Hello again. I decided to post this tutorial on how to put contour and highlights on photoshop.

So the before and after looks like this together with the psd coloring.

Before I start with the step by step process here are a few things that I would like to impart:

- Again choose HD photos.

- Don't use over exposed and over saturated photos.

-Know when to stop. I see this part is really important because sometimes you just get carried away and you want to overcompensate on things.

-Make it look as natural as possible.

Yeah that's just the points that I want to share. Anyway here is the step-by-step process.

First open your Photoshop and for the dimensions, I like to keep it 900 by 900 pixels. I know it's quite big for an icon but its nice to still keep it HD because we keep re-uploading icons on different social media sites and most times it will lose quality. So to be safe just keep it HD.

Now here, I used a photo of Phoebe Tonkin that I got from Pinterest. I like this photo because it looks raw and it's not over saturated. It's a bit too bright for my taste but we can fix that.

It's a habit that I have that when I need to work on a lot of layers I always name them first to avoid confusion. So here, I added empty layers and renamed them to the things that I want to add. I make it to a point that each component gets it's own layer so If I make a mistake, it won't damage the other ones.

Now it's time to add the shadows or the contour. I know it looks terrible but I left it like that to emphasize the points that you should contour. In all of my icon edits I don't use black for shadows on the face because it tend to look artificial and forced especially once you start to mess around with your color grading. So what I do is I pick a color in the natural shadows of her face and use that shade for the contour. It's more practical because skin tones vary so its safer to pick one of their natural shades than using black.

Click on the "Brush tool" and choose the third brush the blending thing. idk what you call that. So this are the points that I put shadow on. The hollow of the cheeks,side plane of the nose, that area between the eye and the nose-ridge, under the part of the neck where natural shadow lies, corners of the forehead and also a bit under the lip.

Now after cleaning up some edges and messy bits it's time to blend it in. Change the blending mode to "Soft Light" and for the opacity I like to keep it between 60%-80%.

*I added an adjustment layer before putting the highlight because the photo itself is quite bright. So using the curves I dropped some of the bright points to keep the exposure a bit balanced. You don't have to do this it just depends on the photo you are working on.

Now for the highlights, using the same brush, go ahead and paint white on the high points of the face. Change up the size and stroke opacity when you paint on small areas. It's just like doing make-up. just put highlights on the points you want to emphasize. like the cheekbone, the nosebridge, the forehead, a bit on the chin and jawline, and the browridge and inner corner of they eye.

Now if you think that the edges are too sharp or too strong just erase the sharp parts using the same brush. Like what we did on the shadows, change the blending mode to "Soft Light" and here the opacity is at 65%.

Now for the lips, using the "quick selection" or "pen tool" just fill it with your choice of lipstick shade. Here I used the "eye dropper tool" to pick a color the same shade as the shadow on her lips. It's a bit nude but it always suits the tone of your model if you pick a color within the image itself.

For the blend mode I chose "Multiply" because I wanted to give her a sultry night look. Now if you like to make it a light day make-up look, you can change it to "Soft light" or "Vivid light". Here I made the opacity 74% and I slightly erased the sharp edges to give it a natural lipstick look not the forced Photoshop lipstick look.

For this last step, I filled in the eyebrows and gave her a light eye make-up because I'm so extra. You can paint this part anyway you like. I just made it match her tone and a give it a bit of a nude deepset illusion.

After this part it's mostly done. You can add doodles or some glow or texture of you like. Personally I like to keep it this way and maybe tweak a few things in the color grading. Just show your own personality in your edits and always know when to stop so that the icons won't look so cramped.

Here is the finished product.

I did just a slight color grading to make her look like a badass femme fatal. Ahhhh love her!

Please do not crop and remove my watermark. If you want this icon, I'm giving it away to the first person who wants it. For free so just let me know if you're taking it.

If you enjoyed this tutorial let me know in the comments or by hitting the star button. I also welcome critiques and suggestions. I hope that this helped you!