Brightness/colour?, pictures inside Options

[Tomates]

Ok. So for a while now ive been trying to figure out how you get this kind of brightness shown in the icons below

Someone suggested using curves but im horrible trying to get curves to work XD

Also another question is how do you get this type of colouring on an icon?


My questions probably seem like a bother, but ive tried many techniques and cant seem to get it like that.
Also i might as well ask for tips on the second one since they both seem that they are in the "same direction" with brightness only it has a bit of a brown, purple or blue tint?

Anyways i would love suggestions on how to achieve this.

[Gigi]

I would recommend adjusting curves, but since you're not that great at that, I would suggest duplicating the layer and setting that layer to "Screen". If it's too light, adjust the opacity. This offers a similar effect to adjusting curves, without having to eyeball the curve yourself (Sometimes, if I feel the contrast is a little lacking, I like to duplicate the image again and set it to either "Soft Light" or "Overlay", again, adjusting opacity).

As for the colouring...I don't see a huge difference apart from the first one looking a little more blue, perhaps more cyan, and the second one being more on the warm side. Personally, I love to change the colours of an image using Color Balance, as opposed to the amateur-ish look you get with Hue/Saturation. Just use the shortcut Ctrl + B, and the dialog box will come up. Adjust the Cyan/Red, Magenta/Green, Yellow/Blue dials to your liking. That's the simplest way of adjusting colours, IMO.

A lot of icon makers like to colour images using new layers and layer options like "Exclusion" or whatnot, but honestly, I'm horrible at that. You could try to check out some of the icon colouring tutorials around here to gather some inspiration, I guess? I tend to be a little more old-school when it comes to Photoshopping.

[venti-anemoi]

when i see that light brown twinge, i think of a layer of blue set on exclusion and around 30% opacity.
http://swimchick.net/resources/tutorials/i...rial3/index.php
or
http://swimchick.net/resources/tutorials/i...rial7/index.php

A dark, less-saturated blue works best.

[Tomates]

i shall try and fiddle around