plugins at Redfield.

-- Download a free, fully functional version of Alien Skin's Eye Candy 3.

(( Plugin Post #2 • Plugin Post #3 ))

Another hiatus...

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 18:51:35 GMT

Obviously, since I haven't posted much lately. :x Not only is the writing keeping me busy, all the stuff that comes with it is taking up more and more of my time.

In the old days, authors wrote books and publishers in NYC took care of selling them. Alas, with the advent on the internet and digital media and all its attendant pros and cons, that's no longer the case. Now authors pretty much have to write and market their books.

ANYway, I'm too swamped with real-life stuff right now to work on icon brushes and resources. Maybe after I turn in this new book, I'll have a little time to play again. Maybe...

Brushes: Circles and Squares

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 19:42:48 GMT

Download: JBR/pspBrush/Image Pack

Eh, just a small set of circle-ish and square-ish masking brushes. Creative inspiration seems at a low ebb lately; probably because I'm so swamped with other stuff. Blah.

Only 7 brushes, so the PSP7, PSPX, and images are all bundled together.

Textures: Gray Noise #3

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:18:57 GMT

Or download the zip file. There's only 10.

I know I've been bad about responding to comments left here. Sorry about that, but I can't seem to catch up on life and the writing is keeping me very, very busy. So if I don't respond with a "thanks!" or a "you're welcome!" it doesn't mean I don't appreciate that you took the time to leave a comment, but that I'm just really pressed for time. Gah!

Textures: Pastel

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 16:05:34 GMT

It's been a while since I've uploaded any icon texture stuff, and I thought the colors and subtle patterns on these were kind of nice:

There's only eight of these, so I didn't make a zip file.

Tutorial: Pinkish coloring (PSPX)

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 15:13:49 GMT

Simple coloring tut:

01. Smart fix [screenshot]

Why: This is a nice quality stock image (from Veer) and didn't need much work. All I did was deepen the colors a little and make her face more pink than pale white.

02. Duplicate layer, normal 30% opacity
03. Gaussian blur 5
04. Brightness/contrast 25/15

Why: Add a slight blur to soften her face, then adjusted the brightness and contrast because the gaussian blur darkens it a little.

05. New layer color 40% opacity
06. Flood fill new layer with neapolitan gradient, to add a soft pink tint to the image

Why: That's all I needed for adding a slight pinkish tint to the image. For more pink, just increase the opacity of the color layer.

07. Merge

08. New layer, normal 100% opacity
09. Flood fill new layer with white
10. Apply frame brush in black
11. Select solid black area, delete
12. New layer, normal 80% or 90% opacity
13. Apply accent brush in black
14. New layer, normal 100% opacity
15. Apply any tiny text brush in black

Frame:

Why: For those new to icon-making, adding effects, brushes, text, textures, etc. on their own separate layer makes it easier to move things around, adjust layers, etc. Sometimes brushes are a little too starkly dark and look better with a lower opacity level.

16. Merge and save

Other materials used: Ice Cream Parlor Gradients, Doodles #2

Quick and easy!

Brushes: Soft white edges

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 18:17:38 GMT

I made this set because I was in the mood for the feathered white edges look, but got tired of doing the "select all, modify, contract, select, feather, select, invert, fill with white, select none" bunch of steps. So now I don't have to do that as often. Maybe you think like me. If so, download away!

And yeah, I'm a really lazy. ;)

Download: PSP7/PSPX | Image Pack | ABR

Edited to add an ABR (PS CS2) from nina79, thanks muchly!

This set recycles a few brushes from earlier ones, modified a bit. Use these as a masking brush (new layer, screen 100% opacity, flood fill with white, then apply brush in black to the same layer) or just copy an image from the image pack and paste over your icon base as a new layer, screen at 100% opacity.

Tutorial: Image quality (PSPX)

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 20:49:50 GMT

A companion to this post. I went hunting around in my computer for a bad-quality scan and this happened to be the first one I found (preliminary DMC4 Dante hitting a TV) so it gets the treatment. It may be easier to just find a nicer scan, but in the event there's nothing else available, it's really not that hard to correct problems like image compression artifacting, faded color, and graininess.

Before and After:

01. Smart fix #1 [screenshot]

Why: The scan was not only grainy and pixelated, the colors were faded, so the first thing to do was darken and brighten the colors.

02. Resize for icon base

Note: Again, reducing the size improves the image quality, though you can still run the image through Noise --> Edge Preserving Smooth --> 1.

02. Duplicate layer, normal 30% opacity
03. Gaussian blur 2
04. Brightness/contrast 15/10

Why: Smooth the jaggies or, in this case, the grainy quality. In my experience, these settings work pretty well for most images, though sometimes I'll change the blur setting to 5. Then I adjust the brightness/contrast levels because adding the gaussian blur darkens the image a bit.

05. Merge

06. Sharpen (?, I think I eventually deleted this step, but keeping it in to be safe)
07. Duplicate layer, screen 40% opacity
08. Duplicate layer, overlay 30% opacity

Why: The image may or may not need to be sharpened again; your choice. The screen/overlay steps intensifies colors and contrast.

