| 1) Take your original image and crop, sharpen and smooth as required. |
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| 2) Paste this gradient into a new layer and set it to exclusion, opacity 100. |
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| 3) Paste this texture into a new layer and set to multiply, opacity 14. |
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| 4) Paste this gradient into a new layer and set to soft light, opacity 35. |
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| 5) Paste this gradient by BTVS_Res (on LJ) into a new layer and set to multiply, opacity 35. |
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| 6) Paste yet another gradient into a new layer and set to colour burn, opacity 13. |
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| 7) Paste this gradient into a new layer and set to soft light, opacity 40. |
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| 8) Paste this gradient into a new layer and set to overlay, opacity 71. |
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| 9) Duplicate your base and drag it to the top. Set it to soft light, opacity 30. |
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| 10) Duplicate your base and again drag it to the top. This time desaturate it set it to soft light, opacity 100. |
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| 11) I added this brush in a pale colour selected from the icon and added an outer glow set it darken in a dark colour taken from the icon (#020104) |
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| 12) I added this border in a dark colour from the icon (#000812) |
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| 13) I thought the left of the icon looks boring so I copied this light texture into a new layer directly above the base and set to screen, opacity 100. |
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| 14) I still think the left of the icon looks boring so I copied this texture into a new layer between the blue soft light layer and the grey overlay layer. I set it to multiply, opacity 100, and created a layer mask and painted in black over Fernando (so that the layer didn't do anything to him.) |
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| 15) I sometimes like to paste a merged copy of the icon into a new layer on top of all the other layers and go Adjustments > Auto Contrast just to see what it looks like, and then play with the opacity until I'm happy. |
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