Ms. Justice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
arspoetica) wrote2012-02-26 04:20 pm
arspoetica) wrote2012-02-26 04:20 pm
Cleaning up dark icons
So I'm definitely not an expert at photoshop...and I'm sure there are plenty of people who can do this better than I can. But since I've been having some success with cleaning up icons, lately, I figured I'd share what I've been learning. ^.^
Step 1: Crop your Screen Cap to a square image so that you have this:
Step 2: Adjust the levels.
Cntrl + L will open the levels menu, so that you see something like this:
You'll want to adjust so that your right-most control (the white arrow under the levels map) is under darkest output levels, and I usually shift the middle control until the image becomes less shadowed. The adjusted levels might look something like this:
Once it seems clear, hit okay.
Step 3: Contrast
Hit Cntrl+M to bring up the curves menu. It'll look something like this:
I usually click at three, equidistant points along the line to act as anchors. The left-most anchor will control the contrast, the middle and right-most anchors will affect the saturation of the image. This greatly depends on the image you're starting with (well-lighted images already have a good amount of contrast and don't need as much adjustment), but can definitely make a big difference in the clarity of your image.
Step 4: Color Balance
Like everything else, the exact changes will differ depending on your base image. Hit Cntrl+B to bring up the color balance menu. You will see that it has three controls... shadows, midtones, and highlights. Generally, I leave shadows alone and only work with midtones and highlights. By default, the controls start on midtones.
When making adjustments, keep them minimal. Too much runs the risk of oversaturating the image. For night scenes that have a lot of blues, shift the top meter further towards red and the bottom meter closer towards yellow in both the midtones and highlights. This will restore some of the skintone colors that have been washed out in dark.
In scenes were candlelight or dim lamps flood the image in yellow, make the opposite adjustments, with the meters moving towards cyan and blue. Highly yellow pictures easily turn orange, and I haven't fully solved that yet...but more moderate pictures can be returned to something more like daylight colors by adding the blue back in.
Step 5: Image Size
Cntrl+Alt+I will open the image size control. Shrink the icon down to 100x100 and you're done!
Step 1: Crop your Screen Cap to a square image so that you have this:
Step 2: Adjust the levels.
Cntrl + L will open the levels menu, so that you see something like this:
You'll want to adjust so that your right-most control (the white arrow under the levels map) is under darkest output levels, and I usually shift the middle control until the image becomes less shadowed. The adjusted levels might look something like this:
Once it seems clear, hit okay.
Step 3: Contrast
Hit Cntrl+M to bring up the curves menu. It'll look something like this:
I usually click at three, equidistant points along the line to act as anchors. The left-most anchor will control the contrast, the middle and right-most anchors will affect the saturation of the image. This greatly depends on the image you're starting with (well-lighted images already have a good amount of contrast and don't need as much adjustment), but can definitely make a big difference in the clarity of your image.
Step 4: Color Balance
Like everything else, the exact changes will differ depending on your base image. Hit Cntrl+B to bring up the color balance menu. You will see that it has three controls... shadows, midtones, and highlights. Generally, I leave shadows alone and only work with midtones and highlights. By default, the controls start on midtones.
When making adjustments, keep them minimal. Too much runs the risk of oversaturating the image. For night scenes that have a lot of blues, shift the top meter further towards red and the bottom meter closer towards yellow in both the midtones and highlights. This will restore some of the skintone colors that have been washed out in dark.
In scenes were candlelight or dim lamps flood the image in yellow, make the opposite adjustments, with the meters moving towards cyan and blue. Highly yellow pictures easily turn orange, and I haven't fully solved that yet...but more moderate pictures can be returned to something more like daylight colors by adding the blue back in.
Step 5: Image Size
Cntrl+Alt+I will open the image size control. Shrink the icon down to 100x100 and you're done!