>

Ok, first and foremost: UTOPIA HAS THE MOST WONDERFUL COLOURS YOU GUYS. NO. SERIOUSLY. which, btw, leads to… go watch it~ /end of subliminal message. But anyway, I WANNA BATH IN ITS COLOURS, therefore, ICONS and this happened.

So, anyway, this is my cap:



one. ADD ALL THE VIBRANCE.
So basically the first step was prepping the base. I tend to change a lot what I do here depending on the cap and my mood~ And this cap had so many pretty colours that I basically added a +100 vibrance layer (I believe), masked a bit of Ian’s face and then pasted on a 100x100 canvas and ended up with this:



two ACTUAL COLOURING.
Ok, so I had my base, I still didn’t know more than I WANT ALL THE YELLOWS, so I basically started working on it.
First off, I started by adding a default black+white gradient on soft light (I abuse this so much usually so, no surprises here). To pop out the shadows and lights of the cap. But since it was still very dark, I added some curves, just to light it up a bit more.

(+ ) > >

But then it was *too* light, and there were some quality issues going on. So I copied it all (ctrl+shift+alt+e) and desaturated (ctrl+u) it. Then I set that layer on softlight and played with the opacity (~30%). I feel this is perfect to bring the shadows back, but 100% tends to be too harsh a result.

+ @100% >

+ @34% >

By now I had lost all colours and yellows and everything. So, I made a selective colouring layer. I only touched the cyans (more cyan, less magentas, even more less yellows) & yellows (no cyan, all yellow)

>

By then the building on the background was starting to bother me. It was too distracting, so I decided to cover it all. So I added a gradient (from # f1edd5 to full transparent white) (played with opacity again) and then went back on my layers, and added an empty second layer on top of my base. Then I proceeded to paint with said colour over the annoying building. Without too much care to be honest, I was being lazy. And since all the yellows were gone again, I added a dark yellow photo filter.

+ * + * > >
*black background is added for this tuto.

three blending!
Now I thought everything looked… boring. And my laziness and the lightning had, imo, distorted the cap quality. So it was all SCRATCH IT OVER or let’s salvage this thing. So, I went and picked two new caps and started trying them out, either by blocking, screen, or soft light. Oh, I should say I also prepped these the same way as the one before: vibrance + masking.

Basically, after lots of IDK what to do, I ended up with this:

(cap 1) Layer one; soft light + Layer two; soft light + Layer three; rotated 90%, on normal; all UNDER the colouring steps.

+ + * + * >
*black backgrounded is added for this tuto.

(cap 2) Layer four; soft light, on top of it all.

+ >

four tweaking
I’m pretty sure I added the text afterwards, is usually one of the last things I do, or at least, decide it’s final aspect by the end… but since it would be messy to just go back and forwards, let’s just say TEXT GOES HERE NOW. So, on top of everything I had till now rests a text layer, set on divide (pretty sure this is only on cs5 forward, but I might be wrong, so, sorry about that.)

Since I’m not sure about the name of these things in English, I’ll just show you the important parts, also, text is bolded:

*, settings:
*black backgrounded is added for this tuto.

So now, it’s all about making the yellows more vivid once again, and adding contrast (I LOVE CONTRAST OK). Anyway, we have a selective colour layer (up the yellows on the yellows channel), another black+white gradient on soft light, a default black&white gradient map set on soft light and opacity ~25 (this, imo, helps a lot with the contrast and bringing back the blacks specially) and another vibrance layer (~20)

(selective colouring mask: ; gradient: )
>


We are ALMOST there. And I guess I sorta knew it, cause I decided to sharpen. So once again I copied it all (except the text layer; no sure if i had added it or not by now, but turned it off if i had) and pasted it and then used High Pass (possibly around ~1, that’s my usual), desaturated it (pretty sure the difference is way too subtle but I do it anyway) and set on soft light.

+ >

I wasn’t feeling it finished, so I wanted a bit more yellows and a bit more contrast so, I followed this steps: add another vibrance layer (~35) and then, copy+pasteall, Gaussian blur (probs around ~5) and set on soft light.

> + >

AND TADA! C’est fini.
tl;dr Vibrance + selective colouring (focus on yellows) + blending similar caps on softlight + gradients/copyall on soft light for contrast.

If you've got any questions, ask! I know this was kinda messy, sorry!
ask the maker thread.