#mega tutorial

TL;DR look through the #sw edit tag, and find the things that inspire you

SO NOW YOU'RE INSPIRED and you absolutely have no idea what to do next. The next step in any graphic/edit making is Playing Around on Photoshop! (or whatever photo editing service you're going to use). Definitely make some really ugly edits at first, just for the sake of playing around with your settings and your tools. I mean, pull the saturation all the up and all the way down, make it a weird color, just trash whatever image you're practicing on! I've been photoshopping for five years now (jesus christ) and let me tell you, it hasn't always been glamorous (you can visit my icon lj paperless_world for some earlier work *shudder*) BUT every single thing I create makes me better, and I really do feel that. Plus, you can never stop learning it is amazing what I can see some people do, and I love reading a good tutorial or even studying a well-made PSD or Action. I recommend reading some tutorials, and if I could recommend a few:

a good general icon tutorial from lj

sallydonovan's cutting out people/hair tutorial (easily the most important tutorial I ever read. Actually, that blog is FULL of creativity and excellently written tutorials so just…follow them idk they're a genius)

sallydonovan's follow-up to using the pen tool!

calikalie's "photoshop queries" tags in which she explains her process and she is *the* reigning queen of photoshop, so I highly recommend following (and idolizing like I do)

yeahps' tutorial on enhancing colors (advanced)

kolouring's easy sharpening action tutorial (a.k.a what I use)

a tutorial I wrote about how I prep my caps

another tutorial I wrote about blending images

vaderblues' SW psd (and I basically used this until I could wise up to create my own coloring, so yes I highly recommend using this as a jumping-off point)

In general, you can probably also search #tutorial #ps tutorial or even #psd and spend HOURS on that tag!

TL;DR read up, do your homework! and if all else fails, ask blogs you admire to help you! 

OKAY SO NOW WE'RE ACTUALLY GOING TO MAKE THE DAMN THING. So now we get to the Star Wars Basics. Here's typically the order of how I work once I'm actually in photoshop:

a) How do I want to crop this? Cropping is an art form that I think has been seriously lost since moving from lj and those 100x100 icons were unforgiving, but cropping is seriously so important. This icon tutorial basically taught me everything I know, but in general here's another list of things to watch out for:

If you're cropping close on a face, in general, keep the crop at the eyebrow

Hair is your friend!!!!

And for the love of god USE NEGATIVE SPACE!!!

Star Wars is full of beautiful negative space, so please use it! Once I've gotten that down, now comes

b) How do I want to color this? and boy let me tell you the possibilities are endless. You can go dark, you can go light, you can go pale, you can go colorful. SW caps are incredibly flexible and lend themselves to a number of different coloring techniques (which we are very lucky for because not every fandom is like that *cough* The Office *cough*). In general here's what I look for:

Pay attention to what colors are already in the cap, and bring those colors out. Here are some good examples of what I'm talking about: green/yellow, blue, and red which you will encounter a LOT of esp if your'e coloring prequel films

Prequel films will be more HQ than OT films, so prepare for that when you're coloring, and recognize that sometimes you can't transfer prequel coloring to OT films and vice versa

Sometimes, less is more! If after doing your base coloring, you enjoy how it looks, then fuck it you're done! This cap, for example, was really easy to color and I think I maybe did two things to it before liking it!

Be careful your skin color isn't getting crazy! If the cap is very green, and suddenly your subject is starting to look unnaturally green, then maybe it's time to re-evaluate how much green you're using!

 **REMEMBER PEOPLE HAVE SEEN THESE FILMS HUNDREDS OF TIMES!! Unless you're making a very specific choice, editing or changing original caps in terms of color, crop, whatever will be obvious to the people looking at it! Hell you can't even mirror a cap without people recognizing that something is different.

Now, coloring is the bitchiest part, so I'll walk you through a cap the same way I normally do:

So I'm starting with this cap since there seems to be a lot to work with in terms of cropping and coloring.

First things first, I crop and resize to 500 x 278 And this time, I kept the crop simple and made sure Han and Leia were the primary subjects and are in the DEAD CENTER of this image (pro-tip: turn on your "rulers" in photoshop for expert-level cropping)

Now, I'm going to do my base coloring for all caps, which I have linked to earlier in this tutorial. I just adjusted some curves layers to make it brighter, and here we are:

The first thing I recognize is there's an awesome blue in the background, so what I'm going to do is go to my "Curves", and adjust the blues to be more prominent. As a tip, anytime I adjust colors in the "Curves" layer, I brighten the image a smidge. So this is what my Curves looks like and this is what the image looks like now

Oh wow, but Han and Leia look a little more blue than I'd like, so I'm going to create a "Mask" on my Curves layer and click Ctrl + "I" to invert. Now I'm going to take my brush, make it white, and basically "brush" in where I'd like the blue to be. Here's what that looks like and now here's what my cap looks like.  If that steps confusing, please message me and I can try to better explain what I mean.

Then I basically do the same thing with the colors I see in the image. Needs more red? Curves layer, Mask, Paint! Needs some more yellow? Same thing! Never under-estimate where colors can be "hiding". For example, Leia's neck has a tinge of yellow to it, and I want to make sure I'm paying attention to it. Now here's the cap after all that meticulous coloring

Cool! Now a final step that I recommend for literally every SW cap, is to pay attention the shadows!! Since SW is all about "dark side" and that general motif, pay attention to who it affects the caps. The Directors of Photography didn't put those shadows in there by accident! So I just go to "Selective Colors" and go to the "Black" layer and adjust those to bring those shadows out. So here's the final cap.

Honestly I would probably do more steps, but just as a beginning coloring guide, that's what I would recommend. Rinse and repeat for all the caps you want to use! WHEW! After all of that, there's still more things to think about! Like, do I want to put a text on the graphic? Do I want to add texture? Do I want to add gradients? And to be honest, those aren't my strong points and I find that less is more (esp. when some of the caps you could be using could be from 1978 and they really can't handle too many textures). Plus those are pretty advanced steps, and probably for another tutorial. BUT I do encourage you to look into it, read some tutorials, and give it a go! For example, here's a graphic I did with both texture and text (which I really do try to stay away form) and I actually kind of liked it! Now you're ready to post and contribute to the SW fandom! In the words of the most dangerous Sith Lord in the entire galaxy, "Yipee!" There are many steps that go into making a graphic, and I spend anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours on any single graphic (literally 2 hours that one time), so don't give up! And don't get down on yourself if you think your edits/graphics aren't "up to par" with other people. What you may think is not your best work, might wind up in someone else's "inspiration" tag! And remember, you can always ask for help! If you're confused, if you need advice/guidance, or if you want to know exactly how someone colored something, go ahead and send them a message! They'll probably respond and help you out in a big way! I'm going to end this tutorial with a list of SW blogs that I absolutely adore and think create some amazing work (in A-Z order for fairness)

alwaysstarwars

anakinspadme

asofterjedi

captainssolo

carriefishers

darthvaderr

drthcaedus

fysw

hansolo

ifallelseperished(my personal sw inspiration)

jburkheart

leialuke

obiwankenoobi

padme-imaholla

philcoulson (okay they literally only have four posts in their #sw edit tag but omg what an amazing four posts they are!!!)

skywlker

vaderblues