spankulert

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Pasted image onto 100x100 layer, used free transform until I had the crop I wanted. (hold in shift to avoid warping the shape)


Used the smudge tool to get rid of the remnants of a speech bubble on the left side.


vibrancy layer: +100


On a new layer I painted over Loki's collar with #80e4b7 and set it to soft light (the layer was blank, but for some reason I saved it with Loki underneath).
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Same method: painted over Loki's eyes with #9ed460 to make the green pop a bit more. Set to color burn 45%.


And again: painted yellow over his crown, #fff200 at soft light 35%. This allows certain items to pop a bit more.


Added a texture by lumsx on soft light. Textures are like the cheat sheets of iconage ;)
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Copy+merge and paste as a new layer(CTRL+A → CTRL+SHIFT+C → CTRL+V). Gaussian blur it at 10, set it to soft light 80%. This bolsters the colors and gives the icon a nice, subtle glow.


It looked a little flat, so underneath the last soft light layer I added a gradient, at soft light 44%. This gives the light of the icon a bit more direction, coming down from the upper left corner.


Copy+merged everything and used smart sharpen, erasing the parts that were oversharpened.



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This is from a cover image with an entirely white background, which is excellent when you don't feel like taxing your wrist with cropping out a subject. Pasted the image onto a 100x100 canvas and resized/positioned it to my liking. I set this layer to multiply.


Underneath that I made a solid color layer, #c5df9c.


It looked a bit plain so I added a texture, set to screen. (I can't find it atm, but it's a bw texture with a white frame.)


Jump to the top layer now, and add a vibrancy layer, +91.


I figured the subject would be a bit too dark unless I spotlighted him a bit, so made a new layer and painted on some white, blurry blobs and set it to soft light (this image is also missing, sorry!).


ON a new layer, I painted over various parts with the corresponding colors to make them stand out more. Set to soft light 65%. Again, minus the black background.
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Since the guy's looking a bit down in the dumps, I decided to add a bit of fading at the edges of the icon. Made a black and white texture and set to screen 71%.
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That's right, it's soft light time! Copy+merge, gaussian blur at 10, set to soft light 55%.


Copy+merge again, set this layer to soft light 48%. The colors are starting to look pretty solid now.


Vibrancy layer, +66.


Copy+merged, used smart sharpen, same settings as above. Erased the parts around his boots and other minor details that looked oversharpened.


I wanted to bring out the greens a bit more, especially in the background. Made a selective color layer, and we're done!