#2 Tutorial

First sharpen your base (Filter >> Sharpen >> Sharpen).


Then go to Filter >> Surface Blur, set Radius to 5 and Threshold to 5. For those who use earlier verse of Photoshop I recommend to take blur tool and blur the sharpened and pixel-y areas, so skin looks clean and smooth.


Duplicate the base three times, set first two duplicated layers to Screen 100%, the third copy set to Soft Light 100% and Desaturate (Image >> Adjustments >> Desaturate or Shift+Ctrl+U).


Next I took the brush by ownthesunshine and modyfied it a bit.


Select (Ctrl+A), Copy (Ctrl+C) the brush and Paste (Ctrl+V) it on your base. Set to Screen 100%.

So now you have somthing like this:


Make a new layer on top of your base (Layer >> New >> Layer or Shift+Ctrl+N) and fill it with #e5d991 and set the layer to Multiply 100%.


Now I don't really like the coloring of the base, it's kinda too dark...or something...so I go to the very first Background Layer:


And now I add some lightness to it:) (Image >> Adjustments >> Levels or Ctrl+L).

Channel : RGB (Default)

Input Level Settings: 15; 1.25; 160

My settings:


So you went:


Brush time. YAY!

Make a new layer (Layer >> New >> Layer or Shift+Ctrl+N).

I used the brush from ownthesunshine and Rotated it (Image >> Rotate Canvas >> 90⁰ CCW).


Added the text brush to the icon:


Make a new layer again (Layer >> New >> Layer or Shift+Ctrl+N).

Next I took a brush by ewanism and added it.


And here's my Layer Palette: