Aw, thank you but I wasn't fishing for more compliments. I'm shocked to see you say group shots are hard. Yours are compelling and retain detail so wonderfully. I hope some day you might be willing to write a tutorial for a group icon you've made. *hint hint* Or the icon I'm using here. Or that exquisite Teal'c one I adopted from you with his gorgeous face musculature. Really? I'm easy. And a sponge for info.

I know. I'm shameless. Utterly unapologetic in my shamelessness, too.

Heh heh, no, not shameless at all.

I'll pay attention the next time I do a group icon and save my PSD files for a tutorial.

With the Teal'c icon, that one was pretty simple (and basically the same method applied to the Sam icon).

I think this is how I made the Teal'c icon:

1. duplicate your prepared base, set to screen
2. duplicate base, set to soft light (seeing as it's dark, I probably lowered the opacity to about 70)
3. added desaturated later - probably about -50 -- fiddle with it
4. added a tan-ish/brownish layer and set to multiply. lower the opacity so it's not obvious, but makes Teal'c's skin color stand out (otherwise it looks a bit washed out)
5. merged layers (I rarely merge layers unless I have a lot of blur tool work to do)
6. use your blur tool, set to 1% hardness, and 65% strength and run the tool over the skin.
7. the trick to this is NOT to run the blur tool over areas where the face is defined (shadows that mark muscles, and dimples, etc.). if you overuse the blur tool, you lose the definition of the face.
8. if the icon needs more definition, add one more softlight layer.

That's it! It may not be the exact settings, but I don't have the .psd file for that, so I'm guessing as to how I might remake the icon.

*hugs* Oh my! I wasn't expecting my own private tutorial. :)

Wow - I assumed you did lots more to this image to bring out the detail, which makes me wonder...I know you tend to use your own caps. May I assume that they're of higher quality than the average available for download? dbw very kindly wrote me a tutorial on how she gets her amazing SGA caps. I had noticed that icons I made using her caps tend to come out sharper and better than those I make with unprocessed caps so I'm wondering if maybe the detail you're able to retain comes from starting with a better quality image? I don't relish the idea of making a ton of my own caps, I am so darned lazy, but if the product is a superior icon**, then I may have to get over myself.

Blur tool eh? I've been using the smudge tool because blur was too strong for me to handle properly -- but I hadn't played with the "hardness" setting. Thanks for that tip -- now I'm off to play with all of my new knowledge. Thank you!

**Obviously, there's more to a superior icon than just a good cap.

Yes -- caps do make a difference. This Ronan and Shep icon I have with this reply was made from a medium quality cap -- a bit darker and grainier, and not from a DVD. So I just change up the style of icon I want to it -- add color layers and make it darker, contrasty.

My own caps are probably not any higher quality than what's out there. I use PowerDVD -- pretty average program.