I dearly love Paint Shop Pro...

[agilebrit]

It works magic. Magic, I say.

rageandpride was kind enough to do some fabulous screencaps of Iron Man and upload them for those of us who just can't get enough of this movie. And there's a scene in the cave that's badly lit with Tony after he wakes up from the surgery with the magnet in his chest, and the shirt is all unzipped, which, yeah.

Me being me, I wanted to icon it, because that's what I do. However, that scene is dark, y'all, and without some pretty intense "fixing up" would make an icon that was just...not good.




So, I dink around in Paint Shop Pro for a bit, and decide to get a little artsy with it because I haven't done that in awhile, with soft focus and maybe a slight comic-book effect, and here's what came out:



Yeah, I'm pretty pleased with that.

Comments

[gates-end.livejournal.com]

Beautiful icon. You are very talented. I have no clue how to make icons.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

*blushes* Well, some of that was just pushing the "one step photo fix" button. And then there's other settings and things you can play with like the contrast and the softening and putting a spotlight in there and stuff. This one was one of the easier ones. There's only three layers on it; I've had others with seven or eight.

[bullet4fob.livejournal.com]

is Paint Shop Pro hard to use? did it take long to lighten the cap?

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

It's not hard at all. The "one step photo fix" button works wonders on big pictures like that one (smaller ones, it tends to do a little TOO much), and I think I might have taken two more steps on that to get it as light as I wanted before doing other things to it, maybe another hit with the "clarify" button and then playing with the contrast a bit. And the version I use (PSP8, which is two or three steps down from the latest and greatest) was something like $25 on eBay.

This Tony/Pepper icon? Started out as this. And it wasn't that hard.