09. Merge

10. Smart fix #2 [screenshot]

Why: I still needed to work on the color and contrast, as well as get a more natural looking skin tone.

brush used in step below

11. Add new layer, screen 100% opacity
12. Flood fill layer with white
13. Add masking brush in black
14. Add new layer, 100% opacity normal
15. Apply accent brush in #990000
16. Add new layer, normal 80% opacity
17. Add text in black, cooper black 8pt, 50 kerning

Why: If you're new to icon-making, adding brushes, textures, or text on a new layer makes it easier to play around with them. Also, sometimes the text looks a little better if you lower the opacity a bit, especially if it's a dark, heavy font.

18. Merge and save

PSP Brushes: Pixelized borders

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:13:08 GMT

It's been a long time since I've made any border brushes, so I played around and came up with some funky pixel-ish stuff.

Download: JBR | pspBrush | Image Pack | ABR (PS CS2)

I use these kind of brushes mostly on a new layer set to overlay or soft light, with a black or white fill. Sometimes the dodge setting produces interesting results, and sometimes I just use a gradient fill.

edited to add a PS CS2 .abr version, thanks to nina79!

Tutorial: Image quality and coloring (PSPX)

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 18:27:04 GMT

My New Year got off to a great start when a bunch of middle school kids threw a football through the back of my van while my son was driving in town. Totally shattered the back window. Gaping hole, glass all over. The window people are coming today to fix it, thankfully.

Too bad my kid didn't catch the little brats or call the cops. Somebody needs at least a stern talking-to.

Anyway, I'm planning to post a series of quick tutorials on how to work with poor-quality images and enhance colors. All tutorials were made in PSPX and rely on the Smart Photo Fix feature, which isn't available in PSP7. The tutorial in this post shows how to improve a bad image and also how to approximate a faded, retro look.

Before/After:

01. Smart fix [screenshot]

Why: I needed to correct RFK's yellow-orange skin tone, but I also wanted a faded, retro photo kind of coloring, which is why the saturation is lowered. These aren't universal settings; they work for this image or images very similar to it. Each image requires its own adjustments, so don't be afraid to experiment with settings.

02. Histogram Adjustment, gamma 0.80

Why: To darken the color black, which was a little too green.

03. Duplicate layer, screen 50% opacity
04. Duplicae layer, overlay 30% opacity

Why: These two steps intensify/brighten colors and contrast. The opacity levels for both will vary depending on the image.

05. Merge and resize, then sharpen

Note: Reducing the size usually improves the quality of grainy, pixelated images like this quite a bit. One of the blessings of making 100x100 icons!

06. Duplicate layer, normal 30% opacity
07. Gaussian blur 5
08. brightness/contrast 25/15

Why: I use this trio of steps mainly to smooth out the jaggies that come from reducing an image and sharpening it. After adding the gaussian blur, the image is a little darker, so I use the brightness/contrast settings to correct that. Depending on the image, you may need to lower the Gaussian blur setting or alter the brightness/contrast levels.

09. Merge

10. New layer, soft light 20% opacity
11. Flood fill with neapolitan gradient (set here)

Why: I use this gradient to add a warmer tint to skin tones. I usually use soft light or color at a low opacity level so the end result isn't too pink. Again, depending on your image, you may need to change the opacity levls.

The finished base:

12. Because I was going for a photograph look, I used a retro style photo edge. Copy the photo edge texture and paste as a new layer on your base, position as needed, then use the select tool to select the black area. Delete the black area, choose "Select" from the menu, then click "None."

(more like this)

13. New layer, normal 100% opacity
14. Add text, Georgia 5pt 150 kerning
15. Duplicate layer, normal 30% opacity

Why: Because adding brushes, textures, or text on a new layer makes it easier to play around with them. Text this small can be too light, so duplicating the text layer and then setting the opacity somewhere below 50% helps make it more legible.

16. Merge and save.

Here's a few examples of finished icons using the base:

When I have a little extra time, I'll try to recreate a few of these for PSP7. It is possible to create a similar effect using auto contrast/saturation and other tools, but it takes a few more steps.

Brushes: Doodles #2

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 18:56:22 GMT

YAIRJ is still on hiatus until January, but this is a Happy Holidays! kind of post. :)

Download: PSP 7/X | Image pack | ABR (PS CS2) | GIMP

The image pack is an "all-in-one" image, since there's only 11 of the little things. (xposted to 100x100_brushes) Edited to add a PS CS2 .abr version, thanks to nina79!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!!

Brushes: Assorted Angle/Edge

Sun, 05 Nov 2006 01:30:07 GMT

YAIRJ is on hiatus until Jan 2007!

Download: JBR/pspBrush/ABR/Image Pack

A bit of a hodge-podge of stuff in this one, though there's only nine brushes. Thanks to nina79 for converting the brushes to the PS CS2 ABR version!

Resources: Ink Blots/Blood Splatter

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:46:00 GMT

Download the all-in-one image pack

No brushes for this one yet. Deadlines loom again, less time for playing.

Bases: Sexy!

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 23:31:36 GMT

Download at the gallery pages.

There's 34 bases in total.