[Tutorial #20] Half-and-Half Coloring for Animated Icon

[aurora_amethyst]

From this: to this:

Requested by chocolatefrogs

I started out with this image of Yuna from her Dior photoshoot with Bazaar Korea. I'll add her in a little later to prevent confusion with the layers.

I knew that I wanted to play with the colors in Yuna's outfit and do an opposite half-and-half color scheme. For this idea, I added a color fill layer of fddddd for the top half and a color fill layer of b4b9be for the bottom half.



Next, I added this texture by lookslikerain and set it to screen, 100% opacity, because the background looked a little blah and flat and needed a little something.



Now, to add in Yuna! I cut her out in a separate file and then pasted her into my icon and resized her.



Next, I added this animated texture by dragging the layers from the texture file to my icon file (first have the texture file open, then go to Window>Arrange>Tile All Vertically, then select all of the layers and drag them to your icon). You can also just work in the texture file if you want.

To make sure my layers are positioned right, I keep all the texture layers selected and hit ctrl+t (or go to Edit>Free Transform) and enter these settings: X: 68.00px, Y: 50.00px, W: 100%, L 100%, Triangle: 0, H: 0, V: 0.

Just a quick tip, if you select the chain icon between the W and the L when you are resizing, it will keep your aspect ratio of your layer's image the same (it won't look squished, stretched, or just wonky). Also, if you are trying to center something in your icon, generally, typing 50 for both X and Y will work.

But back to the icon! With the texture layers selected, right-click and select Group from Layers. The reason that I put them in a folder is that it will make it easier to apply the half-and-half coloring to the layers. Otherwise, I would have to color each layer individually which can be really annoying.



Next is the coloring of the texture. I made two new color fill layers: ffafbb for the top and b4b9be for the bottom. I clipped them to the folder (press alt and click between the first color layer and the folder and then do the same between the two color fill layers. You can also right click on the layer and click Create Clipping Mask) and set both layers to color, 100% opacity.



Now for the coloring of the icon. Add a vibrance layer with the following settings to make the colors pop (if it's too vibrant or saturated, feel free to fiddle with the settings): Vibrance: 100, Saturation: 100.



But Yuna's skin looks too yellowy! To fix this, I added a selective color layer (a great way to change the color of a specific part of the icon) with the following settings: Yellows: C: 100, M: 30, Y: -82, B: 24.



For the animation part, make sure that you have the timeline showing at the bottom of Photoshop. If it's not there or you're not sure, go to Window and then see if Timeline is checked. If not, click on it to check it. You should now see the timeline at the bottom of Photoshop.



Click on Create Frame Animation (if it says video animation, click on the arrow next to it to change it to frame animation).



Now you should see a little square of your icon in your timeline. Click on the arrow next to 0 sec and change it to 0.1 sec.



Before I get started showing how to make the GIF, I just want to show you how to duplicate frames. On the timeline, you'll see an icon that looks like a sticky note with a creased corner. Click on that to duplicate your frames.



For the next part, instead of writing everything down, I made a short video showing how to do the animation bit.

Watch on Vimeo

To save your GIF, you won't go about it the normal way. First, go to File>Save for Web. Make sure you are on the Optimized tab, the 2-up tab, or the 4-up tab. I like to use the 4-up tab so that I can compare when I change settings, but for the sake of this tutorial, I'll be using the Optimized tab.



You may need to fiddle with the settings especially if the icon is over 40k (see the bottom left of the preview section right under GIF to see the file size). In the bottom right corner, there are buttons to preview the animation so you can test out the changes.

I usually choose Selective (you can choose any of them, but do notice how the quality of the icon changes) and then choose the following settings:

• Colors: 256 (you can change the number of colors or delete colors from the color table)
• No Dither (you can choose any of the other settings, but it will change the quality so keep that in mind)
• Transparency should be checked (this is important if any part of your icon is transparent like this icon)
• No Transparency Dither (again you can change it, but it will change the quality)
• Matte: None (I've never fiddle with this one), Web Snap: 0% (Never fiddled with this one either)
• Lossy: 0 (this will really affect the quality but also lowers the file size)
• Quality: Bicubic (I've never really fiddled with this one)
• Looping: Forever (if you choose once, it will only go through the animation once and then stop. You can choose other, and it will let you choose how many times it loops).

Here's the final product! (I just realized that I forgot about the cherry blossoms in the background! I added a stamped layer of cherry blossoms in ffafbb after pasting the texture by lookslikerain.)



Voila!

.psd

Comments

[chocolatefrogs]

Thank you! I'll have to see if I could figure out animation in Photoshop, been a pain trying to figure out.

[garonne]

Thanks for this tutorial! I had no idea how to make animated icons. This is so helpful. The technique for restoring the natural skin tone was really helpful too.