colouring dark icons

In this tutorial, you will learn how to colour dark icons. This will give the icons a saturated red look.

Difficulty: Medium
Program: Photoshop
Added on: July 5, 2010
PSD Included: Yes

You will need a base that is dark and barely has any colour in it. This is the hardest part. It is best if the base depicts a person (graphics or not). If you don't find the right base then this won't work. You will change this:
into this:

Find your base first or simply make one. As you all know, I'm using this screencap of LIGHTS from her Saviour video because of it's low light and I've been using this colouring on mostly her images:


Step 1: Go to Layer and click Curves in New Adjustment Layer. Put in 130 in Input and 167 in Output with RGB as the Channel. This is what you should get, something lighter than the base.


What we just did was briten the image.

Step 2: Go to Layer and click Selective Colors in New Adjustment Layer. Put in:
Reds -100 40 100
Yellows 100 -100 -100
Blues 100 -46 -51
Magentas -100 -100 100
Whites 100 -29 50
Neutrals -29 -13 -5 17
Blacks 45 18 -18 -6
This is what you should get:


Should look more yellow than before.

Step 3: Go to Layer and click Selective Colors again in New Adjustment Layer. Put in:
Reds -40 28 -13
Cyans -100 -100 -100
Blues 100 43 23
Magentas 13 100 65
This is what you should get:


It should look more red or saturated than before.

Step 4: Go to Layer and click Curves in New Adjustment Layer. Put in 139 in Input and 180 in Output with RGB as the Channel. This is what you should get:


Step 5: This is the last step. You don't actually have to use this step but if you think it is too red or if you want to make it look saturated you can use this.
Go to Channel Mixer in New Adjustment Layer and put in:
Red 110 -15 -7
Green 0 100 0
Blue 0 0 100


Download PSD

Now you are done, and other icons I made using this are:

goodbye

enjoy your stay